America is now the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic
America has passed the grim milestone of 20,500 deaths...
...to overtake Italy as the world’s worst-hit nation
Many blame the president for the scale of the crisis
These are the lonely times for a president
All the decisions come to you
And he’s made just about all of them wrong
But the causes of America’s failings in dealing with the virus...
...run far deeper
Independent of Donald Trump, America is a country that always...
...would have found fighting a pandemic to be difficult...
...regardless of who the president was
When the novel coronavirus hit America...
...President Donald Trump’s administration was slow to act
Early on the president was, you know, reassuring Americans that...
...things would not get so bad
We have it very much under control in this country
We had 12 at one point...
...and now they’ve gotten very much better
He seemed to be worried about the stockmarket...
...and its vacillations
And I think that there was a series of critical weeks...
...in which the threat was underplayed
The administration’s initial complacency...
...was set to store up problems for the weeks ahead
There was a sense that we didn’t need to develop...
...the amount of ventilators that we had...
...the number of personal protective equipment...
...that could go out to doctors
And what we find now is that we’re in the midst of...
...kind of a national shortage of those things
On March 9th the Trump administration promised millions of test kits...
...crucial to monitor the spread of the virus
Yet, by the end of the month...
...only around 200,000 tests had been completed
This is a serious thing...
...and right now the federal government is failing
But this failure wasn’t entirely down to President Trump’s inaction
Thousands of Americans may have been exposed to the coronavirus...
...but have not been tested
The first tests created by the Centres for Disease Control...
...a federal agency, didn’t work
Private and academic labs around the country...
...tried to develop their own tests...
...but were initially hampered by strict regulations...
...and a laborious approval process
That’s a technical failing and a bureaucratic failing that...
...perhaps could be laid on the president
But one of the things about America is that...
...public-health authority is incredibly devolved...
...to states and cities in terms of how they respond...
...so that the federal government actually can’t order these things
America’s federal system grants states the authority...
...to decide when and how to respond in a...
...public-health crisis like this pandemic
And every state has responded differently
The state’s 90m residents are being told to stay at home as much as possible
Faced with an escalating crisis...
...the governor of New York announced a state-wide lockdown on March 20th
We’re going to put out an executive order today...
...New York state on pause
We need everyone to be safe...
...otherwise no one can be safe
On the same day in Florida...
...spring breakers were revelling on beaches
If I get corona, I get corona
At the end of the day, I’m not going to let it stop me from partying
Here, there would be no lockdown for almost another two weeks
During which time the virus continued to spread across the country
Some states called for non-essential businesses to be closed...
...and for people to stay at home much earlier than others
The fact that borders remain open between the states...
...complicates efforts at containment
While some states might have, kind of, shut down at this time...
...you know, California, Washington, Oregon...
...if a resident from there goes to Florida and then comes back...
...you can see how it could exponentiate from there
That’s the weakness of a system that relies on decision-makers...
...in 50 states and numerous jurisdictions
A virus doesn’t respect state lines
And efforts to halt the spread of the virus...
...have been impeded by another aspect of America’s political system
Democrats, what do they do?
They want to use a deadly virus as a political weapon...
...against the president
Partisan politics are crippling America’s response...
...to the coronavirus pandemic
Politics has infected America’s handling of the outbreak
Republican and right-leaning politicians...
...have been slower to impose restrictions than Democrats
I am pleading with you...
...to stay home
Stay home...
...unless it is necessary for you to go out
Part of the reason that is...
...it starts in cities, so it’s taken off in...
...places like New York and Seattle and California
And these are places that tend to have Democratic mayors...
...tend to have Democratic governors
When political scientists, kind of, try and account for...
...the rate of infection, how rural your state is and all the rest
They still see that...
...Republican governors are slower to implement social-distancing measures
There is even evidence that Americans’ adherence to the rules...
...crucial to halting the spread of the virus...
...is also being influenced by party loyalty
So you see, at least from what we can measure from cell-phone data...
...Republicans seeming to take social distancing less seriously...
...than Democrats
This blanket spread of shutting down businesses...
...it’s an economic disaster for Michigan and...
...people are sick and tired of it
GPS data show that Democratic voters...
...in the 2016 presidential election...
...have cut travel more than Republican voters
In Hawaii where the majority voted Democrat in 2016...
...people more than halved their travel in March
In Wyoming where the majority voted Republican...
...travel actually increased slightly
It’s supremely unhelpful for response to a virus to be...
...politically polarised because the virus, obviously...
...infects whomever it can
On April 11th America overtook Italy...
...to become the worst-hit country in the world
The damage the virus is causing in America...
...is compounded by the nature of its health-care system
American hospitals are a business...
...much more so than in other parts of the world
There’s no financial incentive for hospitals to...
...have extra beds in the ICU, or extra ventilators, or...
...extra pulmonologists who can specialise in intubation
Only 305 of America’s 6,000 or so hospitals...
...offer the most intensive treatment available
That’s if patients even make it to hospital
Roughly 12% of Americans don’t have health insurance
Around 23% of those who do have insurance are underinsured...
...which means they could be hit with high charges
More than half of working-age people...
...have health insurance through their employers
But now with over 20m Americans claiming unemployment...
...many may lose that access
If you have more people afraid of getting treatment then...
...you know, the mortality rate might be higher than it ought to be
All of those things mean that...
...a pandemic would have strained the American health-care system...
...quite a lot no matter who was president
The Trump administration has promised some help...
...to those who don’t have access to health care
Today I can so proudly announce...
...that hospitals and health-care providers treating...
...uninsured coronavirus patients...
...will be reimbursed by the federal government...
...using funds from the...
...economic relief package Congress passed last month
Yet there are still a lot of unanswered questions...
...about exactly what and who is covered by the federal fund
For much of America, the peak of the coronavirus pandemic...
...is not yet in sight
On April 16th...
...President Trump presented a set of guidelines on...
...how and when social-distancing measures could be lifted
He made it clear that the next move...
...is up to each individual state
Every state is very different
They need to remain closed we will allow them to do that
And if they believe it is time to reopen...
...we will provide them the freedom and guidance...
...to accomplish that task
Yet the president immediately undermined his own guidelines...
...by showing support for a growing protest movement...
...demanding an end to lockdowns
These are people expressing their views...
...I see where they are and I see the way they’re working
They seem to be very responsible people to me
Donald Trump has presided over, and done much to encourage...
...America’s disjointed response to the pandemic
The combination of an erratic president...
...federalised government...
...and a complex and fragmented health-care system...
...means America’s already high death toll...
...will continue to mount
I’m Idrees Kahloon, I’m the US policy correspondent for The Economist
I’ve been writing about how coronavirus has been...
...affecting Americans of all stripes
If you want to read more of our coverage you can see the link beside me