Wednesday, April 22, 2020

Don't be too proud to listen and learn...


Life is full of experiences, some good, others not so much: it seems like these past 6 weeks have taught us more lessons than we normally get in a year. Nobody could have predicted what’s been happening these past few months  – even with the early warning from China of a new and potentially deadly virus, we mostly thought, based on what we knew from our past experiences, that the US had more than enough capacity to weather any large medical problem.  We thought our country and government agencies were ever vigilant and prepared for things like this. We thought that our hospitals were more than big enough to handle large patient loads.  We thought this couldn’t be any worse than a normal flu season or the SARs outbreak back in 2006. We were proud of what we thought we knew.  We’ve learned the hard way that we didn’t have nearly enough experience or preparation or capacity to deal with Covid-19. The lessons learned these past few months ought to be a wake-up call that we rarely know enough about the unknown. Pride often fools us into believing things that are just not true. Learn from this lesson today.

Vernon Sanders "Vern" Law (born 1930): American former baseball pitcher who played sixteen seasons for the Pittsburgh Pirates

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