American failure

A good detailed piece in New York Magazine on the American failure to control COVID 19.

The only bit I am annoyed with is this:

With the exception, perhaps, of New Zealand, practically speaking, across the entire west, nobody has managed to properly and preemptively prepare for this pandemic.

I think Australia deserves some credit.

I more or less agree with this, though:

The first failure is one of hubris: Western nations looking on a disease outbreak in Asia and feeling protected by a sense of cultural superiority and wealth, and disregarding the emergency response in China and other nations as a reflection not of the seriousness of the disease but of an imagined, innate conformist authoritarianism. The second is a bit harder to name, but it does seem peculiarly American — a pattern of failure following failure, with each successive failure normalized by the last, which should have shaken us out of complacency.

Update:  more on the American problem.  Or should we just be calling it - the American problem caused by the American Right?: 

Ohio state Rep. Nino Vitale is urging his constituents not to get tested for the coronavirus, flouting advice from health officials — and from another Republican lawmaker, Gov. Mike DeWine.

"This is what happens when people go crazy and get tested," Vitale wrote on Facebook this week. "STOP GETTING TESTED!"

Vitale was evidently incensed by an order from DeWine and state health officials that people in seven Ohio counties with severe outbreaks must wear face coverings when out in public. That order took effect Wednesday.

Vitale shared an altered graphic about the order — in that version, there is an extra message at the bottom:

"!! NEVER GET TESTED !!"