Winning in the Age of Corona
America’s on top of the virus — here’s how.
The Coronavirus — a scourge challenging the globe like no other in over a century. Asia, Europe, the Americas, Africa — nobody’s left out on this one. But one of the things that’s most misunderstood about the American response both at home and worldwide is how the USA dominates in a crisis. WWI, WWII, the Space Race, Cold War. You name it America wins. It usually happens with an uncanny combo of industrial strength, natural resource exploitation, and Yankee brashness.
Consider WWII where Americans kinda waited on the sidelines while Europe consumed itself in war (again) and then was spurred to action when Japan poked where it shouldn’t have at Pearl Harbor. Heck America might have been content to just watch but when pushed we had to show the world how it was done (again). See WWI. Not only did we supply arms and manpower to defeat the Germans in WWII we single-handedly took out the Japanese as well. Plus we unleashed the atomic era — all that in 5 years.
Or consider the internet commerce wars of the 2000s. After one of our senators invented the internet we let everyone have a free-for-all leading to the dot com bubble. But again we had to show how it’s done. People got lost on the web so Americans built the best tracking search engine. Citizens of the world couldn’t find each other so Americans built the best and slimiest people web. Folks got bored of professionally made movies (which we also made) and so we dropped the best do it yourself video site on the planet. Now instead of the kiddos getting addicted to Saturday morning cartoons, we’ve got adults hooked on cat videos. American greatness. Again.
One of the challenges of American greatness is we leave the sausage factory open for all to see. This can be quite confusing to the outsider. Probably even mysterious. But our crack abilities start at the top. Our presidents are honed to master the American game long before we promote them to the top job. Just look at this year’s crop. In the incumbent’s chair, we have a 4 times bankrupt businessman and perpetual groper against a candidate who leads from his basement by following the rules. We literally find gems where the sun don’t shine.
Which comes to this era’s showing of greatness — the Coronavirus epic. First of all, any virus that comes from a beer is something we can handle without even using our yearly allotment of Nobel prize winners. I’m guessing this is probably what gets the planet out of sync. While the world works The WHO to combat the virus we homebrew our own solutions and build our own massive case study data sets. Just a note before I go on, the world depending on some old British rock band for advice fighting a virus just seems like an odd plan — but hey — what’s not to like about a few power chords along the way.
As you probably know our current administration has decided to pull us out of many international agreements — Paris accords, WHO, Open Skies. NATO too. Why bother putting in our share of money if we’re gonna be the only ones left standing to do it all anyway. So when the COVID beer virus started to flow we knew we didn’t need no international help. What we needed was to study the problem first hand. By shutting down the borders we kept our folk sealed in the country so they could catch the darned thing and we could see what happened. Here’s where we separate from the pack. By early February China had 80,000 cases while we had only a few dozen. But soon we were winning. By mid March we were in the lead, and now we have over 3 million cases. Now that enough people got it we don’t anyone else’s advice, ’cause we’ve seen it all. And we know they’re not going anywhere ‘because they are all locked in their houses. Mix in some masks, off label drugs, bathroom cleaner and we’re off to the cure. We’ll test anything and everything — droppin’ a cure in double time.
So there you have it. Winning — American style. I’d be shy if I didn’t say it showcases how America is Great (again) but that would be too trite. We’re already great. Now where’s another can of that virus beer?
