History, While You Slept


I hope you slept well last night. When you woke up this morning, history had been made on biblical proportions. 

It is zero hour.

While you were off in dreamland, as the rain washed over the East Coast, in the quiet blanket of night, dozens of very special refrigerated trucks made off along the interstates. They departed the previous day from Portage, Michigan: legions of them, fanning out to destinations near and far across America, carrying their valuable and historic cargo, en route to over 600 hospitals and clinics. Right now, as you read this, the COVID vaccinations are hitting the arms of its first American recipients.

One year ago, nobody outside of a biology lab had ever heard of the novel coronavirus, a.k.a. COVID-19. Now it is standard household vocabulary. In December 2019 we knew nothing. Social distancing was something you did when somebody pissed you off. You occasionally viewed people donning face masks on TV news-  Japanese massing in their commuter railways at the height of flu season. Wuhan was a city unknown to most of us.

Oh, how far we've come.

TWELVE months later, our country has embarked on the most ambitious, aggressive, and monumental vaccination program in the history of the world. Somehow, in this comparatively minuscule amount of time, human beings like you and me took the genetic sequence of the virus's DNA,  and through vision, drive and ingenuity created a vaccination; then put it through its regulatory and quality paces and manufactured millions of units of safe, effective, and produceable doses. Once final approval was obtained, a well thought-out operation distributed it to the far reaches of the country- in HOURS.

As a physician, if you would have told you we would be potentially eliminating a 100-year pandemic scourge one year after its initial spread, I would have laughed you out of the room, or committed you, or both. All other infectious diseases, from influenza to polio to smallpox required YEARS of research and more YEARS to develop a safe and effective vaccination. America did it this time in MONTHS. I'm absolutely, 100% fucking blown away.

I'm generally not a "big government" fan. But for the first time in a LONG time, I tip my hat to the current administration and its inception of Operation Warp Speed and its partnering with Big Pharma to save hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of future lives and do it in astounding time,  crashing through all previous records. So to Dr. Anthony Fauci, everyone involved in Operation Warp Speed, Pfizer, Moderna; UPS and Fedex,  the American taxpayer (who footed the bill), and the numerous hospital systems implementing their local inoculation programs, I bow in gratitude and awe. And yes, to President Donald Trump, gotta give credit where credit is due- I thank you as well.

Today- THIS DAY- December 14th, 2020, is my generation's D-Day, Marshall Plan, and rebel run on the Death Star all wrapped up in one.  I sit here on a rainy December morning, typing bloggity-blog,  getting ready to go in for another ER shift, while history is being made all over the country and world. I now fantasize of the blissfully wonderful summer of liberation coming. Parties, barbecues, concerts, athletic events. You there: Feel free to fantasize as well.

Sometimes miracles happen, sometimes they are a group effort.

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