-By Mark Fierro

The end of COVID-19 could very well be at hand. There are a lot of “ifs.” Remember that at the outset none of us had the tools needed to fight against this virus. But the truth is we now have some powerful tools and if we turn on it and fight together, we can wipe COVID from our lives from sea to shining sea.

Let’s focus on our enemy, the virus, for a moment. Vile as it is, the coronavirus is extremely fragile. It needs us to be complicit. It needs help from humans to stay alive because if it can’t jump from body to body it can only stay alive for hours. If we’re smart, we’ll band together.

According to a Reuters report from July 14, Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said: “… I think if we can get everyone to wear masks right now, we can bring this under control within four, six, eight weeks.” Not months. Not years. Four to eight weeks. In other words, getting patriotic Americans to wear their masks would have the same direct impact as a full shutdown of the American economy. When we crush the virus everyone goes back to work. The problem is that COVID-19 has some good friends who insist they have the right not to wear a mask. You know, maybe they are right.

These are a few of the things that we know for certain about COVID-19. People who insist they have the right not to wear a mask have helped make the outbreak in the United States the most deadly in the world today. The second thing we know is that there are several countries that have all but completely reopened. They have a tiny fraction of the percentage of cases of the U.S. and an even smaller fraction of deaths.

You might ask yourself how one of the most advanced countries in the world comes to this terrible point. The answer is that some in the U.S. are not convinced that masks will work as well here as they have worked in Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and other locations. Our lives, our jobs, our economic stability, our standing in the world have suffered as a direct result. Want to know what happened to the 12.9 million jobs that the Bureau of Labor Statistics says have been lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic? Talk to those people who say they have the right not to wear a mask. You know what? Maybe they do have that right.

But the result is clear: Hong Kong had 4,525 COVID-19 cases and 70 deaths at last count (444 cases and 7 deaths per million population). South Korea had 15,761 cases and 306 deaths (309 cases and 6 deaths per million). Japan never really had a complete shutdown, yet due to mask use it has had only 55,717 cases and 1,112 deaths (447 cases and 9 deaths per million). By contrast, the U.S. had 5.47 million cases and 171,000 deaths (16,717 cases and 522 deaths per million) at last count. Seven deaths per million. Six deaths per million. Nine deaths per million. 522 deaths per million. Something is very wrong.

Remarkably, nothing about our current situation is new. In the worst pandemic of modern times, the great influenza pandemic of 1918 and 1919, there were naysayers as well. They insisted that they had the right to not wear a mask and that their own rights were more important than others’ rights. As a matter of fact, one of the iconic stories of the era came from San Francisco, where a Mr. Frank Cocciniglia was sentenced to five days in jail for not wearing a mask. Mr. Cocciniglia told the judge: “That suits me. I won’t have to wear a mask there.”

I’m sure Mr. Cocciniglia thought it was a funny punchline. However, it wasn’t nearly as funny when it was determined that the 1918 pandemic ultimately led to 675,000 deaths in the U.S. alone. It brings to mind the legal term jointly and severally. Everyone in the group may be held legally liable for full judgment. It feels like Mr. Cocciniglia, the comedian, may have had a role in every single one of those 675,000 American deaths and the suffering of surviving spouses, the children left orphaned.

It feels like that is the crossroads we are at today. Wearing masks not only saves lives and protects everyone’s health, but it also saves jobs. It saves businesses. It keeps people in their homes. It allows children to go to school. It allows us to continue with our lives as we knew them.

There is another development. My only fear is that because it is so readily available, it may not be seen as a potential breakthrough against the disease that a lot of very smart people think it is. It’s vitamin D, also known as ergocalciferol and cholecalciferol. Consult your doctor on proper dosage. It will not protect you from contracting COVID-19 or passing it on. But there are a lot of studies in place that point to vitamin D as being a breakthrough in our fight to kill the more lethal aspects of this pathogen. In a University of Chicago Medicine study, doctors found that patients who had untreated vitamin D deficiency were nearly twice as likely to test positive for COVID-19 than individuals who had sufficient levels of vitamin D.

If there is one place that I may refer you, your friends, and your social media followers, it’s a podcast (yeah, I know, another podcast) from Radiolab, which is produced at the WNYC Studios, entitled “Invisible Allies” and dated July 30. Other than the information we have passed along so far, there are two quick stories from the podcast that tend to further prove the point.

Officials of a homeless shelter at the outset of the contagion “knew” that they would be bombarded with COVID cases. Homeless people can’t avail themselves of quality health care, nor do they have access to wash their hands more than 10 times a day, as is suggested by current health standards. Instead, at first it seemed that none of the homeless people at their shelter had contracted the illness. When testing finally arrived, it found that 40% of the homeless people at the shelter had indeed become infected with COVID. However, none of them became symptomatic, or ill, or even realized they had the disease. The simple answer was they live on the street, in the sunlight, and so their bodies were producing enough vitamin D.

The second story from the podcast is that a large percentage of Indian national physicians who were practicing in London became ill and died from COVID-19. When the physicians group suggested there may be a link to vitamin D deficiencies, they upped their vitamin D intake. Not only did they not lose any more physicians, but none of them became symptomatic after that. Here’s the issue: Dark skin protects us from the sun. But it also makes it very difficult for us to develop the necessary amount of vitamin D. There’s another box checked off. While there can be obvious differences in access to health care, adequate housing and a laundry list of other issues, people with dark skin often routinely suffer from vitamin D deficiencies.

So this is where we are. The coronavirus is as deadly as it ever was. But we now know that wearing a mask and washing your hands repeatedly can dramatically reduce your chances of contracting the virus. Taking vitamin D, it appears — and this is an early assumption that requires more study — regulates our body’s response, making the initial macrophage response stronger and averting a cytokine storm potentially leading to greater fatalities.

We all have rights. But if we could just keep in mind that our actions at this critical moment not only decide the health outcome that we’ll have, it also impacts the health outcomes of our fellow Americans, our jobs, our homes, and the quality of life that Americans enjoy. When I think back to Mr. Cocciniglia and his “humorous” quote from more than a century ago, I recall that it was shortly thereafter that the U.S. reported those 675,000 deaths. Arguably Mr. Cocciniglia was severally responsible for every single one of those deaths. I’m not too sure that those who are talking today about their rights while stopping the complete recovery of one of the greatest nations on earth won’t be judged by history to be guilty under that same premise.

Mark Fierro began his career as a reporter/anchor at KLAS-TV, the CBS television station in Las Vegas. He worked at the U.S. House of Representatives in Washington, D.C. He served as communications consultant on IPO road shows on Wall Street. He provided litigation support for the Michael Jackson death trial. He is president of Fierro Communications, Inc., and author of several books including “Road Rage: The Senseless Murder of Tammy Meyers.” He has made numerous appearances on national TV news programs.