Political Cartoon: The unstoppable American virus

As I write this on Friday afternoon, about 2,300 people have died of the coronavirus worldwide since China reported the first death from the disease on Jan. 11. Though none of the fatalities has occurred in the US, our country’s National Institutes of Health scientists are fast tracking development of a vaccine to fight the threat. This is, obviously, what needs to be done when a deadly illness is threatening lives.

America is not without our viruses. According to the Brady Center on Gun Violence, Americans are experiencing an average of 100 gun deaths EVERY DAY, or 3,000 since Jan. 11. Instead of snapping to and treating the gun plague for what it is, federal funds to study gun violence were blocked until late last year when $25 million was finally appropriated for the Centers for Disease Control and the NIH to fund gun violence research. The cure for America’s deadly virus is still a long way off as the daily death account (50 so far this year in Philadelphia alone) keeps climbing. If we can find ways to prevent the coronavirus, we certainly should be able to find ways to prevent our gun carnage.

Editorial cartoons from this week include: