La Conner Weekly News - Your independent hometown award-winning newspaper

It is not a war.

It is a health care crisis.

A nationally mismanaged healthcare crisis.

How do we deal with the uncertainty of it all?

We are lucky to be in a state that follows the scientific consensus of how to fight this virus, lucky to be in La Conner where there is enough physical elbow room to walk about, lucky to connect with our friends and neighbors for human warmth.

The difficult part is accepting those new rules while we seem to be doing all right. Massive loss of freedom. Businesses closed. Keeping distance in the grocery store. Not hugging our grandchildren. Kids stuck home. No travel. No eating out, no bars, no games.

It all seems so unreasonable. However, it is key to our health, if not prosperity.

Call them the rules of enlightened self-interest or delayed gratification. By temporarily sacrificing my freedoms to those rules, I insure the health of others. If nurses, truck drivers, grocery clerks, firefighters and those in countless other professions were to be sick all at once, our whole advanced, complex society would collapse. Turns out we all need each other. I certain depend on you all, thank you by the way. :)

We have exercised patience and community responsibility. So far so good, grumblings aside. We are following the rules of our own free will. No need to be policed, fined.

We are doing quite well in La Conner.

Now for the hard part.

The lessons are clear. We need a national healthcare system that takes care of everyone. A generous economic safety net without holes. A political will to follow the scientific consensus regarding climate chaos.

We are onto the next crisis already.

It will take a paradigm shift in policies and behavior to face it successfully.

I hope I am ready. How about you?

Jacques Brunisholz

A retired La Conner High School teacher, Brunisholz serves the Town as a Councilmember.