It really doesn’t matter where the COVID-19 coronavirus came from. Wherever COVID or any infectious disease comes from, it is our government’s duty to protect us from it.

Protecting Americans from domestic and foreign harm has been a top priority of government since its inception. Three of the six principles cited in the Preamble to the Constitution focus on that – common defense, domestic tranquility, and general welfare. The first two focus upon foreign military and terrorist threats and domestic insurrection and violence. The third, general welfare, includes protecting us from the spread of infectious disease.

Such protection was institutionalized at the federal level by the National Quarantine Act of 1878. It required medical inspection of immigrants to prevent the importation of infectious disease. That mission has been retained and expanded through the Public Health Service formed in 1912, the Federal Security Agency (1939), the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1953), and the Department of Health and Human Services (1980).

Following the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, preventive health systems were strengthened over the years. Thus, we were substantially protected from global outbreaks of SARS in 2002 (8 cases, no deaths), MERS in 2012 (2 cases, no deaths), and Ebola in 2014 (4 cases, no deaths).

Then came COVID-19 with these results: The U.S., with the world’s best health care system, has experienced the most cases, 9.2 million, and the most deaths, 234,201, of any country (all numbers as of Oct. 29). China, with five times our population, had only 4,739 deaths. India, with four times our population, had 121,131 deaths.

Our preventive systems were in place, so how could this be?

At the state level, protecting citizens from infectious diseases was institutionalized with the creation of the Mississippi State Board of Health in 1877. Its operational duties were transitioned to its State Department of Health in 1982.

Mississippi has experienced 118,587 cases, the nation’s third highest incidence rate. Mississippi has suffered 3,310 deaths, the nation’s seventh highest death rate and more deaths than Australia, Japan, Greece, and 182 other countries.

How could this be?

Nowhere is government more responsible for protecting citizens than nursing homes, which house our most vulnerable and dependent seniors. And, nowhere better illustrates the failure of government to control the COVID-19 outbreak.

“Nursing homes have become ground zero for the pandemic in the U.S. with about 40% of the deaths, despite having only 7% of the cases,” the Mississippi Center For Investigative Reporting reported. In Mississippi, nursing homes have had 40% of deaths with just 6% of total cases.

Not all nursing homes. Those few whose leaders were early adopters of 100% testing, masks, social distancing, and stringent sanitary procedures protected most residents.

The numbers – the horrible death numbers in particular – tell the grim story of ineffective to just bad leadership, of state and federal government leaders who failed to implement early and, then, sustain the steps needed to protect Americans from COVID-19.

With cases surging, many more thousands of deaths loom. The onus for excessive COVID-19 deaths falls on our leaders, President Donald Trump and Governor Tate Reeves.

“For each one shall bear his own load” – Galatians 6:5.

Crawford is a syndicated columnist from Jackson.