Editor, Gazette-Journal:

Our nation is facing its greatest challenge in over 100 years. The COVID-19 virus is pervasive, unrelenting, highly contagious and disrespectful of age, sex, race, religion or anything else. It is not the flu. It is not a hoax. It is a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.

This challenge requires strong leadership from the president and the federal government. This has not been forthcoming and our country has paid a terrible price. If the government had acted responsibly back in February when they knew how serious this was, we would not be in our current dire situation and thousands of lives might have been saved.

Of course, early on, almost all the deaths were older people, mostly in nursing homes. The feeling seemed to be that they were old and ready to go anyway. As a mid-octogenarian, I take exception to that sentiment. Then they discovered that PPE and ventilators were in short supply. The Strategic National Stockpil...