Why Is the U.S.So Exceptionally Vulnerable to Covid-19?
This exceptionally dysfunctional society has run smack-bang into a real force of nature, a tiny virus that can kill millions of people.
Researchers in Italy have experimentally confirmed that up to
3 out of 4 Covid-19 cases are asymptomatic and therefore undetectable by testing only people with symptoms. After a series of deadly missteps, the U.S., which had its
first case on January 20th, the same day as South Korea, has over two months later only just begun widespread testing, when we already have the most cases and the 6th highest death toll in the world. Even now, the U.S. is mainly limiting testing to people with symptoms, not doing the targeted testing of new case contacts that was so effective in China. This ensures that otherwise healthy, asymptomatic carriers will unknowingly spread the virus and keep fueling its exponential growth.
So why is the United States so uniquely incapable of confronting this pandemic as efficiently or effectively as China, South Korea, Germany or other countries? The lack of a national, publicly-funded universal health system is a critical deficiency. But our persistent inability to set one up is itself the result of other dysfunctional aspects of American society, including the corruption of our political system by powerful commercial and class interests and the American "exceptionalism" that blinds us to what we can learn from other countries.
The military occupation of the American mind has brainwashed Americans with strictly military concepts of "defense" and "security," perverting federal spending priorities in the interest of war and militarism at the expense of all our country's other vital needs, including the health of Americans.
More:
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/27/why-usso-exceptionally-vulnerable-covid-19
