The US continues to battle COVID-19 as other countries return to normalcy. But why?
There’s no hiding the fact that the U.S. is more devastated by the novel coronavirus than any other country in the world.
As of June 2, the nation has more than 1.8 million confirmed cases and over 105,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, and these numbers continue to grow by the thousands every day.
Meanwhile, countries such as New Zealand currently have one active case and are on the brink of pre-quarantine normalcy.
“Some countries have been very aggressive and have actually done quite a good job,” Ashish Jha, who runs the Harvard Global Health Institute, told NPR. “Other countries have been quite lackadaisical and, I think, have suffered immensely from it. And I think there are lessons to be learned for all of us.”
New Zealand banned travelers from China on Feb. 3 — one day after the U.S. — but later saw a rise in cases around mid-March, the outlet reported. Leaders there then issued mandatory quarantines and later a national lockdown, keeping the country below 2,000 confirmed cases with 22 deaths, Johns Hopkins reports.
“[The U.S.’] response is much, much worse than almost any other country that’s been affected,” Jha told the outlet. “And I don’t understand it.”
But then there’s Brazil with its dangerously high transmission rates, surpassing Italy and Spain, and following closely behind the U.S.
The country is second with over 526,000 confirmed cases and over 29,000 deaths as of June 2, according to Johns Hopkins.
Its president is encouraging protests against local governors for enforcing social distancing, which increases community spread, and the country itself has a weak health care system.
But it’s difficult to compare case counts by country because of population size. The U.S. has nearly 330 million people, while the “five largest countries in Western Europe — the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain — their combined population is roughly 320 million,” BBC News reported.
“And the total number of registered coronavirus deaths from those five countries, as of [May 18], was more than 130,000 — nearly 50% higher than that of the US.,” the outlet said.
Health officials around the world, however, warn the pandemic’s end isn’t near, and it’s clear viral spread continues to devastate communities in the U.S., and that is a result of many factors.
Americans didn’t believe the coronavirus was dangerous
Even when President Donald Trump declared the coronavirus a national emergency, Americans thought the pathogen was blown out of proportion.
About 27% of Americans felt the coronavirus was not a “real threat” in February, with 7% feeling unsure, according to a survey conducted by NPR, PBS NewsHour and Marist of 835 adults.
In March when cases dramatically increased, more Americans (38%) were convinced the disease was nothing to worry about, with 6% feeling unsure.
More than half of Americans also said they were not changing their behaviors to help curb the spread of the virus, such as avoiding large crowds, the survey showed.
Early in March, Trump tweeted similar beliefs.
“The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, “The risk is low to the average American,” Trump tweeted on March 9.
The same day he compared the coronavirus to the seasonal flu.
But confusing messages about the coronavirus’s strength can hold a country back from fighting the fight when it’s still possible.
“This aged poorly,” one Twitter user wrote on Trump’s March 9 tweet just eight days later.
Slow to respond
Consequently, national and local leaders were slow to implement social distancing rules, require face masks and issue stay-at-home orders.
Researchers at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford developed a model in March to measure how government responses to COVID-19 from 73 countries around the world, including the United States, China, South Korea, Italy, and the United Kingdom, ranked when compared.
The model analyzed school closures, public event cancellations and public information campaigns, among others, and turned it into a score ranging from 0 to 100 — least to most strict policies.
As cases increased in the U.S., so too did its score, “but as of April 5, America still had the lowest score … compared to the other top five countries despite having the same, if not higher, number of COVID-19 cases,” Forbes reported.
But as one country can be slow to respond, others can be quick to open back up.
After 35 consecutive days, Wuhan, China — where the coronavirus first emerged — reported six new cases after a month of slowly returning to normal, according to CNN.
As of June 2, Wuhan has 300 coronavirus cases, Reuters reported.
And in South Korea, 100 new cases appeared after one sick man went to a nightclub soon after restrictions were eased, The New York Times reported. The mayor then closed nightspots indefinitely.
Cases and deaths are counted differently
It’s difficult to understand how seriously a country, or state, is affected by the coronavirus when authorities record deaths and confirmed cases differently or change their methods midway.
France and Germany include COVID-19 deaths in “care homes” in their daily counts, but Europe only counted deaths in hospitals for some time, BBC News reported.
Although Wuhan now has 300 coronavirus cases, they are asymptomatic, which the city does not qualify as confirmed cases, according to Reuters.
In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention changed the way the U.S. counted coronavirus cases and deaths to include both confirmed and probable ones, which depend on meeting clinical criteria for the disease without a confirmed laboratory test.
States have their individual issues as well.
A Republican state legislator in Colorado accused the state’s health department of inflating COVID-19 death numbers, according to Live Science.
In Florida, local media reported that the health department there is hiding medical examiner data, clouding the true number of deaths in the state, the Miami Herald reported.
Issues with coronavirus testing
How many people a country tests determines the rate of viral spread, experts say.
Initial test kits in the U.S. developed by the CDC were flawed, The Washington Post reported, which led to weeks of setback in a time when testing was the country’s biggest hope of containing the disease.
It wasn’t until the U.S. Food and Drug Administration relaxed regulations in late February, allowing private laboratories to develop and administer their own tests, that testing ramped up in the country, according to a statement.
“A problem like this is bigger than any single agency,” Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary of heath at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told the Post. “Clearly, there needed to be a higher level of leadership and organization.”
There was a point in March when Vietnam was testing more people per day than the U.S., Jha of Harvard told NPR. That country has just under 330 coronavirus cases as of June 2, Johns Hopkins reports.
In just 19 days, Wuhan tested 9.9 million residents out of 11 million, nearly its entire population, Reuters reported.
“Without testing, you have no idea how extensive the infection is. You can’t isolate people. You can’t do anything,” Jha said.
“And so then we’re left with a completely different set of choices. We have to shut schools, events and everything down, because that’s the only tool available to us until we get testing back up. It’s been stunning to me how bad the federal response has been.”
This story was originally published June 2, 2020 at 9:25 AM with the headline "The US continues to battle COVID-19 as other countries return to normalcy. But why?."
