It was two years ago from the date of this blog post when the World Health Organization's official Twitter feed posted the following:
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) March 11, 2020
"We have therefore made the assessment that #COVID19 can be characterized as a pandemic"-@DrTedros #coronavirus pic.twitter.com/JqdsM2051A
I think about that day often. My wife, mom and me were en route to the Phoenix airport after a four-day vacation in Sedona, AZ. Upon arriving at the terminal, it was pretty obvious that air travel was the first casualty. I'm certain I've never been through a TSA checkpoint faster in a comparable sized airport.
So what have we learned in these past two years? Well, many Americans who were not politically engaged quickly ascertained that government is inefficient and doesn't have the best interest of its citizens in mind when making decisions. To people like me, that was more a confirmation than a revelation, so I was struck by the number of Americans who were shocked, SHOCKED I TELL YA by such ineptitude and corruption.
As difficult as things are economically in the U.S. as a result of legislation and government mandates in reaction to COVID, the most significant damage is yet to come. It still angers me what we did to the kids by not doing everything in our power to have them back in the classrooms ASAP. But once they did return, keeping them in facemasks served to only stunt their social skills and communicative abilities. Sadly it will be years playing catch up for the children as they look to acquire the necessary acumen to be a productive member of the employment sector. It's impossible to put a number on the hit our GDP will take with today's generation 2-3 years behind where they otherwise could have been. If there is one silver lining to this awful period, it's that the sense of urgency for the civil rights issue of our time (i.e. school choice) is getting a much louder voice.
Rahm Emmanuel once famously said that elected officials should "never let a good crisis go to waste." When it comes to the actions of American politicians over the past two years, it's obvious how much they heeded that advice.
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