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With a widespread shortage of medical supplies, we should be concerned that the vast majority are manufactured in China. We should be particularly concerned as there is a tendency to publicly assign blame.
We need to be cautious about that. We should instead focus on the cure -- not on doubling down with another battle on top of an already overwhelming war.
Some members of Congress have called for holding China accountable for covering up the outbreak initially. A world away, Beijing is on the defensive, with China's official Xinhua News Agency suggesting retaliation by banning the export of medical products.
We need diplomacy and awareness that the world is watching -- just as we are watching -- and our first concern should be for defeating the virus. That includes looking inward to up our manufacturing game at home.
There are any number of businesses and institutions that could adapt to focus on making the medical supplies that our nation badly needs, not just now but as we replenish our supplies for the future.
Look at what General Motors is doing, making ventilators that are in short supply, but what else can we do as a nation? What else can we do as a state? As a community?
Locally, Eric Albert, an associate professor at Pennsylvania College of Technology, has been using a 3-D printer to make face shields for frontline health care workers. The idea was sparked by a call-to-action from Pennsylvania College of Technology urging faculty to help in anyway they could.
American ingenuity holds great potential for winning the war against the coronavirus. As Albert is showing, every individual has the ability to make a difference.
Our collective focus needs to be on the will to rise up and take back control of our own fate. For decades, we have given away our industrial base in favor of cheap labor overseas.
That must end now.
Now is the time to retrofit America's manufacturing facilities, starting with making needed medical supplies on this continent. We may not have been ready for this pandemic, but we have always had the determination to overcome the darkest of moments. This one should be no different.
It's time to put people to work toward this common goal and to put our economy on track to recover until the day when America again looks like it did last spring.
Then we will know just how truly great a nation we are.