In the U.S. war on COVID-19, every day has become Pearl Harbor Day

xizhimen · Dec 7, 2020

In the U.S. war on COVID-19, every day has become Pearl Harbor Day

Updated 8:45 AM; Today 8:45 AM

Nearly as many Americans or more will die today and every day for the foreseeable future from COVID-19 than the 2,403 killed in the infamous Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, which brought the United States into World War II. An even grimmer milestone will occur this week when U.S. coronavirus deaths exceed all 291,557 combat deaths during World War II.

The reaction of America to the coronavirus pandemic is vastly different than the reaction of America to World War II. The response of the American government and its people to World War II marked our ascendancy to the world’s most powerful economic and technological leader. The reaction to this pandemic by the U.S. government and our divided American populace may very well mark the descendancy of the U.S. to a secondary player in the economic and technological world stage.

From the moment the U.S. entered the World War, there was a paradigm shift in American attitude and behavior. Defeat of our enemies became a unifying national quest. Since the beginning of the coronavirus war, the U.S. people have become more divided than ever. For the duration of World War II, American leadership, the president, Congress, state and local elected officials put aside partisan competition and worked together to defeat our enemies. Today, our leaders cannot agree on how to ameliorate the suffering from the Coronavirus attack.

Six months after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. began its long march to victory, when the Japanese Imperial Navy was defeated in the Battle of Midway. Two months later, the beginning of the end of the war on land took place when U.S. Marines invaded the island of Guadalcanal. It is nine months since the Coronavirus first began its assault on the United States. Death tolls are higher now than ever and many Americans are resisting the measures that will save lives even though vaccines could be approved later this month.

During World War II, Congress passed, and the president approved all funding that was necessary to meet the challenge. U.S. industrial capacity was redirected from automobiles and consumer goods to tanks, planes, weapons and ammunition. For the first time in U.S. history, critical goods like gasoline, food and other daily necessities were rationed. Leaders in science and technology were recruited to develop armaments necessary to defeat the enemy and thus began the Atomic Age. American citizens supported the war by serving both in the military and in their communities. They lent the government millions of dollars through War Bonds in denominations as low as 25 dollars to help finance the war.

Today’s U.S. reaction to the worldwide coronavirus pandemic is markedly different than it was to World War II. Congress is unable to legislate financial relief for millions of out-of-work Americans who could lose unemployment benefits by the end of this month, many of them are even now unable to feed their families and are on the brink of being evicted from their homes. Science and technology have been called into question by national, state and local leaders, while useless and even deadly remedies are promoted by the same leaders.

Rather than banding together for a single purpose, the country is divided into those who wear protective masks and those who shun them; those who travel to distant locations and those who isolate themselves in their homes; those who insist on family gatherings and those who celebrate holidays and rites of passage only with a Zoom call. Most divisive of all are those who ignore the coronavirus, call it a hoax, a political ploy or a trivial disease versus those who accept the reality and necessary precautions to minimize its spread.

It remains to be seen, as we emerge from this cataclysmic event, whether the U.S. will even be among the economic leaders of the world. There is an inevitable fate that faces all of us if our nation continues to behave as we have for the last ten months. We should hope the U.S. reaction to the coronavirus attack will at last mirror the reaction to the Pearl Harbor attack that we commemorate today. More than ever, our future as a nation and as individuals depends on it.