Why the U.S. Has the World’s Highest Number of Covid-19 Deaths
The U.S. now has the world’s highest number of deaths from Covid-19, with at least 25,000 losing their lives to the virus as of this moment (Tuesday afternoon, April 14, 2020). Why is this?
Jeffrey D. Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute, Professor of Sustainable Development, and Professor of Health Policy and Management at Columbia University, suggests this: Unlike China, which turned to its public health experts, Trump turned to Vice President Mike Pence and son-in-law Jared Kushner.
It’s true that the federal government’s response has been rife with criminal negligence (for which it’s possible the president could, at some point in the future, be charged with involuntary manslaughter). On top of that, this malfeasance is intertwined with gross incompetence, with each day bringing with it new stories of some deadly blend of the two.
Having said that, other factors certainly must be contributing:
Personal Rights. The concept of private property and personal liberty is common to most of the developed world, but America has a particularly strong sense of both these abstractions. As a result, we tend to challenge authority in greater numbers than do the citizens of other first-world countries.
Selfishness. Americans are highly motivated to make fortunes so they can show them off, and, while they’re in the process of generating all this money, they tend to have relatively little regard for the welfare of other people. This is particularly true when by “other people” we mean people of differing ethnicities, religions, and sexual orientations. For the first time in 75 years, overt displays of racism no longer evoke universal revulsion.
As a function of these two cultural flaws, many people ignore social distancing mandates, and, worse, we have things like tens of thousands of college kids flooding onto the beaches of southern Florida during spring break, getting infected, and transporting the deadly disease back to hundreds of different hometowns.
Anti-Science. Over the last few decades, vast numbers of Americans have come to reject several different arenas within the domain of science, especially those related to climate and the environment, and to the life sciences, e.g., vaccinations. A significant percentage of Americans believe, falsely, that COVID-19 is no worse than any previous flu, that world scientists and officials are lying to us, and that the Trump administration is doing a good job in minimizing the impact of the disease.
Religious Fanaticism. After the pastor of the church in Louisiana had preached to an Easter gathering of more than 1000 believers, he was asked why he thought violating the laws of the state banning such gatherings during the pandemic was a solid idea, to which he responded, “Satan will not prevent our coming together to share the blood of Jesus Christ.” Now, though evangelical Christianity may be the most visible sector of the American population in this regard, it’s certainly not the only one.
Though it’s possible that the horrific impact of the disease in America is a coincidence, it sure is hard to believe.
