How will
this Covid-19 problem ever be resolved?
Clearly we first need a therapeutic way to treat the disease and save lives.
Next we need a vaccine to create mass immunities and eventually choke the virus out.
In the meantime,
we need to slow the infection rate to
keep hospitals from being overburdened. We need to quarantine those
that are the most susceptible, old people, obese people and people with other
conditions that make them most at risk to this virus.
What I have
noticed in discussions of steps needed to save us from this pandemic, is the
skepticism of finding a therapeutic treatment, and developing a vaccine. It seems every idea gets instantly shot down
as impossible.
Every thing
needs to be tested nine ways from Sunday, and every potential breakthrough has
not been proved other than anecdotally.
Experts are
careful to explain why it is impossible
to have a vaccine in less than 18 months,
and why possible therapeutic treatments are too dangerous to be
attempted, even on people who are dying.
It harkens
me back to my days at a large brokerage firm dealing with security
trading and processing.
The industry
had many old guard experts who could explain why any new enhancement to the
process of trading securities, clearing and delivering securities and pricing sales
was completely impossible.
Industry
Leaders wanted to clear transactions in 3 days, not 5 days. Experts explained how that was just not
possible without at least several years of development.
The Stock Exchanges wanted to trade
securities in penny increments, not the traditional eight of a dollar. Experts were very good at explaining why this
just could not be done, certainly not without years of programming and testing.
The industry wanted to eliminate delivery of
physical certificates, instead deliveries should be on paper by simple computer
transfers from various brokerage firm accounts.
Experts would say to those requesting these changes,
“You just
don’t understand the complexities and difficulties involved.”
The brokerage
industry and the Exchanges had a solution to overcoming all the difficulties the
old guard experts warned of.
They simply
mandated the changes.
The experts
were told “Just do it, we want it!”
Now, the darnedest
thing is that when ever Industry Groups mandated any of these major changes to
processing, the changes were implemented within the mandated time frame.
It went like
this:
Industry
Leaders and Exchanges:
“We need XY and Z to improve our process.”
Old Guard
Experts: “That would
be nice, but it is impossible, you just don’t understand.”
Industry
Leaders and Exchanges:
“We need it; do it within 6 months. Oh, and It is mandatory.”
Old Guard
Experts: “Impossible,
if it can be done at all it will take at least two years.”
Industry
Leaders and Exchanges:
“Six months, and it is mandatory, any firm not in compliance will be
fined and probably go out of business.”
Occasionally
the time frame was extended a few months, but processes that were deemed by
experts as impossible were developed time and time again simply because those
process changes were mandated.
It is
amazing what smart people can accomplish when they are challenged and when something
simply HAS to be done.
It was a
Wall Street joke, that the way to do the impossible is to simply mandate it!
The solution
to Covid-19 is simple. We need a therapeutic
drug to treat people until a vaccine is developed and we need a vaccine soon.
Just get all
the drug companies together and tell them
we need a therapeutic drug within 6 weeks, and a vaccine by this fall.
Then tell them
it is MANDATORY!
It worked on
Wall Street, why not the world?
