I’m looking specifically for those who are busy bashing and viciously gossiping about the governments of the world, the World Health Organization, hospital administrators, and the world's leaders, etc., for their presumed "incompetence" in handling this worldwide COVID-19 pandemic!
Let’s play a game. It’s called “Problem Solving.” I’ll provide a scenario; a problem, and you all can sit back and relax in your armchairs and see if you can solve it. At the end, you can assess whether or not you still feel the same way about the world’s leaders, hospital administrators and other people you don’t know, have never met and will never meet, and whose jobs you know nothing about, and whose jobs YOU aren’t qualified to do….
HERE GOES – ARE YOU READY? LET’S DO THIS!
You are a 69-year-old grandpa living in a large, six-bedroom house (your old childhood home) at the edge of a sleepy, dying little community in the middle of Texas, which – luckily – still has a small diner, an ancient gas station with one pump, a clinic run by an 80-year-old doctor and his wife (Nurse Susie) and a tiny, dilapidating 8-room flea-bag motel, hardly ever occupied. The nearest towns are 150 and 210 miles down the road – and they’re only slightly bigger. (Remember, you’re out in the middle of NOWHERE.)
Your one great accomplishment in life has been the fact that you have a dozen successful and educated children living all over the world, who have given you a total of 144 grandchildren. (They didn’t plan on having that many children, but, hey – it happened, and you’re absolutely over the moon about it.)
You and Grandma manage to visit some of them occasionally; but the kids rarely make the effort to visit you because it’s soooo much trouble to get there via planes, trains and automobiles.
Oh, I almost forgot to mention – while growing up in this little town, you also had 12 siblings - brothers and sisters who eventually left and spread out all over the world, as well. (No one besides you and your beloved wife wanted to stay in this little dump of a town – and you couldn’t really blame them, but you have always loved this place you grew up in.)
Ironically, every one of your siblings ALSO had at least a dozen or more children because they, too, loved large families … and THEIR children were just as prolific.
In other words - you have a HUGE family and huge extended family! (And that's not even counting your aunts, uncles and cousins and all THEIR children - all of whom you dearly love as well, and with whom you’ve kept in touch over the years – and even managed to visit! Let’s pretend they number around 2,000 and growing, because in your family, there are ALWAYS women in in various stages of pregnancy.)
So, okay - everybody moved away years ago for “greener pastures,” and the houses they vacated all became ruins. Again, because of the remote area in which you reside, you rarely ever saw any of them unless you and your wife made the effort to do all the traveling. Regardless, you and a few old “die-hards” chose to remain in your beloved little town to live out the rest of your days.
But then – quite out of the blue, something really unexpected and exciting happens! The day before your 70th birthday (which you were planning to celebrate at that little hole-in-the-wall local diner with your sweet wife of 52 years), there’s a knock on the door - and to your surprise – lined up on your front lawn and up and down both sides of the street, as far as the eye can see (even past both edges of your tiny town) are ALL your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, along with all of your aging brothers and sisters, and THEIR children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren … AND all your surviving old aunts and uncles and all of their kids, grandkids and great-grands … all here for a SURPRISE BIRTHDAY PARTY! All 2,000+ of them….
The thing is, they were all just as surprised as you, because none of this was planned! They had no clue that EVERYBODY was going to show up today for your 70th! They all came due to tweaked consciences because YOU had been the only one to visit each of them for decades, and so … well … here they are – brought together by some quirk of nature that caused ALL them to decide to surprise you on such an important birthday …
By now YOU are freaking out because there is NO WAY you can possibly put them all up, much less feed them – even with the help of the local diner and that little 8-room motel down the road. Even if the few town’s people offer to open up their homes, there aren’t enough rooms in this whole town to accommodate that many people! You really freak out when you realize, you only have a few options that include the following:
1. Put as many as possible in your own home.
2. Have some stay in the tiny 8-room hotel.
3. Ask the townspeople to put up as many as they possibly can.
4. Ask as many as possible and who are willing to do it, to sleep in their rental cars tonight.
5. Ask the ones who aren’t too exhausted from their long trips, to drive the 150 - 210 miles to the nearest towns to find accommodation.
YES, YOU ARE FREAKING OUT – but just when you think you’ve got all you can possibly handle, five of the young pregnant women go into premature labor because the long plane, train and automobile trips proved to be too much for them; and you rush them all to the local doctor for delivery.
In the meantime, you receive a frantic call from your wife who’s letting you know that many people are starting to pass out from the lack of nourishment and water in the mid-day heat. “And, oops – wait!!!” she cries. “Oh, my gosh, I think some are DEAD … they have no pulse! Send the doctor, quick!”
But you can’t because the doctor and his nurse/wife are busy trying to deliver those five premature babies (and oh my gosh, they only have ONE incubator!!!) And while the nearest towns do have small clinics, they have no ambulances and they’re too far away for the help you need right NOW….
YOUR CHALLENGE: Manage this situation! What would YOU do? What will you tell the media when they ascend on your town and demand to know “who, what, when, where and why?”….
When you're done solving this problem, apply it to the total surprise of the World Health Organization and hospital/medical professionals who had NO IDEA on how to deal with an unknown virus that virtually overnight spread around the world and began to overwhelm the capabilities of nearly every hospital on earth!
Apply this scenario to all the various governments and the world leaders, who had no idea about how to manage a world-wide pandemic … trying everything they knew how, including at first, responsibly asking people to quarantine in their own homes in hopes of stopping its spread…
And then ask yourself if YOU could have done any better – and if you think you could have, please put your money where you mouth is, and tell us HOW!
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