The US response to the coronavirus has been a disaster of epic proportions.
If decisive leadership, clear communications, planning and preparedness are the key criteria to successfully combat a pandemic like COVID-19, then the United States has failed miserably on all counts.
Despite being the world’s wealthiest country, the United States has failed to cope with the outbreak and has, by far, the highest casualty rate. As The Lamp went to print over 100,000 Americans had died from the virus.
President Trump was warned by his economic adviser Peter Navarro at the end of January that the coronavirus had the potential to kill hundreds of thousands of Americans and massively disrupt the economy , according to the New York Times.
Yet, Trump’s first response was to play down the threat.
“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming from China. It’s going to be just fine,” Trump said after the first diagnosis in Washington state.
It took another six weeks before Trump authorised the development of an easy-to-use rapid diagnostic test – a crucial measure Asian countries like South Korea and Vietnam had implemented immediately after the outbreak in China was known.
Before and after the coronavirus broke out in Wuhan, critical decisions were made that have subsequently hamstrung the US response to the virus.
In 2018, the pandemic unit in the US national Security Council was disbanded. The unit’s role had been to prepare for health emergencies of this precise nature.
On 10 February this year Trump proposed a 16 per cent cut to the US Centres of Disease Control and Prevention – a key government agency in a pandemic.
In mid-March, as the outbreak gained steam on US soil, US governors urged Trump to mobilise federal resources to provide much- needed ventilators that were in critically short supply across the country.
Trump’s response as reported by The New York Times, “Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment – try getting it yourselves.”
As the infections and deaths have mounted, Trump has deflected blame by demonising China and the World Health Organization, culminating with his decision to cut US funding to WHO.
“The US response will be studied for generations as a textbook example of a disastrous, failed effort,” Ron Klain, the United States Ebola response coordinator, told The Guardian.
Lose your job, lose your healthcare
The nature of access to healthcare and the economic fallout from the pandemic in the United States have added to the crisis.
Even before the pandemic, 87 million Americans were uninsured or underinsured. As the outbreak unfolded, more than 26 million lost their jobs in just five weeks.
Democrat senator Bernie Sanders says the pandemic has left working class Americans utterly vulnerable.
“When you lose your job, you lose your healthcare. As a result, up to 35 million Americans are estimated to see their health coverage disappear in the middle of this COVID-19 nightmare,” Sanders said.
“As horror stories circulate of $34,000 coronavirus medical bills, the uninsured remain terrified of going bankrupt just to get tested and treated for coronavirus. In many cases they just cannot afford to go to a doctor or the hospital.
“Four out of five frontline nurses don’t have enough protective equipment. In the richest country in the history of the world, nurses caring for coronavirus patients have resorted to wearing trash bags as makeshift protective care. That is an international embarrassment.”
American healthcare is atomised chaos
For many experts, a health system shaped by the logic of the market has been badly exposed by COVID-19.
“We have a completely fragmented, privatised health system that continues to fail us,” Adam Gaffney, a pulmonary and critical care doctor told The Financial Times.
“We’ve shot ourselves in the foot with a 12-gauge shotgun: year after year of underfunding of our federal, state and local public health agencies has left us ill-prepared for the COVID-19 challenge.”
Gaffney says rather than having a cohesive healthcare system America has “atomized chaos”.
“In the American way of paying for healthcare our hospitals are silos, some rich and some poor, each fending for themselves, locked in market competition.”
The Financial Times reported that many poorer hospitals are closing at a time of national emergency, not because they are unneeded, but because they are unprofitable.
“Even with money from a $175 billion bailout, many hospitals are facing critical cash shortages, because they have had to cancel the elective procedures they rely on to make money,” it said.
“Some have had to put much-needed staff on leave, even while the pandemic spreads, because they can’t afford to pay them.”