THE NUKE MADNESS YET AMONGST US

A flip chart [1980 ]from same organization as the exhibit - also part of our activism -

the single dot of WWII in center square

In moving away from our house of 25 years I brought the Nuclear Freeze movement out of my upstairs office room—the set of 16 exhibit sized, plywood-mounted posters that describe the devastation that nuclear weapons can bring to humanity.  We’ve had them since the early 80’s, and displayed them a couple of times back then, but their warning cries out to us in the present moment.  They’ve been donated to the Peace Center in Lansing, MI with the hope that they can be more prominently seen again.

n these times of pandemic, of an unseen virus, we have to remember that our country still prepares a more devastating means for worldwide destruction.  We are investing as a country $100 billion to totally renovate our nuclear arsenal, already the most powerful on earth.  We want to modernize our own megadeath potential because we still fear the mega enemy, even though the only real external threats we can manufacture are bands of mini-terrorists in faraway lands.

The Lord God promised Noah after the Flood that He would never again destroy the world by water.  This time it would be by fire thermonuclear and by our own hand.  It would take only 100 of our thousands of nukes at the ready, if actually exploded, to create the “nuclear winter” postulated by scientist Carl Sagan, to end human life on our planet.

Yet we the most powerful continue to tinker with these massively destructive machines in the interests of our own purported safety.  We dedicate the first financial fruits of our government to this crazy quest for security, while outside our borders the the world suffers from many ongoing wars—mostly maintained in search of this illusion of our “Homeland Security.” 

This monstrous golden fatted calf can never deliver.  It is a shameless idol that robs us and the rest of the nations of the resources and creativity that could bring us solution to the poverty, injustice, and disease that plague all countries.  These weapons are a terrible backdrop of institutionalized mass suicide that are a constant factor in our political inability to be truly pro-life.

 Nuke failure of submarine launch - From Netflix movie "The Bomb."

Their continued existence looms over all our discussions, though they are rarely spoken or thought about now.  We’d rather fuss over North Korea’s possible half-dozen, or Iran’s potential to make it’s first nuke.  But our mass destruction monsters are a real presence, tall somber metal guardian watchers, jailors of our better intentions.

We must put away this nuclear sword, before we self immolate, and take most of God’s creation with us.  “It is a Sin to Build a Nuclear Weapon” wrote Jesuit Fr. Richard McSorley in the1980's.  It persists as a mega-mortal sin with preposterous immorality inherent in its design.  Their use would be an anti-Christ disaster, a pro-bad choice of radical evil.

Yet we still build them, perfect them.  They surround and hem in our search for a good, healthy life.  Their existence with our reliance on them, is a fundamental disrespect for life.  I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live. Deut 30:19   It’s time before it’s too late to completely dismantle our nuclear weapons leading the rest of the world in this effort, as we are the originators and have made the most of them.  There should be no more government funds for constructing these amoral giants, only for their full retirement and disassembly. May they rest in peace buried in history’s graveyard, so that they never become the tombstone over human existence. 

men

Hope from Pax Christi USA - visit site

References
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/when-carl-sagan-warned-world-about-nuclear-winter-180967198/
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/222/4630/128
https://paxchristiusa.org/backfromthebrink/

https://sojo.net/magazine/february-1977/its-sin-build-nuclear-weapon

The Reverend Richard McSorley, S.J. (1914 - 2002), was professor of peace studies at Georgetown University and writer of eight books on pacifism and social justice. As a Jesuit priest ordained in 1946, he completed his studies for his Ph.D. at Ottawa University. In 1970, he co-founded St. Francis Catholic Worker in Washington, D.C. He served as a board member of the National Interreligious Board for Conscientious Objectors for 15 years and was a National Council member of Pax Christi, U.S.A. from 1983 to 1989. He has written five other books and is a nationally recognized newspaper columnist.

Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

Addendum to our pandemic problem --

200505-WSJ – U of Wash. Covid death numbers double

The reopening plans came as projections show deaths in the U.S. could nearly double in the coming months. Deaths in the U.S. could approach 135,000 by early August, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, which produces a forecast sometimes cited by the White House. The model is one of several that researchers have developed to chart the potential path of the disease, with some predicting more dire scenarios than others.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-latest-news-05-05-2020-11588669450?mod=djemHL_t&tesla=y

THREATENED DEATH OF OPINION PAGE

Have you noticed the death of the opinion page in many newspapers nationwide?  Our local Port Huron area Times Herald let go a couple of good editors, and dropped the page with its editorial, letters to the editor, op-eds, and award winning “Talkback” column over a year ago.  This restructuring, after our paper years ago being subsumed by Gannett News, is part of a further downsizing at behest of new giant owners “New Media Investment Group.“

nd now with the pandemic upon us, its foreseen that with this blow to the economy, many local newspapers across the land will fold or be further diminished.  They were already under pressure from personal device delivered media.  What is lost in this demise?  The freedom of the press to express our opinions in the press, distributed to a wide circulation of people of divergent views.  Our newspapers have contained one of the last public forums designed to invite diverse discussions, respectfully refereed by hopefully impartial editors.

The new newspaper business model has no place for citizens to make public response to the problems and politics of our society. What the powerful willingly or unwittingly want is no talkback from the common folk—just let their thoughts diffuse impatiently among Facebook friends, without impact on those with whom you disagree, impotent to make change. No dialogue, no editor to keep the issues balanced and the discussion civil.  No compromise—more stupidity.  The threatened death of the newspaper opinion page, and local papers themselves, is warning sign that our system of democracy, dependent on a vibrant public forum, faces extinction as well.

Reference 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/05/business/media/gannett-acquired-gatehouse-media.html

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

Update on refugees & Covid 19 [last week's subject]
"Based on the 995 tests it has conducted, ICE has confirmed 449 Covid cases among detainees. As of April 25, the agency had 29,675 detainees nationwide, most of whom are waiting for asylum cases to be resolved or for deportation proceedings to conclude. There have also been 36 positive tests of detention workers."  For full article https://www.wsj.com/articles/inside-the-largest-coronavirus-outbreak-in-immigration-detention-11588239002?mod=djemwhatsnews
And then there are tens of thousands denied entry, awaiting review of their cases in Mexican border city encampments.

AND OUR ADMINISTRATION SAYS, THEY ARE JUST DEPORTEES

From Fresno Bee, 1-28-1948

Woody Guthrie’s song “Deportees” sung by his son Arlo

A 1948 plane crash killed farmworkers being deported back across the border

Too little has changed -- Click on this link for song

 Deported migrants, and soldiers, at an Air Force base in Guatemala City, March 12 and March 19

Photos from UK's Daily Mail 4-27-20

As the nation grapples with the Covid 19 pandemic, staying home and stocking up on groceries, those who harvest our food face terrible double jeopardies—disease and deportation.  CBS news reports that 50% of our migrant farm laborers are undocumented.  They still are considered essential workers, keep the food on our tables, but are not given any government pandemic economic supports, or medical care, and many have been put in detention facilities where the coronavirus further afflicts them.  Those that have documents {H2A program} are also in trouble, with government barely letting them in the door, and then, by a directive of the Trump administration, all farm laborers’ minimum wage is slashed.  This is the reverse of hazardous pay benefits given other essential workers.

So as farm laborers work in often crowded conditions, with historically poor work protections, they are threatened with the dragnet of government ICE detention & deportation, which has been the hallmark of our current administration.  We absolutely need you, but we’ll kick you out as soon as we can. 

   

hen they are picked up and placed in detention, these immigrant workers have faced the increased risk of inadequate jail facilities spreading the infection, which has then led to them being deported back home, ejected infected back to their home countries.  Guatemala has finally refused [see below *], after a deportee flight from the U.S. had a group positive for Covid 19.  Give us your tired, your homeless, those yearning to work freely, and we will use you, then infect you and reject you?  And we export our trouble, as the world’s richest but most Coronavirus ravaged country, to a third world country, more greatly exposing poorer countries to pandemic risk?

Our farmers as well as farm workers are big losers in our current viral plague situation.  See the recent WSJ article,  Coronavirus Forces Farmers to Destroy Their Crops.

We may emerge from this pandemic a hungrier country—at the least having to import more of our produce and staples.  Many of our own farms and their workers could be set back towards dustbowl times.  And a good portion of those who might have come to our country for refuge, work, and a better way of life, will be much more reluctant to do so.

*  Excerpt from the Wall Street Journal--

https://www.wsj.com/articles/latin-america-wary-of-exported-coronavirus-voices-concern-over-u-s-deportations-11587736679

“Guatemala suspended nearly all deportation flights last week after President Alejandro Giammattei said “a large part” of a flight with 76 repatriated Guatemalans was infected. The country is in talks with the U.S. to restart flights once American authorities can certify all deportees have tested negative for the disease, Guatemalan officials said.

On Friday, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed it would begin acquiring 2,000 coronavirus test kits a month to test immigrants it plans to deport, though the agency acknowledged it wouldn’t be able to test every deportee with that number of kits.

The governments worry that returned migrants could spark new waves of infections that overwhelm ill-equipped health-care systems. The U.S., in turn, has threatened these governments with visa sanctions and potential aid cutoffs should they refuse to continue taking back their repatriated citizens, say U.S. officials familiar with the discussions.

Across ICE detention centers, the agency has tested just 425 of the 32,000 immigrants in its custody as of Tuesday [4-21-20], and 253—about 60%—tested positive for the virus.”

And the other reference links  --

https://www.wsj.com/articles/white-house-seeks-to-cut-wages-smooth-migrant-labor-hiring-for-farms-squeezed-by-coronavirus-11587123000?mod=article_inline

https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-forces-farmers-to-destroy-their-crops-11587909600?mod=djemHL_t

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/02/trump-immigrant-workers-coronavirus-162177?mod=djemCapitalJournalDaybreak

Latest news 4-27-20 from UK paper--Guatemala agrees to receive renewed deportations

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8202339/Guatemala-resume-deportation-flights-US-week.html

A good report in the midst of this pandemic, reminded us of the time we spent at a motel refugee center in El Paso a year ago.  Generosity to the stranger, refugee, homeless, outcasts—can save us all.

https://www.wsj.com/video/doctor-treats-chicagos-homeless-at-hotel-during-coronavirus-crisis/027C53BA-AECD-49BF-8FFD-649AD3CC6BFB.html

NEW UNIVERSITY BASED STUDY ESTIMATES 70% OF ICE DETAINEES COULD BECOME INFECTED WITH COVID 19 -- April 27, 2020 https://whistleblower.org/press/study-projects-significant-impact-on-immigrants-and-local-health-care-if-ice-detention-populations-are-not-decreased/
Illumination and artwork by Kathy Brahney

CHOOSE LIFE—ALL OF US –BOTH SIDES OF THE POLITICAL COIN

    The Last Judgement - Michelangelo

When we get to the pearly gates, and at my personal last judgment, Jesus will not ask me, nor 50% of my Catholic faith community, ”Did you have an abortion?”  This will certainly not be my personal litmus test for salvation.  He will ask me, and my male Catholic brethren, and all of us, “Did you protect innocent life?” “Did you choose life, compassion, and mercy?”  “Did you see Me in the third world Muslim child in the war zone, as equally innocent, precious, and present to Me--as in the developing child in the first world womb?”

“

id you recognize that the mind justifying killing the enemy and enemy’s children to save the country, is the same mind that justifies killing the unborn child to protect the lifestyle of the parents?

Why do you think I said to love your enemy, and to put away the sword?  It was to teach that you are all children of the same God our Father, and that all justified violence and killing is against my new commandment, ‘Love one another as I have loved you.’  Do you not understand my death & resurrection?  Did I act and teach in a way that authorizes my followers to kill, in order to win a worldly kingdom, or a smaller more prosperous family unit?"

“Did you aid and abet an abortion?  Or on the other hand, did you expend massive effort to anti-abortion legislate the other’s personal morality?  Did either of these help anyone to truly choose a better life?  Did you aid and abet the large part of the U.S economy that has created the most lethal military machine in recorded history?  Did that make the world more open to My love?”

May we choose life, and health, and charity, over the hardness of heart which invests in war weapons and luxury, while others starve, and pandemic crushes us all.  In this time, Easter, spring, we hopefully begin to make our society one, in which it is easier to be good, right or left rich or poor. 

  

Photo from Popular Mechanics

Illumination by Kathy Brahney

GOD OF THE PROSPEROUS, OR GOD OF MERCY & TRUTH

Do as I say not as I do.  Social distancing 6 feet apart

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-crowded-coronavirus-press-conferences-photos-2020-3

From the New York Times 4-11-20

By the third week in February, the administration’s top public health experts concluded they should recommend to Mr. Trump a new approach that would include warning the American people of the risks and urging steps like social distancing and staying home from work. But the White House focused instead on messaging and crucial additional weeks went by before their views were reluctantly accepted by the president — time when the virus spread largely unimpeded.

When Mr. Trump finally agreed in mid-March to recommend social distancing across the country, effectively bringing much of the economy to a halt, he seemed shellshocked and deflated to some of his closest associates. One described him as “subdued” and “baffled” by how the crisis had played out. An economy that he had wagered his re-election on was suddenly in shambles.

He only regained his swagger, the associate said, from conducting his daily White House briefings, at which he often seeks to rewrite the history of the past several months.

We live in a time when truth is under assault from powerful political and financial interests.  It’s not just a problem for Presidents, but for a whole society which has become full of itself, triaging to the dustbin those who don’t measure up.  Jesus said to power, confronting death, “In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”  “What is truth?” retorted Pilate.  Jn 13:37-38    Jesus conquered death, holding fast to truth no matter the consequences.

 

Just before Lent this year my wife Ande and I were in El Paso a second time to be of some help to refugees from death & violence in Central America.  There was little to do this time as the U.S. administration was in process of shutting the door hard to keep those seeking mercy out.  At mass in the Cathedral there, I was blessed with a bright moment, a golden vision of the altar crucifix reflecting sun.  Holy Communion received, I’m right there at the beginning and end of all things, alpha and omega, Jesus head and foot.  Then right back to the growl of my stomach, and grounded on the kneeler—while remembering, still lifted up, a gift.  We are helped to stay faithful to the truth, and to do what's right, by staying in communion with the Truth who embraces all humanity.
 

here is hope for the immigrants, and the rest of us too.  In the midst of Coronavirus and political arrogance--Jesus is in all current events.  The God amongst us is intrinsic to every situation at all times.  Jesus is the present moment.  We are not alone facing evil, mired in the mundane, or when resplendently within the joyful.  Suffering and triumphant alike we are God’s companions, wayfaring but no strangers.  If we believe in an omnipotent creator God, this One is omnipresent.

Jesus is the personal higher power—all the more credible because God comes down deeper mucking it up just like the rest of us, so much lower into it---To blast death’s door away, Risen, for us, with us, everyone.

Illuminations by Kathy Brahney

Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-response.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/after-icu-coronavirus-patients-ordeal-is-far-from-over-11586356850?mod=djem10point

https://www.wsj.com/articles/ice-releases-160-migrants-over-coronavirus-risk-11586304725

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/01/world/australia/coronavirus-new-york-expats.html

TO INFINITY, THE INFINITESIMAL, AND BEYOND, WE HOPE

The Apollo Missions

Supplanted by

The Mission to police the world with Stealth Jet nuclear bombs,    and the most advanced nuclear missiles ever land & sea

Yet still completely vulnerable to the world's smallest invaders, destroyers of health & home

This scanning electron microscope image shows SARS-CoV-2 (round blue objects) emerging from the surface of cells cultured in the lab. SARS-CoV-2, also known as 2019-nCoV, is the virus that causes COVID-19. The virus shown was isolated from a patient in the U.S. Credit: NIAID-RML 

We squandered our post WWII potential peacetime inheritance, and every possible peace dividend since, on massive doomsday machine weaponries, leaving ourselves incapable of even a fair fight, or mustering any effective fight, against a tiny microbe.

My wife and I have traveled down to Cincinnati to help our daughter Bridget pregnant 6^th month, and her husband who are both working from home under Covid 19 precautions, while they also care for 1 year old Bruce at home due to daycare closure.  With our medical backgrounds we reviewed our absence of carrier risk, and decided we could with good practices be safe help for them.

On the trip the freeway road sign states, “Wapakoneta: First on the Moon,” commemorating the success of one of this town’s own, Astronaut Neil Armstrong.  His “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” lives in our national consciousness.

hose Apollo missions lasted from 1969 till 1972, and 11 other U. S. men landed on the moon.  Many have been the NASA plans since, but they’re been no further such expeditions.  Since 1972 the U.S. has pivoted from exploring the heavens, to trampling down the people of S. E. Asia.  plodded through their rice paddies with some 2 million of their dead in the wake.  For ourselves, 50,000 U.S. soldiers dead there, and 500,000 of veteran lives eventually destroyed back in our homeland.  Nonstop wars entangle us somewhere on earth ever since.

We exchanged a major triumph of inquisitive science, for the glitter of hi-tech military power grabs—ongoing hot & cold wars snuffing out those days of peaceful aspirations.  I remember the hope, having a young president who wanted a better world, worldwide.  Who coupled a mission to land on the moon, with a patriotic invitation to join the Peace Corps, and was trying to pull us out of Vietnam, before he was shot down dead in Dallas.

 was in high school at that time, and felt the world starting to shift {after its brief “cold” spell post WWII} into hotter & hotter scattered but unrelenting war gear.  The U.S. had then decided to be the very best at war.  And we’ve become the world’s most profitable prolific war machine.

And now the world has the chance to turn again.  The U.S. can become great again, leading the nations towards a peace economy that helps provide for everyone’s needs, that conquers the terrible scourges of wars, pandemic, and poverty.  A call to cease all the world's armed conflicts has been made by the head of the United Nations.  Invest the world’s intelligence and efforts into beating a common enemy health destroyer, for the benefit of all—learning how to settle conflict without the bloodshed of the battlefield in the bargain.

In sixth grade my juvenile aspirations were to be a priest-scientist-astronaut.  It was the era of Sputnik then Telstar—they could be seen in the night sky over our Minneapolis neighborhood’s schoolyard.  I soon armed myself with a slide-rule, eager to learn every lesson solve every math problem.  And now my daughter Kathleen has put into significant practical bioscience accomplishment* on the ground, what I only had in vague outer-space imagination.  In addition to awards and publications, she’s today in the growing group of those working to target the coronavirus cell structure. 

Another daughter Maura, and all our extended family have been so supportive doing their parts in Kathleen’s success, and each in their own way on the front-line against this viral threat, and for positive equitable progress in this world—having faith in each other, and in a merciful loving God.

Sources

* "The 20 under 40: Inside the next generation of biopharma leaders"-- from Endpoints News, 4-6-2020
Please contact me at mccpax@gmail.com, if you want to read the "Endpoints" article on Kathleen McCarthy's achievements.  Also -- A pdf of article is in a 2nd email I've sent. Or--To read the article on Kathleen's achievement, you have to google "The 20 under 40: Inside the next

generation of biopharma leaders" and free subscribe to the professional emagazine, "Endpoints." Scroll down to the article section on her success with Skyhawk, a genetics medicine company she co-founded.

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/un-chief-calls-for-immediate-global-ceasefire-amid-covid-19-pandemic/

One disaster alters another
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-stops-separating-immigrant-children-at-border-under-coronavirus-emergency-powers-11585701887?cx_testId=3&cx_testVariant=cx_2&cx_artPos=0#cxrecs_s

Not a serious pandemic?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/03/world/asia/coronavirus-china-grief-deaths.ht

Bill Gates - on real threat: 2015, and today
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Af6b_wyiwI&feature=emb_rel_end
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyFT8qXcOrM


Illumination art by Kathy Brahney

MONEY MISSPENT, VIRUS INSURRECTION, SERVICE IS THE CURE

     Billion dollar 'Raven' Stealth VTOL Gunship - Strafing Run - Ineffective against virus

from Pinterest

Image from The Guardian

This map from Foreign Policy magazine published 1 day ago. 3-29-20

Update from the New York Times 3-30-20

As of Monday evening, at least 160,718 people across every state, plus Washington, D.C., and four U.S. territories, have tested positive for the virus, according to a New York Times database. At least 3,002 patients with the virus have died.

Why were we blind-sided by the coronavirus?  Because we have the blind leading the blind in our national government.  The best money can buy, but incapable of providing for the basic real needs of we the people.  The billions upon trillions we’ve squandered on nukes, F-35s, border walls, tax breaks for billionaires, frivolous country invasions, pay to play national elections, military and on-the-streets weapons galore…just since our ramping up the War on Terror…left us nearly defenseless against a microscopic invader.

We have mis-spent our nation’s treasure.  One consequence is finding ourselves unprepared to combat this pandemic.  We are too good at endless war, and not good enough at universal healthcare.

Members of the inner circle of White House and Congress and lobbyists may get the coronavirus, but who amongst them will be without a ventilator if needed?  What we have here is not only a failure to communicate, but also a failure to commiserate--a failure to equally value and understand life of different income levels and social strata.  We have become a very divided nation, not just politically [huge gulfs between parties and factions], but crucially, between haves and have-nots.

We are becoming fundamentally, racially, religiously, and economically divided.  In the absence of any regular personal interactions or commitments between we the individualistic U.S. citizens, we more permanently form separate social classes. We are isolationists to each other, strangers to each other in our own homeland, and afraid of immigrants from elsewhere.  In the past it has been immigrants who have made us great, made us who we are—a melting pot of somewhat still courageous mongrels.  But our leadership is now abandoning us, and science, engendering fear—misdirected and chaotic uninformed and dangerously prejudiced.  Facebook cannot save us.  We need real substantial community solidarity.  Face to face, if for now, only 6 feet apart.  The graphs below from 2 states obtain if we follow social isolation protocols, worse if we don't.

When we recover from this pandemic, which we can and certainly will, we have to renew faith in Americans of all races, cultures, and incomes; and acknowledge our interdependency with all the world’s peoples and creation.  We should dedicate our resources to the provision of adequate health care, and living conditions, for every member of the human race.  Poverty, and war, and arrogant apathy about these, breed terrible disease. 

Graphs are from Washington State's Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation

Let’s start acting like the developed wealthy nation we are.  The Bible states that from those who have more, more is required.  Practical measures should start here at home:  the income tax structure needs to be revised back in the direction of a truly progressive tax [progress for all, not just the 1%].  Significant tax increases from those at the top make an investment in the whole.  Opportunities for advancement of those in the middle class and bottom are obligatory for a healthy stable USA.  This redirection of financial resources works internationally as well [see Jeffrey Sach’s book, “the End of Poverty”].  Most everyone worldwide wants to be given just a well-designed step on a sturdy bottom rung of the economic ladder, so that their work to support and advance self and family has a chance of success.

tarting with a new Robin Hood tax strategy which makes focused investments in everyone’s abilities here and abroad, we can also balance our budget by decreasing our military expenditures.  At the same time we strengthen our posture in the world by transitioning from bombs and bullets, to real engagement: in the Peace Corps, informed diplomacy, shared economic development projects [to complete the Millennium Challenge which we waffled on], and AmeriCorps here at home.

Everyone able should be required to serve.  As President Kennedy said to a younger nation, “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”  [And, for your world.]  This applies equally to rich, middle class, and poor.  The sickness which we now battle should make us wiser.  Much wiser than the man in the Gospel who went to bed smugly admiring his newly built second barn to hold all his burgeoning stuff, never to awake the next morning.  For us Christians, and all who would hear, this is Jesus direct recommendation. “But Jesus called them aside and said, ‘You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their superiors exercise authority over them.  It shall not be this way among you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.’”  Mt 20: 25-26.

We can no longer trust in blind politicians and corporate wizards, stupefied by their riches and power, who’ve become self-immune to the concept of service.  We must see clearly with eyes of informed common sense, and faith.  Competent stewardship is the true path to wellbeing and new life.

Could the U.S. been better prepared?--absolutely!   The Lost Month- How a Failure to Test Blinded the U.S. to Covid-19 - The New York Times (2) https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/28/us/testing-coronavirus-pandemic.html

Illumination art works by Kathy Brahney