2020 Hometown Heroes

2020 Hometown HEROES Magazine LINCOLN DAILY NEWS May 14, 2020 Page 181 leaders have been highly engaged in the battle against this disease and have offered leadership to the best of their ability. Looking at the last sentence of that March 2020 article – states received no assistance from Washington, D.C., not even from the Food and Drug Administration. In stark contrast, the public has heard daily of the financial assistance that is going to the states. There is a multitude of information being provided by the CDC on how to protect ourselves, and the federal government has deployed FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers to assist states with immediate medical facility needs and other tools that will be needed to defeat this illness. While many of us may be wondering how the government can afford to do what it is doing, and when and how the ‘pay back’ will come about, there is no denying that the government has thrown a lot of money at this problem. With multiple programs to help working families who are now sheltering in place and small businesses that have had to shutter their doors for the health and safety of their community, the government is trying to keep everyone going through this tough time. During the Spanish Flu there was no medical recourse for fighting the disease. There were no medications that could be administered. From the CDC website: “With no vaccine to protect against influenza infection and no antibiotics to treat secondary bacterial infections that can be associated with influenza infections, control efforts worldwide were limited to non-pharmaceutical interventions such as isolation, quarantine, good personal hygiene, use of disinfectants, and limitations of public gatherings, which were applied unevenly.” Science and technology over the last 100 years has advanced substantially. While there is not a vaccine for Covid-19 yet, scientists are rushing to create one. Research doctors are experimenting with drugs that have been used to treat other illnesses with similar symptoms to see if they have an impact on those infected. And, while the results are mixed, they keep trying, keep searching, and are hopeful that they will be able to give us something useful in the near future. There have been a few reported cases of a drug that is commonly used for Malaria that has had a positive affect on some patients. The President’s task force, led by Vice- President Pence is well aware that Covid-19 is not going to go away forever, and on the short list of work to accomplish is to develop a vaccine that will protect our populations in the future. That work is ongoing, and we’ve been assured that the work will not stop until the vaccine is ready to be administered to everyone. There was also a shortage of doctors in 1918 compared to the number of patients. In his CONTINUED u