Our leaders, health system personnel, business leaders and their employees, and many others are doing their best during the pandemic. Expediting the development and distribution of vaccines has been a great accomplishment. Also, one needs not to look far to find the heroes: the doctors, nurses and staff who work tirelessly in harm’s way.

Aside from the deaths, which are paramount to the discussion, other bad things are happening. The foundation and sustainability of our free enterprise economy and the well-being of our children are being seriously threatened by the extended closings of businesses and schools. Many parents are ill-equipped to home school. When to reopen everything is hotly debated. Naturally, each decision made by authorities is criticized, with charges that each decision caused more deaths than would otherwise have occurred. But think of the flip side. If no orders had been issued, the criticisms would have been that some of the deaths were caused by inaction. And who could have proved otherwise?

Politics is showing its darkest side during the pandemic. The slogan “never waste a crisis,” meaning to use this opportunity to unleash a host of policy goals that may at last be accepted by the opposition, was repeated by the Democratic leaders. The House has passed a law aligned with those goals. Republicans are aghast. In all fairness, however, compared with the unprecedented ferociousness of politics during 2019, some holding back of criticism has been evident this year due to the seriousness of the pandemic.

As for the government insisting that the people act in a certain way during the crisis: That may not be new. It is rumored that in 1439, King Henry VI passed an order banning kissing throughout England in order to stop the spread of the black plague. How was that enforced?