Two years into this pandemic, no one should be surprised that the United States, one of the richest and most influential countries in the world, has lost more people to Covid than any other nation. Depending on the virulence of the BA.2 subvariant, we could see the official death count exceed one million in a matter of weeks. We are a nation uniquely suited to the proliferation and spread of Covid-19.
Early on, people blamed the blasé response by the Trump administration, who just two years prior had disbanded a unit within the National Security Council that focused on pandemic preparedness. I was one of these people. I believed that our response would improve if Joe Biden won the election. And in a way, the response from our government did improve. President Biden stopped downplaying the virus and began to distribute the vaccines to the people. The pandemic looked like it was receding until the Delta wave hit during the fall of last year. Since then, our lives have been a roller coaster of escalations, peaks, and falls. We are currently at the beginning of what looks like yet another wave with the BA.2 subvariant.
But if the Biden admin’s response was better than the Trump admin’s response, why have we fared so poorly? Why have nearly one million Americans lost their lives? It’s a complicated matter, and while I may not be the most qualified individual to speak on it, I do have a hypothesis.
The United States as it exists today cannot overcome a pandemic like the one we are currently experiencing. Take a moment to consider the countries that have fared comparatively well. China comes to mind. Maybe New Zealand. How about Southeast Asian countries such as Taiwan, Singapore, or South Korea? What did these countries get right that the United States and so many other nations got oh so wrong? Well, their governments acted swiftly and firmly. They viewed the virus as a serious threat. They imposed lockdowns and mitigation policies designed to curtail spread. And they enforced these policies on a populace that was, by and large, willing to submit for the greater good.
Our response, on the other hand, put the onus on the individual. Sure, we had lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and various mitigation strategies. Nonetheless, they have all been ineffectual. They are ineffectual because the mandates behind them have no teeth. Like so much else in this country, the responsibility fell on the individual. Individual businesses and their employees were tasked with enforcing government policies that they may or may not accept or even understand. This led to haphazard or unequal enforcement in most localities.
Consequently, these government mandates became guidelines for individuals to consider, but not to absolutely obey. To quote Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical adviser, each individual is going to have to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take. Unfortunately for America, most of us are not capable of adequately assessing our risk, for the average, individual American is stupid.
I’m not going to mince words here. We have an uneducated and illiterate populace. One cannot decry the American education system as ineffective and then act as if all Americans are intellectual equals. It’s dishonesty masquerading as politeness. For example, 54 percent of Americans, ages 16 to 74 years old cannot read above a sixth-grade reading level. What’s more, many who can read, do not read on a regular basis. We get most of our news from article titles, Facebook memes, and comment threads. Blogs like this one are, uncritically, given the same clout as academic journals or respected newspapers. This lack of literacy, and indeed, the bizarre complacency of our populace, creates an environment where deception and misinformation can run rampant.
It was relatively simple for bad actors, the GOP, corporate America, and competing nations, to take hold of the narrative and convince an unthinking populace that Covid is little more than a cold. That all mitigation measures are ineffectual and that we should just return to our normal, everyday lives.
We should be used to this strategy by now. After all, it’s the same one that politicians controlled by corporate lobbyists employ to convince us that government policies and organizations are bloated and ineffectual. They make it so by running the government that way. It is the self-fulfilling prophecy of mediocrity.
We lost this war as soon as the responsibility for this pandemic fell on our easily manipulated populace. Our lack of compliance with these measures made it appear as if they don’t work. This, coupled with a corporate-owned mainstream media that often elevates research that suits their agenda and downplays or ignores research that does not, has created the perfect environment for Covid to prosper.
This effect was amplified by one of the only remaining forces of solidarity left in American society, the political party. One million deaths became an inevitability as soon as the GOP decided to politicize the pandemic and use it as leverage against the Democrats.
Along with being unthinking, the American people are, by and large, a tribal people. However, their tribe is not related to their community, their class, or really any grouping that could lead to positive change in the conditions in which they live. No, this tribalism relies on an almost cartoonish alliance to political parties created and fully funded by corporate America.
This suicidal push for normalcy that began on the political right is now seeping into liberal America. The Democrats risk losing power so long as the pandemic remains a problem. However, the pandemic will remain a problem, because doing anything to curtail the spread of this virus is now politically unpopular. Instead, the Democrats’ strategy has been to normalize the pandemic.
Sure, President Biden and the Democrats will pay lip service to our concerns, but their actions say much more. Near the end of the Omicron wave, it seemed like Democratic governors and politicians across the country were in a race to pull back Covid mitigation measures, even as the CDC guidelines continued to recommend them.
Democratic governors began removing indoor mask mandates, preferring to rely on vaccination as the first line of defense. However, the cult of the vaccine has a problem. While it is true that the vaccines significantly reduce severe disease, hospitalizations, and deaths, they do not stop the virus from spreading. These vaccines are not panaceas. Their creation and distribution may have given us hope that the pandemic would end, but just because we wish something to be true, does not mean that it is. The American people must learn to deal with disappointment. The vaccines are incredible tools, but alone they will not suffice.
Yet, there’s a sizable number of entitled liberals that act as if getting a vaccine is some great sacrifice. That now that they’ve gotten the shot, they can burn their masks and act as if everything is normal once again. In short, they are as much at fault for the continued severity of this pandemic as the anti-vaxxers whom they hate.
We know that masks work. Even if they are not 100 percent effective, they are a simple precaution that both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals can wear to not only protect themselves but also those around them. The media has spread doubt concerning their effectiveness, which, for an unthinking populace, is the same as saying they have no effect at all. This is to our detriment. In the US, there are an estimated 7 million immunocompromised individuals. The vaccine offers little protection for these people. To refuse to mask is an assertion that your comfort is worth their sacrifice.
However, it’s not just immunocompromised individuals that should be fearful of this disease. Our corporate-controlled media has convinced a majority of our population that Covid is a mild disease. This narrative is expressed as common sense, as Covid presents as a symptomatically mild disease for most individuals. It is a narrative that ignores research into how Covid damages our bodies.
For example, long Covid can result even from mild cases. Patients have complained of a variety of symptoms ranging from the very mild to the severe. Just some of these symptoms include brain fog, fatigue, chronic pain, chest pain, shortness of breath, and depression. Somewhere between 10 to 30 percent of Covid cases present with long-term symptoms.
This prevalence of long Covid shows us that this is a disease that presents mildly but leaves lasting damage to our bodies. We are rapidly learning how this virus affects us. Within the last year, we’ve learned that Covid increases risk of cardiovascular disease, that Covid infections can accelerate biological aging, and that even mild cases of Covid damage the brain. These studies, if they are discussed at all, are either glossed over or downplayed. If not for ignorance, why would so many people willingly put their health at risk when mitigation measures are truly a mild inconvenience. There are people who have already had multiple infections. What are we to do when millions of our people are disabled due to our willful ignorance and refusal to take basic precautions?
It’s important to note, however, that the responsibility for our situation does not rest solely on irresponsible and selfish individuals. The American public are, by and large, reactive. They follow the actions and take on the opinions of their tribe. Just as with the climate crisis, responsibility for this disaster mostly belongs to our ruling class, the businessmen and politicians who continue to put their bottom line before the health and safety of the American people.
Let’s return to the Democrats and President Biden. Not only did Democratic politicians begin removing mask mandates as the Omicron wave started to wane, but they, along with their Republican brethren, began to dismantle the infrastructure that we had in place to measure, monitor, and control the severity of this pandemic. First, many testing sites around the country have been dismantled. Without testing, it’s difficult to ascertain the number of cases we are experiencing at any given moment. What’s more, many people who do test, test using at-home tests that are not recorded. This problem has been made worse by a new focus on hospitalizations rather than case numbers as the principal metric of concern. Hospitalizations are a lagging indicator. They may help indicate how virulent any given strain is, but they will not indicate the prevalence of infections in any given locality.
This recalls something that President Trump tweeted as cases skyrocketed during his term: “When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing we would have very few cases.” While this is not something I’d expect our Democratic politicians to say out loud, it is what their actions imply. For them to remain in power, Covid must be normalized.
As part of this return to normalization, comes President Biden’s push to end remote work in America. Remote work has likely helped to reduce infections, as fewer people are congregating in indoor spaces. But beyond its value as Covid mitigation, the growth of remote working options provides the American people with a better balance between their personal and professional lives. It’s even a net positive for the environment. Fewer commuters mean fewer vehicles on the road which means fewer greenhouse gases are released into our atmosphere. And while it’s true that only a privileged few in our society have benefited from this trend thus far, that is not a reason to halt its growth. We need to increase the availability of remote positions, not reduce them. Nonetheless, the Biden admin does not consider these causes in their push back to the office. They are solely concerned with the economy and the capital of the corporations that control them.
The American people are little more than a means to an end for our ruling class. Regardless of which corporatist party is in power, be they Republican or Democrat, we will not see change so long as they remain in control. They are not honest actors. They will say and do what they must to maintain power. It doesn’t matter if their actions will put the American people at risk or negatively affect their quality of life. Our ruling class acts for itself.
If we are to overcome this pandemic, we must first overcome the collective delusion that those in power have imposed upon us. We must work towards a normalization of mitigation measures, not a normalization of the virus. We cannot and should not accept a return to normal. If we continue to go down the path that has been set for us, there will be no end to this pandemic. We will pine for the days when the virus had only claimed one million American lives.