America Faces a Catastrophic Covid Winter That Didn’t Need to Happen
It is going to be a long, bleak Covid winter in America. The numbers are mind-boggling. Caseshave doubled again in less than a month— and it’s now reached the jaw-dropping figure of more than 180,000 cases.Per day.
To put that in perspective, more than a million people have been infected, and more than ten thousand have died —since the election.It’s spiralling so fast that thedaily caseload has doubled—since the election. It’s beeneleven days. Yes, really.
Hi there — is this getting through?I ask because Americans don’t seem to get, at all, how bad Covid actually is in America, compared to the rest of the world. So let me try to give you two more ways to put how bad Covid in America is in perspective.
In South Korea, just 500 people died of Covid.That’s because it pioneered a global template ofbest practices— (really) locking down, testing and tracing, people acting responsibly, leaders taking it seriously.
It’s a smaller country, sure. But how much smaller? It’s not that small — about one sixth the size of America. If South Korea had acted like America,37,000 people would have died — not 500.If America had acted like South Korea,just 3300 people would have died — not 243,000 and counting.
If you’re American, Istronglysuggest you re-read those sentences, memorise them, and teach those facts to everyone you know.Americans are not grasping how bad the magnitude of its failure on Covid really is. Not even close. They know things are bad, but they appear totally and utterly clueless as to how bad they are, versus how much less bad they could and should have been.
Covid in America is growing so fast that if the exponential rate of doubling keeps up, it will cross more than 330,000 new cases per day in thenext ten days. That’s a tenth of a percent of the population every day, or one percent every ten days, and then faster and faster thanthat. At that rate,the entire countrywill be infected in less than two and a half months — shortly after the new year. Exponential growth is no joke. That is why you don’t want to mess around with pandemics.
Covid’s mortality rate in America is no joke, either.It’s about 2.2%, which is 244,000 deaths out of 10.8 million cases. The flu, by way of comparison, has a mortality rate of between 0.1 to 0.2 percent — Covid’sten to twenty timesdeadlier, which is precisely why so many are already dead. At the current mortality rate, if Covid goes on to infect just half of America, do you know what the death toll will be?3.75 million people.I’m not saying that’s how many will die — I’m trying to get you to see how grave the stakes really are.
Covid is not something to get as wrong as America has gotten it.Even if there’s a vaccine tomorrow, it’s going to take time to give it to hundreds of millions, and even then, there’slittle guarantee that a vaccine will provide long-term protection against Covid, which seems to thwart a lasting immune response.
Covid in America is so bad thatapparently the entire country is a hotspot now.
So to say that Covid is out of control in America is now an understatement. It would more accurate to say that thepandemic has goneendemic. It is a catastrophe of unparalleled magnitude in America’s modern history. 9/11 doesn’t come close. And yet just like 9/11, Covid isn’t a natural catastrophe.It’s a man-made one.Things didn’t have to be this bad.To understand where America’s headed, let’s rewind, and understand how it got here.
Why did America get hit so hard by Covid?This pandemic was like a perfect storm for a failing, ailing state like America.
Donald Trump, the most inept President in modern history, was busy golfing — when he wasn’t denying Covid would be a big deal. So Americanever had a national Covid strategy — and still doesn’t have one to this day. America appears to be perhaps the only country leftin the worldwithout a national Covid strategy of any kind whatsoever.
But the failure only really begins at the top.In the absence of leadership, America’s Red States did what they tend to do — which is bemassive, flaming idiots. Governors promptly scoffed at the idea of lockdowns, and populations in Red States steadfastly refused to wear masks.Freedom became free-dumb. Not wearing a mask became some kind of symbol of manly pride and strength and supremacy. Don’t downplay the angle of race, so ever-present in America, too — all those Red Staters didn’t care much because, well, they were mostly white, and Covid wasdisproportionately killing and infecting minorities.
Countries like New Zealand and South Korea and Australia — among many others — tried tocrunchthe curve: to wipe Covid out, totally. But America, like Europe, didn’t. No real attempt was made to crunch the curve, to wipe out Covid. Instead, even where there was some level of enlightened response to it, the idea of reallydefeatingit was off the table. America hadgiven up on Covid from the beginning, like Europe— only without really knowing it.
Red States soon became America’s Plague Belt.They used to be a Rust Belt and a Bible Belt — but today, they’re the world’s worst Covid hotspots. The Dakotas alone right now havethe world’s highest Covid caseloads, adjusted for population,period. That trend carries across most, if not all, Red States. So Red States aren’t just America’s Plague Belt — they’rethe world’s. Acombination of incompetent leadership, cultural backwardness, sheer stubborn stupidity, and a dash or two of racism made Red States the world’s most heavily hit Plague Belt.
And because Covid wasn’t wiped out in Red States, soon enough, it kept on spreading across the rest of the country, too. It didn’t help that whatever lockdowns there were were largely ineffectual, even in Blue States — and they were lifted too early. The Plague Belt acted like a massive, giant viral incubator, and made all of America a hot zone.
So what happens now?
If America had any sense, it’d bepounding down the doors for Trump to resign— so that Biden could get to work right away on Covid.You see, it doesn’t seem to have sunk in that we are dealing with a pandemic here. These days and weeks are crucial, because a pandemic is a thing of explosive, sudden exponential growth. Remember, daily Covid cases have doubledsince the election— just ten days ago.
So what happens if, under Donald Trump’s complete abdication of any form of governance let alone leadership whatsoever…Covid in America just continues to explode until he’s finally thrown out of office? That gives the virus more than six weeks to keep spreading — but exponential doubling is happeningevery ten days.
Maybe you’re beginning to see the problem here.
America is facing the worst case scenario this bleak Covid winter.How bad could it get? Really, really,reallybad. As in — you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet bad.
Yes, belated lockdowns by Red States will finally, finally slow the spread of the virus. But they probably won’t halt it. America’s making the same mistake, all over again — it’s not trying to crunch the curve, and wipe Covid out. That means the best it can hope for is basically a slower rise. What does all that add up to?
If the virus keeps doubling every ten days, the results will be nightmarish, and millions reallywilldie.But that’s probably not going to happen. Instead, let’s just assume — generously — that America manages to stabilise the virus at this new level. That’s what’s happened twice before, since, again, it’s not trying to crunch the curve. Over six weeks, what does stabilisation here mean?
Probably — and again, this is being generous — something like 150,000 casesper day. That’s more than a million people a week. That’s six million over the next six weeks. How much death is that? Another 132,000 people — according to the raw math. But we need to adjust it. Hospitals are already at capacity. What little healthcare system there is in America is at the point of catastrophic breakdown. The death toll is likely to be much, much higher — as it was when Italy’shealthcare system hit capacity, early on. How much higher? Maybe double — we don’t yet know. Just…higher. Let’s call it 150,000, which is again being very, very conservative.
That brings us to 400,000 total Covid deaths in America — by the time Trump leaves office. That is a figurewithout modern parallel. It is horrific and surreal. And the worst part, the part Americans, too many of them, still don’t get it, don’t want to get it, won’t grapple with, is thatall these deaths are now needless.
Countries can crunch the curve. They can wipe Covid out.Many have, by now.What America lacks is thewill. And that’s not just on Trump — it’s also on ignorant, selfish Americans living in denial, especially in Red States, who still seem to revel, many of them, in proving just how macho they are, by spreading a deadly virus, which then kills someone else’s grandpa, kids, mom, dad.
And yes, sure, a majority of Americanssaythey support masks — but we can all see what actually happens when noble intentions meet the real world, which is that they don’t seem to care, as a society, about each other at all anymore.And that is the central problem. There’s a failure of leadership, sure — but there’s also afailure of mass, collective action, of Americanswho don’t trust or even like each other anymore as a society seemingly unable to act in ways of common decency or common sense during a pandemic, happily infecting their cities, towns, neighbours, kids,in the name of free-dumb.
That might sound harsh to you. What sounds harsh to me is another 150,000 people plus needlessly dying.
Here’s what I see.
America still hasn’t taken Covid seriously.Not politically — obviously. But also not mentally — America still hasn’t grappled with the simple fact that at South Korean levels,less than 5,000 Americans would be dead, not 250,000. Not socially — America’s Red States seem to have adopted Covid as some kind of bizarre cult-like cause to defend, not be defendedagainst. And not culturally — Americans don’t seem to grasp thattheir individualism has turned toxic, and made it seemingly impossible for them to take collective action, to act as one, to do things together, to care about each other’s lives in genuine and real ways which involve changes of lifestyle and behaviour, without which a pandemic — or any of the problems America now faces — can’t be defeated.
Thisis exactly what I mean.An attitude of indifference seems to prevail — at least in enough of the country and amongst enough of the populace for a pandemic to keep getting worse and worse until it’s reached catastrophic, mind-numbing levels.Youmight not be in denial about how bad Covid really is — but enough Americans are to have made the crucial difference that ended up with this being the worst hit country in the world.
This denial that’s rampant among Americans isn’t just limited to so-calledCovidiots, though. It goes both ways. Red Staters, living up to their reputations for being uneducated and ignorant, are spreading the virus with abandon. But Blue Staters don’t seem to be able to graspjust how much bettermuch of the rest of the world has really done and how many fewer deaths America should have suffered in comparison.
It’s going to be a long, bleak Covid winter in America.Trump’s gruesome negligence ensures it. American society and culture’s individualism and ruthlessness and callowness assure it.
The question, left, then, is this: is anyone going to learn a goddamned thing?
UmairNovember 2020
