Crisis demands a unified response

We’re lucky. We’re both retired with pensions. During the current pandemic our main sacrifice is we have had to cut back on our social life. No more Molly’s. No more trips to E-town Coffee or the Highway 20 Brew Pub in Elizabeth. No more trips to the Green Street Tavern tucked inside the DeSoto House in Galena, or salad, pasta and tiramisu, a real treat, at Cannova’s in Freeport.

We’ve had to give up Thursday Birding with the Jo Daviess Conservation Foundation up and down both sides of the Mississippi River from Fulton to Dubuque.

We do Zoom. It’s weird but a lifesaver. We do Zoom cocktail parties, Patty’s book club Zooms and Chuck does Shelter in Place with Severson Dells every Thursday morning. Jessie Crow Mermel from Severson Dells leads a weekly discussion about a short environmental reading. We have had about 16 one-hour meetings. They have progressed from wonderful to great.

Sometimes people invite another couple over, for just drinks or perhaps dinner, too. The hosts supply nothing and the guests bring everything as if they were going on a picnic. Weird but fun.

But many Americans are in trouble economically, and we are all worried about health. Gov. JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot have begun to lift some of the restrictions put in place to help stop the spread of the virus. The restrictions worked. Illinois went from being one of the most dangerous places to one of the safest. Not great, but less frightening than other states such as Texas, Arizona, California and Florida.

Pritzker and Lightfoot have not received nearly enough credit for the work they have done to fight the virus.

Now, however, they have loosened the rules, and some people have in some cases ignored the guidelines. And now there is the predictable rise in the number of cases statewide. Not as bad as some other parts of the country but similar to the rest of the country in the sense that once a state begins to relax, the numbers start going up again. The states with the strictest rules have been the most successful in controlling the virus.

Americans have been avoiding the reality that the virus is going to be with us for more than a month or two. Pritzker and Lightfoot and governors across the country are going to have to begin tightening the guidelines again. At the same time, the president and the U.S. Senate will have to devise funding strategies to help the unemployed and small businesses. The government must spend more money on the businesses that employ fewer than 50 people rather than on wealthy corporations who just happen to be Republican donors. They must also cover the medical expenses of those who are suffering from the virus. Many of them either had no insurance or just lost their insurance when they were laid off.

The states need to work together.

The feds need to work with the 50 states.

America needs to work with the rest of the world to deal with the pandemic.

The country needs to get serious and realize that the pandemic is not going to go away in just a few weeks.

We need to readjust our lives long-term. This is not going to be something that comes and goes in a few more weeks or even months and then we get to go back to normal. The 1918 flu pandemic struck in four separate waves over more than two years. And then again in 1923, killing millions more.

We need a comprehensive, long-term plan.

Chuck and Pat Wemstrom live in rural Mount Carroll. Email: patandchuck@gmail.com.