John Murphy is the Dubuque County recorder. -promoted by Laura Belin

We all have memories of that awful day ingrained into our minds. What if you could have helped stop it? If we had prior knowledge that the 9/11 attacks were going to happen, what would you have done to prevent them? What would the American public been willing to do to stop the attacks? What would you do to help save the 2,977 lives that were lost or the roughly 6,000 injured? Would anything have been “too much?”

Now, what if you knew that instead of four planes, there were thousands more in the sky? You didn’t know who they were targeting, but knew they were planning to strike every state in the nation multiple times. Would you be willing to change your life for a few weeks or months to try to prevent these attacks?

Now let’s substitute 9/11 for the novel coronavirus. We saw the bodies of people jumping from the towers on 9/11 and those images are burned into our memory. We will not see the faces of those slowly dying alone from COVID-19 because of medical privacy rules, but make no mistake, we are at war.

Right now there are hundreds of proverbial “planes” in the air. We have the ability to bring many of the “planes” down safely and save American lives. We have already brought down hundreds of “planes,” but they keep attacking every corner of our nation. It is the responsibility of our leaders to do everything in their power to bring as many “planes” down safely as possible.

These are the questions our “leaders” should be asking themselves right now. Hundreds of thousands of lives are on the line, and the federal and state governments should be doing everything they can to prevent the attacks. As of April 20, we have had the equivalent of more than thirteen 9/11 attacks (39,083 dead, more than 746,000 injured). Yet too many “leaders” are worrying about votes for their next election vs. saving American lives.

We need to safely bring down every “plane” we can at this time. There are still hundreds or potentially thousands of “planes” in the air.

We must be vigilant against this enemy. This enemy operating these “planes,”  can take back to our skies if we are not vigilant. We must listen to legitimate public health officials and their recommendations to help us protect American lives. This enemy isn’t going away in the coming days or weeks. This war will take months or even years, if we discover more “planes” in the skies once we “return to normal.”

We need to show the world that we are not willing to sacrifice American lives to preserve selfish preferences that are disguised as “our way of life.”

We need to come together like we did in the days that followed 9/11. It was the only time in my life where politics fell to the wayside and we were the United States of America. I want that back. We need that back.

I ask you, are you sheltering in place? If not, you are aiding the COVID-19 enemy.

Top image: The north tower of the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks. (The south tower had collapsed before this picture was taken.) Photographer unknown, part of the Library of Congress collection and available via Wikimedia Commons.