LETTER: A pandemic lesson: Economy and health inextricably linked

To Ozaukee Press:

Now we know: We can’t separate our national health from the economy. One influences the other, whether we like it or not. While the inexorable link between the two has always been true, it has taken a pandemic to bring the lesson home. We’ll never be able to sustain a robust economy until we’re healthy (which we know, in the case of the pandemic, won’t occur until we have a vaccine).

Now we know: We can’t keep ourselves healthy if unhealthy people are around us.

Now we know: Science has a great deal to teach us. We can’t blow off what scientists tell us about our health or the environment because, in the end, everything is linked.

We can’t isolate our economy from our health or environment, just as we can’t isolate our liver from the rest of our body.  We are—and our country is—one organism.

 Protective agencies like the World Health Organization and Environmental
Protection Agency can be unwieldy, expensive obstacles to a freewheeling economy and they frustrate many of us.  But they are our safety net, not to be hollowed out or dismissed.  

Because now we know: We need them to keep us from free-falling into chaos.
Barbara Joosse
Port Washington