IN MARCH 2020 THE UNITED STATES surpassed China to become the country with the greatest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the world, and it has remained at the top of infection and mortality charts since. The scale of our failure is truly staggering. As of early August, more than 160,000 Americans have died from COVID-19— almost 25 percent of all deaths around the world in a country that accounts for just over 4 percent of the world’s population. All the while, our façade of federal leadership has been ruinous. After more than six months of global emergency, President Donald Trump cannot think beyond the twentyfour- hour news cycle, now focused solely on his reelection campaign. Meanwhile, several states have rushed to reopen, even while new cases surge and a viable containment plan remains notional, at best—when the disease is not outright rejected as a hoax.
The first stage of the U.S. COVID-19 response was denial, issued straight from the top. The second was a wave of social solidarity as we realized that, in the absence of leadership, we had to act: communities, neighbors, and state and local governments began to try to flatten the curve. The third stage, the one we remain in, has been a riptide of skepticism—a powerful current running against the wave of social distancing, leading to an acceleration of the pandemic. An outbreak of armchair epidemiology and economics has aided and abetted the problem, suggesting we must choose between saving the vulnerable and “saving the economy.” For Republicans this reframed choice obscures the fact that the Trump administration’s catastrophic response systematically undermined our ability to shift to a more focused approach. At a minimum, that would have required massive testing and contact tracing, widespread distribution of personal protective equipment to the general public, structural supports to enable people to follow public health recommendations, and a scale up of our health care capacity.
That has not happened. Instead, we have seen millions of Americans sacrifice for one another in a remarkable display of care for their friends, families, and neighbors. It is telling, however, that our typical indicators of the economy register these actions as a kind of collective suicide. “The economy” that we’re offered in the usual take—measuring little and commanding much—is a death machine, as climate activists have been saying for years. Models of the economy do not incorporate the idea of staying home as productive of anything—not least avoidance of the negative externality of mass death. Staying home, taking care of our kids, safeguarding our health care workers, organizing volunteer drives for gloves and masks—none of this counts as part of “the economy,” nor in any obvious way can this fetishized conception of the economy value the lives of those most at risk.