ADF – MedSupply

In the novel American Democracy Forever, Charlie watched one of his employees die of HIV/AIDS. It shocked him into memories of the COVID-19 pandemic in his Life 1 that killed his wife and that he barely survived. There is nothing he can do to get President Trump to manage the pandemic in a responsible way, but there is something he can do. He can make sure that the medical community has all the supplies they will need – from bedpans to ventilators. And he can make trained people available to relieve the doctors, nurses, and other medical workers overworked by the pandemic. He sets up MedSupply as a nonprofit tasked with stockpiling medical supplies in warehouses all over the country. But he soon finds the financial demands of MedSupply exceed even his enormous fortune. He is forced to sell naming rights to the warehouses to other billionaires.

How reasonable is this scenario? Well, Andrew Carnegie, the 19th century industrialist, built libraries in cities and towns across the nation in the belief that a modern society needed an educated, reading population. Having his name on them was his reward, his legacy. Couldn’t today’s uber-rich do something similar, with their names proudly displayed on MedSupply warehouses. Wouldn’t this be better than the ostentatious spending they do on ever bigger yachts?

And what about the idea of training warehouse workers as adjunct medical workers, as aids to doctors, nurses, etc. Already we are seeing some of the workload of highly trained doctors and nurses being offloaded to people with lesser credentials. Why not go further and train part-time people to help them?

There is also the problem of keeping people–MedSupply employees among others–psyched up about some vague pandemic that is sure to come soon? But once people are sold on an idea–a meme, however stupid it is!–it doesn’t take that much reinforcement to keep them believing and acting accordingly? We see this all the time, whether it’s about religious prophecies (e.g., the 7th Day Adventists) or political ideologies (e.g., trickle-down economics).

In American Democracy Forever, MedSupply plays an important role in alleviating the COVID-19 pandemic by helping to save hundreds of thousands of American lives, but it is President Trump who gets most of the credit because he finally listens to medical experts and does what they recommend to alleviate the pandemic.

So, what role does MedSupply play in Charlie’s goal of preserving American democracy? Is it enough that MedSupply helped save the lives of countless Americans, the lives of people who would continue to vote as they always had, as liberal Democrats or as MAGA-Republicans? Charlie doesn’t know, but he does know that living voters are better than dead nonvoters. He is willing to take a chance on American intelligence and integrity.

Questions

Do you think warehouses of stockpiled medical supplies is a promising idea?  Pandemics are nothing new and will always be with us. So, what do you think we (our government and scientists) should do? Should the role of FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) be expanded to include pandemic preparedness?