More than five million cases. More than 165,000 dead. The nation has tried to move on despite the growing death counts and looming second wave in the fall. In a nutshell, that aptly describes the current state of affairs in the United States at this moment. While other developed nations have started to reopen their economies, schools and sports, cases rose at a rapid rate in the Sun Belt with Arizona, Texas, Florida and California leading the pack. Florida, Texas and Arizona had a few cases during March and April. Everything changed as Americans collectively dropped their guard, took victory laps before victory was achieved, and reopened or expanded economic activities regardless of the recommendations from the public health experts to act otherwise. After the Memorial Day weekend several embers started to flare-up, and in no time those became conflagrations with rapidly rising hospitalizations and death.
Insufficient Testing, Partisan Politics and Irrationality
Politicians played politics, prioritized optics over safety, and thought that the virus would miraculously disappear just like it did in Europe after the initial onslaught. Many politicians incorrectly said that the virus would lose its potency with the rising summer temperature. They ignored the fact that the European nations and some of the Asian countries locked their entire country down for weeks in an ardent effort to contain the virus.
Those European and Asian countries tested in high volumes early on to identify the amount of spread and then aggressively traced and quarantined. The United States didn’t do much except for some governors who shuttered their state economies for a few weeks. The volume of testing and turnaround of results lagged and is still lagging, allowing the virus to spread within communities. While the United States has performed more tests to date among all developed countries, no country is still grappling with infection like we are. Countries like Germany and South Korea did rapid tests at the beginning of the pandemic and owing to their quick actions, they were able to bring the pandemic under control.