“When this is all over, the NHS England board should resign in their entirety,” Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, quoted an employee of Britain’s National Health Service.
Horton agrees. It’s “a national scandal.”
But now things are looking up.
“[T]he British government asked people to help the National Health Service,” reports The Washington Post, “it called for a ‘volunteer army.’”
“The NHS is ‘rallying the troops’ for the war on coronavirus,” reads the NHS webpage, “with volunteers being called up to help vulnerable people stay safe and well at home.”
The results?
“Within four days, 750,000 people had signed up,” The Post quantified, “three times the original target and four times the size of the British armed forces.”
The newspaper story recounts several endearing tales of people inspired to serve their fellow Brits. And now the website’s sign-up page notes recruiting has been paused — to process the applications.
That’s certainly not the tack taken by New York’s Bill de Blasio. “Mayor de Blasio today called on the federal government to institute an essential draft of all private medical personnel to help in the fight against COVID-19,” informed the city’s website.
Sadly, the mayor wasn’t alone. At Foreign Policy, University of Massachusetts professor Charli Carpenter asked, “But why isn’t compulsory service on the menu of policy options right now?”
Why would a politician and a professor demand to conscript citizens of a free Republic?
Without ever asking for volunteers.
Meanwhile, ABC News notes that “[m]ore than 9,000 retired soldiers have responded to the U.S. Army’s call for retired medical personnel to assist with the response to the novel coronavirus pandemic,” and others are rushing to help.
As free people are known to do.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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