Fighting Omicron As A Country, Not Individual States
Updated: Jan 1, 2022
Omicron is now the dominant version of COVID-19 in the US, accounting for 73% of new infections as of this writing. President Biden is fulfilling his promise of fighting this scourge with “science and speed, not chaos and confusion.”
President Biden’s answer? A new federal initiative that includes:
readying 1,000 military medical professionals to help at overburdened hospitals,
setting up new federal testing sites,
deploying hundreds of federal vaccinators, and
buying 500 million rapid tests to distribute free to the public (and creating a website where people get the tests sent to their homes).
(See Path Out of the Pandemic)
But will all this do any good in Texas? Not if the current government and his cronies have anything to do with it.
A proactive, smart (federal) plan
Biden invoked the Defense Production Act to accelerate production of 500 million newly purchased tests, which they intend to make available in January.
Six federal emergency response teams are deploying immediately to six states: Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont and Wisconsin. They are in addition to the 300 federal medical workers deployed since late November.
Our government now has hundreds of millions of N-95 masks, billions of gloves, tens of millions of gowns and over 100,000 ventilators in the Strategic National Stockpile—all ready to ship out when states need them. The Administration has pre-positioned these supplies in strategic locations across the states for immediate delivery when required. HHS will give pharmacies more flexibility to administer a wider set of vaccinations across state lines. Pharmacies are opening up hundreds of new vaccination sites for kids in January.
FEMA will work with hospitals across the country to make plans to expand capacity. The agency will also get new pop-up vaccination clinics set up to handle hundreds of additional vaccinations per week. FEMA has ventilators, ambulances and emergency medical teams at the ready so when one hospital fills up, they can transport patients to open beds elsewhere.
But in Texas ...
To complement Biden’s federal initiative, governors, mayors, local officials and businesses should (re)impose the mask requirements and other effective tactics that many abandoned – like our state leaders. This would help open up businesses and the economy much more quickly than being anti-mask and anti-vax has done.
If Gov. Abbott et al will just get out of Biden’s way this time, maybe we can get control of this new surge.We can get through this if we stay together—the UNITED States of America and ONE Great State of Texas.