The unique US failure to control the virus | via nytimes
China committed the first major failure, silencing doctors who tried to raise alarms about the virus and allowing it to escape from Wuhan. Much of Europe went next, failing to avoid enormous outbreaks. Today, many countries — Japan, Canada, France, Australia and more — are coping with new increases in cases after reopening parts of society.
First, the United States faced long-standing challenges in confronting a major pandemic. It is a large country at the nexus of the global economy, with a tradition of prioritizing individualism over government restrictions. “In many of the countries that have been very successful, they had a much crisper strategic direction and really had a vision,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “I’m not sure we ever really had a plan or a strategy — or at least it wasn’t public.”
But it quickly became clear that the US policy was full of holes. It did not apply to immediate family members of US citizens and permanent residents returning from China, for example. In the two months after the policy went into place, almost 40,000 people arrived in the United States on direct flights from China.
Travel restrictions and quarantines were central to the success in controlling the virus in South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Australia as well as New Zealand, many epidemiologists believe. In Australia, the number of new cases per day fell more than 90 percent in April. It remained near zero through May and early June, even as the virus surged across much of the United States.On Jan.
By early March, with the testing delays still unresolved, the New York region became a global center of the virus — without people realizing it until weeks later. More widespread testing could have made a major difference, experts said, leading to earlier lockdowns and social distancing and ultimately less sickness and death.
The conflicting advice, echoed by the CDC and others, led to relatively little mask-wearing in many countries early in the pandemic. But several Asian countries were exceptions, partly because they had a tradition of mask-wearing to avoid sickness or minimize the effects of pollution. Many other Republicans and conservative news outlets, like Fox News, echoed his position. Mask-wearing, as a result, became yet another partisan divide in a highly polarized country.
Nonetheless, Kemp went ahead. He said that Georgia’s economy could not wait any longer, and it became one of the first states to reopen. The stay-at-home order expired at 11:59 p.m. April 30. The events of the last few months have borne out Goolsbee’s prediction. Even before states announced shutdown orders in the spring, many families began sharply reducing their spending. They were responding to their own worries about the virus, not any official government policy.
Americans, frightened by the virus’s resurgence, responded by visiting restaurants and stores less often. The economy’s brief recovery in April and May seems to have petered out in June and July.
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