{"id":10486,"date":"2020-03-26T13:08:16","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T13:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/?page_id=10486"},"modified":"2022-02-23T20:27:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T20:27:33","slug":"03-26","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/adhc.lib.ua.edu\/pandemicbook\/03-26\/","title":{"rendered":"03-26"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Thursday, March 26<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tUS Cases 86,693
US Deaths 1,785<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Mar 26: Wall Street rallies<\/a><\/span> for another day as unemployment claims<\/a><\/span> skyrocket to 3.3 million. U.S. Coronavirus cases surpass China. The New York Times reports<\/a> <\/span>that there are still not enough tests to test everyone who needs it due to a lack of tests as well as PPE for medical care workers. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is diagnosed with coronavirus.*<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\tFrom the Cutting Room Floor...\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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America is #1! But the bad version. We\u2019ve registered more COVID-19 cases than China, over 82,000, making us the center of the pandemic. New York City is the epicenter of our world\u2019s-highest-caseload.[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Elmhurst Hospital Center in Queens currently has a line outside full of people with symptoms waiting for tests. Even after being admitted, there\u2019s no guarantee patients will get a bed. Some have died while waiting. Nurses, lacking PPE, wear trash bags. A refrigerated truck holds bodies that won\u2019t fit in the full morgue. A federal hospital ship is on the way but won\u2019t be useable for weeks.[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>

I can\u2019t believe I am writing these words. We are supposed to be the most advanced nation in the world. We are not supposed to be a place where nurses wear trash bags and people die in hallways. I have known for a long time that America is not the great nation on the hill that my elementary school textbooks said it was. I have spent a lifetime studying the Cold War and am aware of our hypocrisy and disregard for human life. I know that black and brown people can live here for generations, with their ancestors having been brought here against their will as chattel, and still be made to feel like strangers, like something less than fully human. But somehow I never imagined that we would be so broken, so weak, so unprepared. It reminds me of how I felt when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and our entire nation could not effectively evacuate the city\u2019s residents and really didn’t seem sufficiently disturbed about that fact. Maybe that’s the clue to how this pandemic is going to go, too.<\/span><\/p>

[read_more id=”1″ more=”Read more” less=”Read less”]<\/p>

Topping that news is the Department of Labor report out this morning that 2.9 million<\/i> people filed for unemployment benefits last week, more than quadruple the highest number ever seen.[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Hypothetically, that number will come down as the virus recedes and employers re-fill the same jobs, but it remains a staggering indicator of how unprepared SARS-CoV-2 found the United States. Even the American precious metals market, often a place to which scared investors flee during stock panics and bank runs, seems to be nearly at a freezing point.[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>

It\u2019s like this across the globe, right? No, it is not. Objectively, there are other parts of the world that are handling this virus much better than we are. South Korea and Japan, who learned they had infected citizens at the same time as the United States, managed to \u2018flatten the curve\u2019 by aggressive contact tracing, bombardments of public service announcements, and very broad testing.[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/span>
Singapore worked so hard at tracing and quarantining that they were able to reopen schools quickly. By contrast, our contact tracing has been negligible and we are seeing mysterious outbreaks popping up in places like Albany, Georgia, far away from major outbreak cities and with no known connection to travelers from Asia or Europe.[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Our economic response to the chaos has also been substandard. The EU, for instance, is paying companies to keep employees even while quarantining. They\u2019ve mostly avoided the mass unemployment we are seeing and are able to incentivize people to stay home.<\/span><\/p>

Why is the United States so unprepared in comparison? Why have we become an object lesson for the rest of the world? Scholars, epidemiologists, and politicians are going to study this question for decades to come. I am convinced, here on March 26, that this has happened because of systemic failures across our society. Our president and his supporters have shown themselves willing to put their personal political agendas before the uncomfortable truths that would save the lives of their constituents. There has been a failure by our leadership to create a unified, effective message that would mobilize the American public, a failure by the hobbled political left to lambast those incompetent leaders and demand effective messaging, a failure of experts to very clear on basic issues like the merits of wearing masks and social distancing, a collapse in the process of peer-review that has led bad science to get pre-printed and then quoted as fact, an inability or unwillingness by Americans to recognize the importance of good, hard science, combined with a desire to believe non-experts who have no actual knowledge on the issue\u2014all because it confirms their own pre-established beliefs and is repeated ad nauseum by Fox News, a profound lack of care and concern for the Black and brown citizens of this nation, and for the poor, who will bear the brunt of this disease, a generations-long tendency in business and in governance to prioritize quick profits over long-term planning, an utter disregard by our leaders for public health, and a toxic legacy of American \u201cvictory culture,\u201d that makes so many people in this nation incapable of humility or sacrifice.[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> The parallels with the collapse of Rome are unmistakable, except Rome lasted for a thousand years.<\/span><\/p>

Then again, as Paul Simon reminds us, \u201cwe can\u2019t be forever blessed.\u201d \u00a0<\/span><\/p>

Notes
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[1]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Jeremy Berke and Morgan McFall-Johnsen, \u201cUSA Now Has More COVID-19 Cases Than Any Other Country in The World,\u201d ScienceAlert, March 26, 2020, https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/usa-is-now-the-centre-of-the-covid-19-outbreak-as-their-case-numbers-top-italy-s.<\/p><\/div>

[2]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Michael Rothfeld et al., \u201c13 Deaths in a Day: An \u2018Apocalyptic\u2019 Coronavirus Surge at an N.Y.C. Hospital,\u201d The New York Times<\/i>, March 25, 2020, sec. New York, https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2020\/03\/25\/nyregion\/nyc-coronavirus-hospitals.html.<\/p><\/div>

[3]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Department of Labor, \u201cUnemployment Insurance Weekly Claims, Week Ending March 21, 2020,\u201d March 26, 2020, https:\/\/www.dol.gov\/sites\/dolgov\/files\/OPA\/newsreleases\/ui-claims\/20200510.pdf.<\/p><\/div>

[4]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Hanna Ziady, \u201cWant to Buy Gold Coins or Bars? Good Luck Finding Any,\u201d CNN, March 26, 2020, https:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2020\/03\/26\/investing\/gold-demand-supply-coronavirus\/index.html.<\/p><\/div>

[5]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Jason Beaubien, \u201cHow South Korea Reined In The Outbreak Without Shutting Everything Down,\u201d NPR, March 26, 2020, https:\/\/www.npr.org\/sections\/goatsandsoda\/2020\/03\/26\/821688981\/how-south-korea-reigned-in-the-outbreak-without-shutting-everything-down.<\/p><\/div>

[6]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Alan Mauldin, \u201cCOVID-19 Suspected in Three Weekend Deaths in Dougherty County,\u201d Albany Herald, March 17, 2020, https:\/\/www.albanyherald.com\/news\/covid-19-suspected-in-three-weekend-deaths-in-dougherty-county\/article_8b759eb6-6878-11ea-8de5-07fa83d6e0e6.html; Darran Todd, \u201cUPDATE: Dougherty Co. Coronavirus Cases Linked to 2 Funerals,\u201d WALB News 10, March 17, 2020, https:\/\/www.walb.com\/2020\/03\/17\/watch-live-dougherty-co-address-latest-coronavirus\/.<\/p><\/div>

[7]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/a> Tom Engelhardt, The End of Victory Culture: Cold War America and the Disillusioning of a Generation<\/i>, 2nd edition (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007), 9.<\/p>

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAccording to Mike Ryan at the WHO, the effects of mask wearing, while important \u201cpsychologically,\u201d don\u2019t show definitive benefits for the general public. He would have done well to be clearer\u2014right before that, he says that sick people should wear masks to keep from spreading it to others. I think what he means to say is that mask wearing does not protect you from getting sick; it only protects others from getting sick by you. This quote of his, \u201cThere is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there's some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly,\u201d could so easily be used by people who oppose masks altogether.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thttps:\/\/www.pscp.tv\/w\/1OyJAYoodRnJb\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLines of people waiting to get tested, Elmhurst Hospital Center, Queens, NYC. \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\thttps:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2020\/03\/25\/nyregion\/25nyvirus-hospital1\/25nyvirus-hospital1-superJumbo.jpg\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t
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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tU.S. Cases surpass China\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
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