By Janet Ekstract
NEW YORK (TURKISH JOURNAL) – World Health Organization Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Monday: “There will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future.” At a media briefing in Geneva, Ghebreyesus added: “But there is a roadmap to a situation where we can control the disease and get on with our lives.”
A major stumbling block in recovering from the COVID-19 global pandemic are the thousands of maskless Americans who claim their rights are being violated if they are forced to wear a mask in public. The fact is that COVID has skyrocketed in at least 38 states in the U.S. precisely because of Americans flaunting social distance rules, not wearing masks and attending gatherings of more than ten people. The results have been that some governors alarmed at spikes in their states have made masks mandatory.
Despite some states attempting to enforce social distancing and the donning of protective gear in public, there has largely been a failure in America to seriously address the issue while the virus continues to spiral out of control in specific states that haven’t followed COVID protocol.
A case in point is Florida who currently has over 8,000 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 largely due to the fact that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ignored the seriousness of the pandemic and announced he would not endorse wearing masks. DeSantis also refused to put Florida into a lockdown, allowing Americans to cavort on beaches with no strict adherence to COVID prevention. The Agency for Health Care Administration reported that statistics on Monday morning showed the highest numbers of COVID cases in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County. On Sunday, health officials in Florida recorded 15,300 new cases in just a single day.
WHO’s director said: “We need to reach a sustainable situation where we do have adequate control of this virus without shutting down our lives entirely or lurching from lockdown to lockdown.” He explained that to be able to achieve this, three things must happen: Focus on reducing mortality, suppressing transmission and an ‘empowered, engaged community’ that takes individual measres to protect the entire community. He said there also must be strong government leadership and communication.
