How We Should Have Dealt With COVID-19 at the Beginning of the Pandemic

From the beginning of February to now, the world has had to ask itself is it safe to throw a party, visit family, or even just step foot outside. You may be thinking we didn’t get news of this COVID-19 nonsense till late March. While that is true, it has been stated that the first case of COVID-19 was detected as early as January 20, 2020, in the United States. So now you know that the government kept the virus a secret for several months. We start to ask ourselves, what the world would be today if the government responded to the cases of COVID immediately? What really should have been done at the beginning of the pandemic?

Let’s talk about mid-January, everyone is living their perfect lives, mask and hand sanitizer free. Little did we know that our president had just received news of what is now COVID -19. Was the situation addressed right then and there? Of course not, have you seen how the government deals with problematic issues… Exactly. While our president was ignoring the issue of this virus, China was going under quarantine. A week later WHO(world health organization) declares a global health emergency. The government should have requested a lockdown as soon as they heard the news of a deadly virus. As we know they waited untill cases started increasing. 

By February, the United States finally declared a public health emergency due to the coronavirus outbreak. As the month goes by CDC says Covid-19 is heading toward pandemic status. What does the U.S. do? Nothing because it was “fake news”. This is where our president’s beliefs start to impact us. If the government had responded to CDC right away, we might have been able to avoid a major outbreak in the distant future. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case because by March things started to go downhill.

At this point, the virus has caused drastic changes to the world. By March 11th, COVID-19 had been declared a pandemic. States started to see a rapid increase of cases within a few weeks. A travel ban was put in order to prevent non-Americans from coming from Europe to the U.S. By the end of March, most states were on a stay at home order that should have been put in place months ago. Health departments were beginning to notice that the virus was spreading through such ridiculous ways. Why were health officials barely starting to investigate the conditions of the virus two months later? I have no idea, but what I know is that the bacteria of the virus should have been sent to a lab back in January.  

As much as we like to imagine what the world would have been, it is just a fantasy that we can’t do anything about. Today we are still trying to cope with the new norms of the pandemic. There still isn’t a vaccine to save lives. Covid has gotten to the point where it has been able to mutate into other viruses. Almost 7 million people have tested positive and 200,000 have died due to this outrageous pandemic. People haven’t seen their family in months, we haven’t been able to go back to school, and we have to wear a mask everywhere we go. We are living through the consequences of our failed government system.