The US is in the midst of a definitional national emergency. While COVID is in steep decline in most of Europe and East Asia, case loads are growing exponential in the US and widely distributed around the country. Death tolls have started to rise and look set to grow rapidly.
2/ The federal government is passive and absent, allowing each state to approach this basically on its own, with it's own strategy, its own resources. This is bullshit. Nothing in the last century of American history makes that logical or even explicable.
3/ The US is not 50 countries. It's a single country with 50 administrative units in a federal system. We now know a lot about how to control the virus. Masking, tight constraints on indoor group activities, aggressive and quick testing and contact tracing. There's no mystery ...
4/ to how you do this. We literally know exactly how to do it. The basic model has been repeated successfully around the world. The US clearly has some serious resource and supply chain issues that can't be solved easily or quickly. But mainly this is simply a decision.
5/ Do we get this out of control or not? It's not more complicated than that. We have a President who simply wants to ignore the situation and do everything he can to create an appearance of normalcy and recovery to help him win reelection.
6/ That approach is nonsensical even on its own cynical terms. But that is where we are.
