It is generally believed that the 1918 flu epidemic infected 500 million people. The actual death toll is unknown but thought to be between 40 and 50 million. Our country was tangled up in WWI and this deadly flu killed as many of our young men and boys in the service as those that fell on the battlefields. President Wilson was “begged” to take actions such as limiting large gatherings and other emergency measures to help control the spread of this debilitating disease. He wouldn’t even do a press release about it for fear of our German enemies learning how hard we had been hit by this deadly flu. And there was politics in 1918 too.

Moving to the present, probably the most amazing thing to me, as a pharmacist, was the ability of our nation to so quickly isolate this SARSCo- 19, develop an effective and safe vaccine and mass produce it in large quantities. America’s health care industry quickly developed covid tests that worked and on a massive scale figured out how to vaccinate everyone in the nation. Our health care scientists were able to tell us with a great degree of accuracy who were the ones who were most likely to die if they caught it and how to prevent this too. Yes, it was our nursing home population and the elderly.

This is why my own doctor was able to look me in the eye and tell me “If you and/or your wife catch this, you’ll likely die.” He advised us to skip ballgames and lay out of church awhile. We did too and we got our shots, wore our masks and stayed in the house a few weeks. If only America in general had followed sound medical advice it would have been better for us all.

It soon became evident that Covid had become politicized. New terms for face masks (face diapers) were just one example. Pfizer caught much flack for allegedly trying to make the most of this and profit off our citizens’ misfortunes. Some of the advice taken may have been foolish, did schools really need to turn out? How much damage was done to our kids by all this enforced home schooling. Damage to our schools and even our churches may be more lasting than we could foresee. And let me say this about what some are labeling as the “evil” Pfizer Pharmaceutical Company. As a longtime pharmacist my experience with Pfizer tells me they are a company of honor who operate in the interest of the public’s health.

I wonder what would have happened if the same political resistance had come about during our long hard battle to stop Polio. Remember the hard years that we had “The March of Dimes?” Remember Jonas Salk? I remember his victory in developing this polio vaccine and I remember how our nation came together with thousands of volunteers helping health officials mobilize Americans and help them get those millions of shots that stopped the polio scourge in its tracks. It worked too. We need to put aside foolish politics and work together to help our great nation go ahead and “whip” covid. We are the only nation capable of doing all this! In fact, we may be the only ones interested in doing all this. And for that let me just say, “God bless America.”

The circulation of these papers is limited and the whole world will not read this, but you did. Let’s all shut off our griping and get to work. Be sure and attend your church Sunday and pray that we can quickly put Covid in our rear-view mirror.

Wayne Bullard, DPh cwaynebullard@gmail. com