Thanksgiving message by AmCham CZ Executive Director Weston Stacey: Humanity working together can overcome this crisis better than individuals acting apart. We give thanks to all those who helped.
Today is America's day of thanks giving. 2021 has been a year of crisis, conflict and concern. And, yet, despite all the tumult of our covid era, we have much to be grateful about.
We should start with those individuals, oft maligned, who employed their knowledge and public and private resources to find medicine that prevents the spread of the virus and treats those deeply infected. We thank Andrzej Parys and Abbott for their tests; AstraZeneca, Pavel Sedláček of Pfizer, Michala Malát and Johnson & Johnson, Moderna and NOVAVAX for organizing their resources so effectively in the research, production and distribution of the vaccines; and we thank Stefano Santangelo and Merck as well as Pfizer for devising a treatment, that if approved by the European Medicines Agency, could mark the shift from pandemic to endemic, and relieve the tension between fighting the virus and restoring economic activity.
We also are grateful for those public servants who did not hide from their responsibility to decide. We may not have agreed with every decision, but these individuals exerted maximum effort to keep us safe and the economy stable at the expense of their own health and reputation. Some may curse them now, but Andrej Babiš, Adam Vojtěch, Karel Havlíček, and others in the government prevented both a major breakout and an economic meltdown. We also give thanks to Petr Fiala, Vladimír Válek, Věslav Michálek and others who have been nominated to make those complex choices in their place.
Finally, and must importantly for the coming weeks, we are tremendously thankful for those individuals who understood that the freedom of choice comes with the responsibility to choose wisely for both themselves and their community. For those who weighed the risk of vaccination, the impact of wearing masks on their fellow tramriders, the need to keep a safe distance from others, and to balance their desires against the possible harm they could cause to the economy, we view you as the great, unacknowledged heroes of these crisis. It is you who showed your willingness to sacrifice not freedom (because most made this choice willingly) but comfort, and placed your bet that humanity working together would overcome this crisis better than individuals acting apart.
As a result, we are weeks or months away from a sturdy solution to this virus. We can wear our masks, we can work from home, we can curtail our desire to gather in mass for the bridge of weeks until those most vulnerable can receive their third vaccine, and medicines that dramatically reduce the risk of hospitalization and death come on the market.
We give these thanks to those who helped to carry others to that day.
Log In