The HOLE in Trump's 'whole of government' COVID 19 solution.

President Trump’s “whole of government” and “whole of America” approach to combatting the COVID 19 threat has an earth sized hole in it.

Viruses don’t respect borders or the human construct of national sovereignty.  Walls and military force are useless in defense against them.  

New and re-emerging infectious diseases (and human made bioweapons or accidents in making them or preparing defenses against them) have always been the greatest and most immediate threat to our freedom, security and prosperity.  Our government’s habitual reactionary response to this increasingly persistent and inevitably threat possess an additional threat to our nation’s security in the form of unsustainable debt.   Both our government dysfunction and the absence of the protection of human rights globally is our greatest threat.

Prevention appears to be an un-American word.  It would require action beyond our borders first and foremost.   Without acting on this fundamental principle, the costs will be high.   Failure to make timely and adequate investments in the prevention of any obviously lethal problem is either delusional or suicidal.   Without such global investments in the prevention of infectious diseases (natural or human made) we are ensuring a catastrophic future for every nationality, race, religion, and income group.  But those who will suffer most are the poor.   And this sets the stage for future pandemics and other national security threats.   

In the mid-1990s the World Health Organization said that providing universal access to clean water and sanitation alone could prevent half of all the world’s infectious diseases.  Add basic education, affordable access to nutrition, and basic health services and most other infectious diseases could be prevented -- or caught and controlled more rapidly.  Unfortunately, policy makers will likely ignore this fundamental reality yet again.  And when (not if) the next killer pandemic comes (from nature or lab) we will again be unprepared.  The economic cost will be in the trillions and death toll in the hundreds of millions if not billions.  And with any serious threat comes a draconian loss in human freedoms.  Primarily privacy and freedom to travel.  Just going to school or church could be restricted as it was during the 1918 pandemic.   Few remember that more Americans soldiers died from that virus than the war and well as over 600,000 of the healthiest US citizens basically drowned in their own body fluids overnight.  Their healthy immune systems overreacted which flooded their lungs with mucus.   Secondary bacterial infections killed many.  With today’s accelerating loss of our antibiotic arsenal and the rise of superbugs we can expect this again.

What’s needed and we’ve known for decades is putting human rights above the rights of nations.  The Declaration of Independence assertion regarding the self-evident truths inherent in the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God has never been codified.   For millennia we’ve known the value of the Golden Rule and justice.   And now in the form of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals as the best vaccination against future pandemics, wars, genocides, environmental degradation, and growing chaos.

Chances are we will not learn this lesson that the COVID 19 should make self-evident.  It’s not the problem.  We are. 

Our human minds evolved to solve problems.  Our minds today perpetuate them by insisting on flawed ideas like ‘peace through strength’, ‘national sovereignty protects us’, and ‘market forces solve problems’.

Science and engineering offer the best technologies for creating solutions.  But humanely guided government, religion and economics is needed to prioritize, guide and fund them.