President Trump and team during their almost daily briefing on the status of the administrations response to the corona virus.

OPINION

The President of the United States wants to see the church pews full by Easter and I suspect, in a way, we all would like to see that, except for one underlying fact. The virus doesn't seem to care what we like. This virus, much like a computer virus, needs useful idiots to help it to grow and expand. If we don't get back to work, that goal is much harder to achieve. Imagine a business with thousands of computers. One of the employees inadvertently clicks on a link and by doing so, allows computer malware onto the network. The virus is malicious and is expanding exponentially throughout the network. The Data Scientist and IT Forensic team responsible for preventing and responding to just this problem were let go last year, so the response falls to the IT Engineering team. The IT director see's the linkages to a command and control center and shuts down the connectivity to this location, but the virus is already inside the building and continues to expand. The team now shuts down the entire network to stop the virus from expanding further. What happens next is critically important. Bring the network back, without understanding what devices are infected and risk losing the entire business. Keep it down too long and the same results are equally catastrophic. Allow the different company departments to handle the problem, while assisting them as needed will result in sporadic results and only serve to prolong the problem. This is where we are. Blunder after blunder from this administration has the U.S. on the cusp of being a failed State.

Get this next step wrong, and we're living with overflowed hospitals and hundreds of thousands of patients or more until a cure or treatment is made available. If the $2 trillion dollar price tag seemed astronomical, let airlines, restaurants and hotels go 18 months with a panicked public unwilling to travel until they are secure in the idea that we've gotten a handle on the pandemic. In other words, we can all go back to work, but chances are, the buying public won't be going back to leisure as usual until they know it's safe.

The Federal Government has already failed in a multitude of ways. For one, there isn't a single agency tasked with keeping track of the infection cases, rates of infection or number of people infected. According to the NYTimes, efforts have been underway since January by organizations, such as Johns Hopkins University and the Times, to keep track of the growing numbers of infection cases nationally. Because of that effort, we have an idea of what the national rate of infection is and how the virus is tracking globally.

In addition to the failed statistics, testing, for too long, was not where it needed to be and in many cases around the country, still isn't. The only reason it's where it is, is due to the administration finally allowing testing to come from the numerous research labs across the country. There's plenty of blame to go around, but not allowing State and Academic centers to start creating and testing the citizens of their State was a critical blunder. It wasn't until February 29th that New York received approval to use State testing facilities. The prior weeks since the first case was reported in the U.S. in January were effectively wasted. The testing that was done had to go back to the CDC labs in Atlanta and there was simply no way that they would have been able to test large numbers in earnest. This gave time for the virus to incubate and spread wildly. We're seeing the effects of this decision today in hot spots around the nation.

One of the consequential choices in the administrations response, since the start of the pandemic is not a specific decision at all, but their nonchalant attitude towards the virus as it began to silently ravage State after State. The President, very clearly stated on January 22nd in an interview with CNBC that, "...we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” We just authorized $2 Trillion dollars to be spent combating this pandemic. 3.3 million Americans are out of work. We are a lot of things, but "just fine" we are not.

To complete the earlier analogy, we have several steps that must be taken to resolve this. First, we need to maintain the shutdown. At the same time, we need to isolate the network, down to as small a grouping as we can reasonably achieve. Once the network is isolated, we need to have testing set up, so that we can bring individual units up, clean the systems and reintroduce them to the overall network. This will be difficult, but none of the units can be placed back on the network without knowing it is clean, at least not without risking a reintroduction of the virus. In addition, tools need to be put in place that will allow for ongoing testing and health checks to ensure everything is running as expected. Finally, the end users need to be trained not to click (touch) certain items and to be suspicious of what might be lurking behind it.

The virus will always choose life. Not human life of course, but its own. In that vein, the virus is in full agreement with the President and can't wait to get back to work by Easter. We all need the President to succeed here. Failure is not an option, not if we want to recognize this country on the other side of this pandemic. Mr. President, launch a national response to this pandemic. Work on delivering "tools" and the testing to the hospitals in need and ensure that a lock down, for as long as the scientist in your circle have called for, is implemented. In essence, create a plan and stop winging it. Do it yesterday, so that there is a rats chance we can defeat this and as you put it, "get back to work!!"