Letter to the Editor: Where We Were, Where We’ll Be

It is an interesting exercise to imagine where our country was a year ago and where we might be a year from now. On Jan. 31, 2020, there were no COVID-19 deaths in the United States and only 15 confirmed cases.

Today, Jan. 31, 2021, we have something like 25 million confirmed cases in the United States and nearly 450,000 who have perished. That is a number equal to the entire populations of Madison, Green Bay and

Racine combined. 

The unemployment rate in December 2019 was 3.5 percent. In December 2020, it was 6.7 percent. The consensus is that there is stagnation in the labor market in the absence of a robust stimulus bill from Congress and the White House. 

It is believed that Iran is now just a month away from a viable atomic weapon, and North Korea continues unabated.

A year from now, who knows? But we won’t have a president who has spoken more than 25,000 untrue statements; we won’t have bounties on American armed forces going unanswered; we won’t have the largest hack of American government and businesses by a foreign adversary ignored; and we won’t have a president inciting sedition and treason and ignoring a public-health and economic catastrophe unlike anything in the lifetime of most living Americans.

Four years ago, many Republicans said something along the lines of, “Give the guy a chance. He’ll pivot and grow into it.” Not so much.

Sam Carmen

Milwaukee, Wisconsin