How the world’s richest country got into this dismal situation is a complicated tale that exposes the flaws and fissures in a nation long proud of its ability to meet cataclysmic challenges.
, self-defeating political polarization, a lack of investment in public health, and persistent socioeconomic and racial inequities that have left millions of people vulnerable to disease and death.
“If we’d had really strong guidance from local, state and national leaders, maybe we could have sustained the determination to get the curve all the way down to zero,” he said. “Now, we’re on the upswing, and I don’t quite see the top of the upswing yet.”Other countries have managed to avoid the kind of dramatic viral resurgence that is happening in America. Spain, Italy, Germany and France — all devastated by the virus months ago — drove coronavirus cases and deaths to relatively low levels.
and spearheaded by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security and the Nuclear Threat Initiative — assigned scores to countries as a way to warn them of the rising threat of infectious-disease outbreaks.How did the nation get caught so flat-footed? By not really trying, said Beth Cameron, who helped lead the project for the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
In the minds of many Americans, the coronavirus crisis that was so alarming in March and April lost its fearsomeness in May and June, when people tried to resume something approximating a normal life. The shutdowns had been miserable, but they’d been effective.The success of the shutdowns meant that many Americans didn’t know anyone personally sickened by the virus. In places with low transmission, the crisis seemed far away.
He and others cite human nature as a problem with containing the virus. Human brains simply aren’t wired to emphasize the importance of doing things, like wearing masks, that protect others but offer no immediate payoff, said Paul Slovic, a University of Oregon psychologist.“You don’t get rewarded for putting on a mask,” Slovic said. “You don’t see who you’ve protected from harm, but you do feel an immediate discomfort.
“When the president, the governor and people on cable news are all saying one thing, how do you compete with that?” she said. “He would push back. ‘I hear what you’re saying, but why would the governor say it’s safe to go out if it’s not true?’ ”“He was a huge supporter of Trump and Arizona governor Ducey. He believed what they said. And they betrayed him,” she said in an interview.Even before the pandemic hit, local public health agencies had been decimated by years of staffing and budget cuts.
“The question is, does the water come out of your tap clean? Are the sewer systems being inspected? Are restaurants and food being inspected? Those things, you don’t notice until they fail,” he said. “People’s response has been to just take care of themselves, take care of your own business, your own family,” Poe said. “That’s not how this virus works.”
“When that happens, you lose the ability to act rationally. You lose the commitment to fight. You lose all chance of beating back the virus,” he said. Florida’s governor has resisted weeks of calls to implement such a mandate. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp announced Wednesday that all local mask mandates in his state are void.
In a telephone interview, Cuomo said New York officials were caught off guard early in the year because everyone assumed the virus was coming into the West Coast from China. But it had already spread in Europe, and from there to New York. White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews in a statement defended the administration’s response to the crisis, saying Trump “has led an historic, whole-of-America coronavirus response — resulting in 100,000 ventilators procured, sourcing critical PPE for our frontline heroes, and a robust testing regime resulting in more than double the number of tests than any other country in the world.
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