RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) America is using historical milestones to put the victims of Covid-19 into perspective. The country, which has become the epicenter of the global pandemic, has recorded almost as many deaths in a single day as claimed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
In total, over 60,000 Americans have already died as a result of the novel coronavirus, more than in the Vietnam War, another national tragedy.
Officially recorded cases have exceeded the one million mark, which represents about one-third of all people infected worldwide.
Mass graves and protective clothing made from trash bags
However, even more shocking than the stark figures are the pictures traveling around the world from the USA. In New York, which was particularly hard hit, refrigerated trucks for the dead lined the streets in front of hospitals.
The morgues were so overcrowded that dead bodies unidentified by relatives were buried in mass graves on Hart Island. The world’s most expensive health care system lacked equipment, so the hospital staff used ski goggles and trash bags for protection. Several patients were forced to share a ventilator. With the slow decline in new infections, the focus is now shifting to the impact of the lockdown.
Within just six weeks, 30 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits. Endless lines regularly form for food donations. In addition to the health emergency, the pandemic is causing an economic crash worldwide, the extent of which cannot yet be estimated in any way.
However, the USA has been particularly hard hit by this double crisis. There are several structural factors behind this. Although the health care system boasts excellent, state-of-the-art technology, access to basic care is difficult for millions of Americans with either none or insufficient health insurance.
Pre-existing conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which significantly increase the risk of coronavirus infection, are therefore not only extremely common, but in many cases are also poorly treated or not treated at all. Nearly half of American workers are also employed in the low-wage sector, where home-office is usually not possible and sick pay is a luxury.
Those who are able to keep their jobs despite the almost non-existent protection against dismissal should be happy, in any event. A number of experts are sketching the frightening scenario of mass unemployment of over 20 percent, as occurred during the Great Depression in the 1930s.
Along with employment, health insurance is often lost, and many are at risk of slipping into poverty. Forty percent of the population barely make it through to the next payday and have no financial savings. Inequality, which is already alarmingly high for a rich industrialized country, is dramatically reflected in the number of Covid-19 victims. It will deepen even further with a severe recession. These conditions alone render the epidemic a monumental challenge for the USA. It is all the more devastating that administrative and political shortcomings have exacerbated the situation.
This is not a simply a question of past decisions that now turn out to be short-sighted, such as the dissolution of the Global Health and Safety Department by the then security advisor John Bolton two years ago, or the massive reduction in the staff of the American health authority CDC stationed in China, during President Trump’s administration. Such bodies could have provided an edge in terms of knowledge and thus become less dependent on the WHO’s estimates.
However, such decisions are not an exclusive problem of the USA. Experts worldwide pointed to the threat of a pandemic with a novel pathogen, and hardly any country followed the recommendations for preventive measures. The omissions of the last four months, after the government in Washington had already been notified of the outbreak of the disease in China in early January, are considered criminal by many.
Nothing happened for weeks, although it is now well documented that in January and February the President had been warned over a dozen times by the secret services in briefings intended for him about the consequences for national safety. The reports not only contained the latest figures but also addressed the fact that the virus was dangerous, that China was concealing its easy transmissibility and that the economic impact of the virus could be catastrophic.
Trump believes in a miracle
According to media reports, the Secretary of Health and his subordinate bodies also sounded the alarm. However, they were given little attention in the White House due to concerns over the economic situation in an election year.
The entry restrictions for Chinese nationals, which were enforced in late January, apparently had to be laboriously wrested from the President. He feared the impact on the trade dispute with Beijing, even though he now claims to have enforced the travel ban despite resistance. In any event, the virus had long been rampant in the country – largely unnoticed because the CDC first developed a faulty test. This embarrassing mishap costs further valuable weeks.
At that point, Trump completely dismissed the threat. The “corona flu” was comparable to the seasonal flu, would soon miraculously disappear and everything was “totally under control”. He regards skeptics as opponents who want to hurt him politically .
In the conservative camp this argument fell on fertile ground. For years, Trump and right-wing forces such as the Tea Party movement, have discredited the government machinery. In Washington’s “swamp”, which the President pledged to dry up, countless leadership positions are currently vacant or filled with unskilled loyalists.
In the current pandemic, when bureaucracy had to run smoothly, this proved to be fatal. For far too long, the health authorities also said that the risk for the USA is low – whether due to pressure from the White House or their own misjudgment.
It was not until mid-March that Trump seemed to realize the gravity of the situation. He declared a state of emergency and recommended social distancing. However, he still lacked leadership, and instead strayed from the crisis with what were at times bizarre appearances.
Out of fear of the economic emergency, he announced completely unrealistic grand “reopenings” of the country, spread conspiracy theories and praised his administration for having prevented “thousands and thousands of victims”, while blaming all the ills on the states or the former government.
He fanned the flames of additional conflict by fuelling protests against containment measures, thereby undermining the recommendations of his own administration that had only just been announced.
The inconsistency of his behavior was summed up by his statements that as president he had “total decision-making power” but would not accept any responsibility for maladministration.
Two hours of attacks, four minutes of solace
Trump is not even striving to be the president of all Americans, despite the state of emergency. In spite of tens of thousands of deaths, he is unable to show empathy or offer solace.
The Washington Post analyzed Trump’s appearances at his daily coronavirus briefings over a period of three weeks. Out of 13 hours of speech time, he used two hours for attacks on critics and 45 minutes for self-praise.
For only four and a half minutes did he express sympathy. Given this context, it is no wonder that the “rally around the flag” effect, the typical standing together behind the President in a national crisis, is largely lacking. Trump’s approval ratings remain relatively low and hardly reach beyond his base.
The fact that a virus can split the country along party lines exposes the dysfunctionality of Washington politics, which Trump did not create, but of which he is a product. Equally relentless are the shortcomings of a system that Americans take for granted as morally, economically, and politically superior to all others.
It is not surprising that the President claims that no country is facing the emergency better than the United States, and that the number of people infected is the highest in the world, simply because other countries glossed over their statistics.
To hundreds of thousands of affected, bereaved or unemployed individuals, however, it sounds like mockery. The pandemic claws at the myth of “American Exceptionalism”.