The heated rhetoric around the COVID-19 virus is a distressing example of our polarized country, the toxicity of our politics. and the dysfunction of our government.

Covid is a non-partisan virus – it doesn’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, whether you live or die, or whether the economy tanks. It is just looking for a warm place to replicate and mutate. Intelligent people working together, with the resources we have available to us in this highly developed country are capable of defeating or a least managing this common enemy. Instead, we are fighting each other and the virus is winning.

Who else is winning? Which politicians, media groups and individuals are promoting, amplifying and benefiting from this divisiveness at the expense of the rest of us? When are American citizens going to have enough of having our emotions exploited, start listening to each other, and band together to work on this and other problems our country faces?

It is up to us to keep our democracy safe, by electing leaders who are able to focus on the common good and, through an honest exchange of well thought ideas, collaboration, and compromise, get things done.