Why Is The U.S. So Exceptionally Vulnerable To Covid-19?
'Why Is the U.S. So Exceptionally Vulnerable to Covid-19?' This exceptionally dysfunctional society has run smack-bang into a real force of nature, a tiny virus that can kill millions of people. By Nicolas J.S. Davies, Common Dreams, 3/28/20.
The United States has become the new center of the global coronavirus pandemic, with over 86,000 cases, more than China or Italy. More than a thousand Americans have already died, but this is surely only the very beginning of this deadly collision between the U.S.' uniquely inadequate public healthcare system and a real pandemic.
- Photo: Whatever mix of capitalism and socialism each American may favor as a model for the U.S. economy, very few Americans would pick this corrupt 21st-century command economy as the system they would choose to live under.
On the other hand, China and South Korea, which both have universal public health systems that cover the bulk of their people's healthcare needs, have already turned the tide on Covid-19 through targeted quarantines, mobilization of public healthcare resources and testing programs that quickly and efficiently test everyone who may have come into contact with the virus. China sent 40,000 doctors and medical staff, including 10,000 respiratory specialists, into Hubei province in the first month or two of the epidemic. It has now gone up to 3 days in a row with no new cases and is starting to lift social restrictions. South Korea quickly tested over 300,000 people, and only 131 of its people have died.
The WHOs Bruce Aylward visited China at the end of February, and reported, I think the key learning from China is speed
The faster you can find the cases, isolate the cases, and track their close contacts, the more successful youre going to be
In China, they have set up a giant network of fever hospitals. In some areas, a team can go to you and swab you and have an answer for you in four to seven hours. But youve got to be set up speed is everything."
Researchers in Italy have experimentally confirmed that up to 3 out of 4 Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic and therefore undetectable by testing only people with symptoms. After a series of deadly missteps, the U.S., which had its first case on January 20th, the same day as South Korea, has over two months later only just begun widespread testing, when we already have the most cases and the 6th highest death toll in the world. Even now, the U.S. is mainly limiting testing to people with symptoms, not doing the targeted testing of new case contacts that was so effective in China. This ensures that otherwise healthy, asymptomatic carriers will unknowingly spread the virus and keep fueling its exponential growth.
So why is the United States so uniquely incapable of confronting this pandemic as efficiently or effectively as China, South Korea, Germany or other countries? The lack of a national, publicly-funded universal health system is a critical deficiency. But our persistent inability to set one up is itself the result of other dysfunctional aspects of American society, including the corruption of our political system by powerful commercial and class interests and the American "exceptionalism" that blinds us to what we can learn from other countries. Also, the military occupation of the American mind has brainwashed Americans with strictly military concepts of "defense" and "security," perverting federal spending priorities in the interest of war and militarism at the expense of all our country's other vital needs, including the health of Americans.
Why can't we just bomb the virus?...
More, https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/27/why-usso-exceptionally-vulnerable-covid-19
SWBTATTReg
(22,118 posts)thrown into the face of every republican forever. It'll take a generation to even remotely forget this scourge (the CV and the republicans, both scourges).
rampartc
(5,407 posts)like they always do.
SWBTATTReg
(22,118 posts)tanyev
(42,554 posts)Squinch
(50,949 posts)White House we would have been testing widely since January and isolating those first few positives.
Yes, a good healthcare system would be great right now, but the spread of the virus is all on the head of Filthy Donnie.
TwilightZone
(25,471 posts)This has more to do with our reaction than our healthcare system. We could have at least given the healthcare system a chance to deal with it.
CaptYossarian
(6,448 posts)And his cult followers believed this was a hoax and another ploy to impeach him.
The polls closer to November will reflect his popularity among GOP survivors.
TwilightZone
(25,471 posts)I know that this is just another Common Dreams Bernie/"Medicare For All" plug, but it's not even that complicated. Trump and others professed ignorance for weeks, delayed the response, and we started flattening the curve much later than other countries.
Does our system contribute? Certainly, but had we started much earlier, more intelligently, and more aggressively, we'd be in a different place.
appalachiablue
(41,131 posts)Since 1980, every sector of the U.S. economy has been gradually taken over by fewer and fewer larger and larger corporations, with a predictably debilitating effect on American life: fewer opportunities for small business; diminishing investment in public infrastructure and services; shrinking or stagnant wages; rising rents; privatization of education and healthcare; the destruction of local communities; and the systematic corruption of politics. Critical decisions that affect all our lives are now made primarily at the bidding and in the interests of big banks, big pharma, big tech, big ag, big developers, the military-industrial complex and the wealthiest 1% of Americans.
Runningdawg
(4,516 posts)Tell them they can't do or have something and they take it as a challenge and will kill you for it.
Example: A church near me posted on their billboard after our governor suggested he MIGHT close churches "We will NOT let the devil close our doors". Last weekend they hosted a FOUR STATE revival.
Igel
(35,300 posts)And when somebody says something bad about us, our first response is to say, "Absolutely!" and then follow it up with, "But you mean the other guy, right? Because it's his fault, you know that? Right?"
Currently we're something like #14 for death rate. France and Iran are still ahead of us.
But we're big, bashable, and we have that "#1 in reported cases". But you know, for the most part if you have 2x the deaths of the US you're almost certainly either going to have a health-care system from hell or you're just not bothering to test as many.
The way it works is if you test 1000 people at random and get 900 positives, you're much better off (with a 90% infection rate) than testing 100,000 people and getting 1000 positives (with that awesome 1% infection rate). Context doesn't matter.
With France still ahead of us for total deaths, and way ahead for deaths / million population, I really have to wonder what makes France so exceptional. And why, since it's 6-7x more exceptional than the US.
Germany's not that far behind us in death rate, to be honest.
Every nation that's successful has a different combination of features. Many of them are based on cultural views of freedom and social obligation and don't transfer well.
Igel
(35,300 posts)Hadn't seen this posted so here's as good as anywhere.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/timeline-south-koreas-response-covid-19