Originally Posted by WutFace

You know, this part got me thinking. What would make me satisfied that we were doing enough to face this threat? And I haven't been able to articulate it until this reply.

This should have been our generation's moonshot. America used to be able to do amazing things, impossible things. But we're lost and divided, a shadow of our former selves. Here's how it should have gone down.

A national call to action. Part of preventing a second wave is containment of hotspots and flare ups. So when clusters breakout we can get to the source and isolate quickly. That means contact tracing. We can do that utilizing 2 ways: technology and manpower. Apple and Google are codeveloping an app that could track if you came within the vicinity of someone who later tested positive. Combine that with boots on the ground tracers and we might just prevent a second wave. We could have hired 100,000 contact tracers and put them in every town to insure this doesn't go nationwide again.

Our pharmaceutical infrastructure is decimated. When and if a vaccine will be developed, we'll need hundreds of millions of doses. And we'll have to import them from other countries. I doubt we'll be a priority. We should be building massive testing and pharma labs today.

Set up screenings at airports and other public places. Yes, it may not be completely effective, but it will give the public confidence. Right now, everyone is panicked out of their minds. People need to see that we're taking steps to insure their safety, or they're not going to do anything. We need people to feel confident to fly.

These steps would be massive undertakings. Hard work. But seeing this sort of collaborative effort in working towards a common goal would have been unifying.

I try to think what FDR would have done in this scenario. We could use someone like him right now.