Learning From One's Mistakes

WHEN YOU CONSIDER THAT more than a million Americans have died so far from the Covid 19 pandemmic, and that hundreds every day are still dying, one cannot other than conclude that the response to the virus in these United States, both in the government and the private sector, in every conceivable sector and in every way imaginable, has been and remains, shall we say, "anemic"? That's putting it mildly. Even now, even after all this carnage, we the American people still, incrediblly, refuse to get ourselves vaccinated in sufficient numbers to produce an American "herd immunity", even thought effective, free harmless vaccines are available to all. So, we keep needlessly dying from a virus for which there is prevention, only now we seem to have come to accept the death, to have learned how to live with it, to ignore it. In a hard hitting, deeply analytical, irrrefutable new book, "Democracy In the Time of Covid" Harvard professor of sociology and ethnics Danielle Allen asks why, concludes that the disastrous failure of the U.S. to effectively fight Covid 19 was caused by and reveals severe weaknesses and a decline in the effectivesness of American democracy, of the American social, political, and economic insturutions and the willingness and ability of American government and the American people to use them effectively. Then, she proposes solutions, as she explains that the Covid pandemic can be used as a teaching tool, a learning mmoent to ensure a much better American response to the inevitable next pandemic. Americans trust in government is historically low, for several reasons, and must be restored. Education attempts concerning Covid failed to convince half the American people that vaccination is essential for everyone. In terms of specific solutions to restore American Democracy, the author sugests increasing the size of the U.S. House of Representatives from its current and long time four hundred and thirty five, to perhpas double that number in order to give all Americans a more direct voice in public affairs, as the founders intended that the House would periodically need to increase in size to accomodate the increasing American population. The current state of polarization, culturally, politically, economically in America, the "pulling apart" of American society, the collapse and infectiveness of Democratic institutions can be reversed and healed, but not without strong, definite action. This conversation badly needs to take place, and it is encouraging that the academic community is starting to offer study of it and solutions for it.