Covid-19: Why is America’s death toll so high? | The Economist

The United States is now the epicenter of the corona virus pandemic. The United States has surpassed the grim milestone of twenty-five hundred

death

s to overtake Italy as the world's worst modern nation. Many blamed the president for the magnitude of the crisis. These are lonely times for a president. The decisions come to you and he has made almost all of them wrong, but the causes of America's failures in dealing with the virus run much deeper regardless of Donald Trump. The United States is a country that would always have found it difficult to fight a pandemic, regardless of who. president was When the new coronavirus hit the United States, President Donald Trump's administration was slow to act early on the president, you know, reassuring Americans that things won't get that bad, we have it very much under control, it seems to be worried about the stock market and it's wavering and I think there were a series of critical weeks in which the threat was downplayed, the initial complacency of the administration was destined to accumulate problems for the weeks to come, there was a feeling that we didn't need develop the number of fans. that we had the amount of personal protective equipment that we could send to doctors and what we found now is that we are in the middle of a national shortage of those things.

On March 9, the Trump administration promised millions of crucial testing kits to monitor the spread of the virus, but by the end of the month only about 200,000 tests had been completed. This is serious business and right now the federal government is failing, but this failure was not entirely due to President Trump's inaction. Thousands of Americans may have been exposed. to the corona virus but have not been tested the first tests created by the Centers for Disease Control a federal agency did not work private laboratories and academics across the country attempted to develop their own tests but were initially hampered by strict regulations and laborious approval process that is a technical failure and a bureaucratic failure that could perhaps be attributed to the president, but one of the things about the United States is that the Public Health Authority is incredibly delegated to the states and cities in terms of how they respond so that the government federal can really do it.

To order these things, the United States federal system gives states the authority to decide when and how to respond in a public health crisis like this pandemic, and each state has responded differently. States, 19 million residents told to stay home as much as possible amid escalating crisis New York governor announced statewide shutdown March 20 We're issuing executive order today New York State on pause we need everyone to be safe, otherwise no one can be safe the same day in Florida Spring The breakers delighted on the beaches. I have Colonna. I have Corona at the end of the day.

I'm not going to let that stop me from partying. There would be no lockdown here for almost another two weeks, during which time the virus continued to spread across the country. Some states called for non-essential businesses to close and for people to stay home much earlier than others. The fact that borders remain open between states complicates containment efforts, while some states might have closed at this point, you know, California. Washington Oregon for the residents there goes Florida that returns you can see how it could be exponential from there that is the weakness of a system that depends on decision makers in 50 states and numerous jurisdictions a virus does not respect state borders in an effort By waiting the spread of the virus has been hampered by another aspect of the United States political system.

Democrats, what do they do? Do they want to use a deadly virus as a political weapon against the president? Partisan politics is crippling the United States' response to the corona virus pandemic. Politics have infected the United States' handling of the outbreak. Leading Republican and right-wing politicians have been slower to impose restrictions than Democrats. I beg you to stay home, stay home unless you need to go out, part of the reason is that it starts in the city, so it has taken off. in places like New York, Seattle and California, and these are places that tend to have Democratic mayors, tend to have Democratic governors, when political scientists try to explain the infection rate, how rural their state is and everything else, they still see While Republican governors are slower to implement social distancing measures, there is even evidence that Americans' compliance with rules crucial to stopping the spread of the virus is also influenced by party loyalty, as It is seen at least by what we can measure from cell phone data.

Republicans seem to take social measures. distance themselves less seriously than Democrats this widespread spread of business closures is a disaster for Michigan and people are sick and tired of it. GPS data shows that Democratic voters in the 2016 presidential election have cut back on more trips than Republican voters in Hawaii, where the majority voted Democratic. In 2016, people took more than half of their March trips to Wyoming, where most voted Republican. Travel actually increased slightly, which is extremely unhelpful for a virus response to be politically polarized because the virus obviously infects whoever it can. On April 11, the United States overtook Italy to become the worst country.

Hardest hit country in the world, the damage the virus is causing in the United States is compounded by the nature of its health care system. American hospitals are a much bigger business than in other parts of the world there are no financial incentives for hospitals to have extra ICU beds or extra ventilators or an extra pulmonologist Tuscon specializes in intubation only 305 of the approximately 6,000 hospitals in the United States The United States offers the most intensive treatment available, even if patients arrive at the hospital. About 12 percent of Americans do not have health insurance. About 23 percent of those who do have insurance are underinsured, meaning they could be hit with charges. elevated;

More than half of working-age people have health insurance through their employers, but now, with more than 20 million Americans claiming unemployment, many may lose that access if more people are afraid. to receive treatment, then you know that the mortality rate could be

high

er than it should be. All of those things mean that a pandemic would have greatly strained the American healthcare system, and no matter who was president, the Trump administration has promised some help to those of us who don't have access to healthcare today. I can very proudly announce that hospitals and healthcare providers treating uninsured corona virus patients will be reimbursed by the federal government using funds from the economic relief package that Congress passed last month, but there are still many unanswered questions about exactly what and who is covered by the federal fund for much of the United States the peak of the corona virus pandemic is not yet in sight on April 16 President Trump unveiled a set of guidelines on how and when social distancing measures could be lifted made it clear that the next step is up to each individual state, each state is very different, they need to stay close, we will allow them to do that, and if they think it's time to reopen, we will give them the freedom and guidance to achieve it. task, however, the president immediately undermined his own guidelines by showing support for a growing protest movement demanding an end to the blockades.

These are people expressing their views. I see where they are and I see the way they are working, but they seem to be very responsible. people to do Donald Trump has presided over and done much to encourage America's disjointed response to the pandemic The combination of an erratic president, a federalized government and a complex, fragmented health system means that America's already

high

death

toll

will continue to increase I am madri's Kalu I I am the US political correspondent for The Economist. I've been writing about how the coronavirus has been affecting Americans of all kinds. If you want to read more about our coverage, you can see the link next to me.