Why are America’s death rates since the pandemic higher than most other countries?

 A recent report in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that “in the past five months, per capita deaths in the US, both from COVID-19 and other causes, have been far greater than in 18 other high-income countries” with populations larger than 5 million people and gross domestic product levels above $25k per year. Deaths in the U.S. are even 29% higher than in Sweden, a country that did not order strict social restrictions and never went into full lockdown. When looking solely at confirmed COVID-19 deaths, the number of people dying since May 10 (after adjusting for population size) is on average 50% higher than every other country in the study. Though the United States is home to only 4% of the population, it also produced a quarter of the world’s confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths. So, what went so wrong in America?

Much of what went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was unfortunately predictable and preventable. Many factors contributed to our disastrous response: Our ill-informed government responding too slowly and spreading misinformation, chronic underfunding of public health, an inefficient health-care system ill-prepared for the wave of COVID-19 patients, racist policies leaving indigenous and black Americans most vulnerable to COVID-19, lack of testing and treatment, and a declining social safety net forcing essential workers in low-income jobs to risk their lives to continue working. The virus has exposed many of America’s weakest points: our disregard for expertise, rampant racial and health inequities, a dangerous emphasis on individualism, lack of funding for public health, and a shortsighted leadership.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump pulled more than 30 staff out of the CDC office in China who may have been able to warn about the spreading coronavirus, and he also ignored early warnings about the coronavirus threat from American intelligence agencies back in January. According to Ronald Klain who had coordinated the U.S. response to the Ebola outbreak in 2014, “by early February we should have triggered a series of actions, precisely zero of which were taken.” These actions should have included mass-producing tests to detect the virus, tasking companies with production of protective equipment and ventilators, tracing, and building up the health system, but the president had instead focused on barring entry of foreigners from China and banned travel to China. According to Ed Yong at the Atlantic, “travel bans are woefully inefficient at restricting either travel or viruses” and “in general they can only delay the spread of an epidemic—not stop it.” As such, America wasted its chance to restrain COVID-19, and by February 26 at least 1 million Americans were already infected.

- Claire Hillier

References:

Beaubien, Jason. “Americans Are Dying In The Pandemic At Rates Far Higher Than In Other Countries.” NPR, NPR, 13 Oct. 2020, www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2020/10/13/923253681/americans-are-dying-in-the-pandemic-at-rates-far-higher-than-in-other-countries. 

Yong, Ed. “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 Aug. 2020, www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/09/coronavirus-american-failure/614191/.