Items

• 2020-10-23

  The great mask debate

  This article is one that shows a good example of a COVID “success story” in a European country, while highlighting some of the failures in American leadership during the pandemic. Especially when it comes to the concept of leading by example. Slovakia is a country that seemed to tackle the pandemic head on, taking extraordinary measures in order to slow its advance across the nation. The article shows that Slovakia took three key steps in order to curb the pandemic when it reached the country’s borders. 1) Face masks were widely adopted 2) A nationwide lockdown was swiftly enacted 3) Slovakian leadership showed the way. For me, this submission is important because it is essentially the tale of two countries. While nothing is certain, If American leadership had taken a similar route to navigating the perils of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is likely that less Americans would have lost their lives. While America is more than 60 times more populous than Slovakia, there is little to no excuse for why the pandemic has been so poorly handled here in comparison to a nation with less resources like Slovakia.