Is There Really No "Federal Solution?"

By Tim Klaum

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, on many levels of government and from both sides of the aisle, we've head it said that there's no "federal solution" to ending this, and that the states have autonomy to make rules as they see fit. Most recently, the president himself said those words almost verbatim. And while they may see this as true, I can't help but look at countries around the world who have handled this pandemic farm more gracefully and efficiently than we ever did. Granted, a lot of these countries are smaller than the United States, in both population and just by land mass. However, I can't help but be jealous of countries like New Zealand, which has been relatively covid free since June 2020, while the United States is still struggling.

For instance, in New Zealand, they were able to shut down the country altogether, and for the most part their citizens followed protocol. In doing this, the nation was able to quarantine those who had contracted the virus and pretty much eradicate it by summer. At first, I wondered why the government here wasn't following suit, but in doing more research I found the three most likely reasons. For starters, New Zealand is much smaller, with the United states population outnumbering them almost 66 to 1. This gave their government a lot fewer people to worry about. Another reason why is because their government is already set up in such a way that allows them to make big changes to help their country in one swoop, such as having a functioning national healthcare system called the "Commonwealth Fund", which is free to all on the island. The final reason, and likely the biggest, is that their provinces, which house their 16 local governments, have far less power than the states do here in America. 

Obviously, the states do hold a great deal of power in terms of making rules for the people and shutting down for a period of time, but I can't help but feel like these unprecedented times may call for an unprecedented solution. I don't think that any branch of the government, be it on a federal level or local level, should overstep its bounds or its power and get away with it because of the pandemic, but we're quickly approaching the 3rd year of covid in the United States, and it feels like the government is starting to give up any hope of us actually going back to some sense of normalcy. We were close this past summer, but with new variants popping up left and right it seems as though many Americans are also giving up hope that we'll eradicated this pandemic any time soon.

A big part of this, in my opinion, is how political the pandemic has become. Instead of bringing the nation together to try and find a way to end it, we've only grown further apart. With many refusing to follow even the minimal restrictions tat our government and the CDC have given us, and the CDC minimizing the aforementioned restrictions even further, many of us who have done our best to do the right thing are losing hope. Especially going into 2022, with the Omicron variant surging to levels reminiscent of the beginning of the pandemic, there's been no news on shutting down again, quarantining, or even reducing back to just essential businesses. So what can we do at this point? Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm not going to sit here and pretend like I'm a monolith or all-knowing, but I do know that the fabled "federal solution," which I think is valid to use right now, seeing as the pandemic is not only an interstate problem, but also an international one, could easily be our saving grace.