Wayne O'Leary

Why We Can’t Defeat the Virus

The evidence is all around us: rising rates of infection, increasing numbers of deaths, hospital overload throughout the South and West, Americans banned from most other countries. We are losing Donald Trump’s “war” on the coronavirus and emerging as the global epicenter of the pandemic, a nation of literal super-spreaders.

Why is this? You may well ask. The easy answer — it’s almost too easy — is the moronic, incompetent occupant of the Oval Office. Trump’s manifold failures in dealing with the COVID-19 crisis comprise the stuff of legend. Over the summer, he spent weekends playing golf as the epidemic surged around him, a modern-day Nero fiddling in the midst of catastrophe, issuing pronouncements that (to paraphrase Shakespeare) are tales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The idiocy has continued unabated in the form of daily tweet storms and absurd public statements: Children can’t get the virus. It will disappear shortly anyway, so open the schools. Hydroxychloroquine really works, regardless of scientific opinion. Masks are effective, or maybe they’re not (depends on the day of the week). A miracle vaccine is just around the corner. Look for it by Election Day.

These semi-coherent ramblings may very well be calculated for political effect. The Donald enjoys the trappings of the presidency and would obviously like to stay in office for another four years, provided he doesn’t have to actually perform on the job. This precludes dealing seriously with the pandemic, which “is what it is,” a problem that doesn’t respond to Trumpian posturing and rhetoric, and is therefore not worth his time or attention. Better to let it take care of itself, while he focuses on the endless reelection campaign.

So, it’s easy to make Trump our virus scapegoat — and he does bear much of the responsibility. And yet there’s something about the contemporary nature of this country that has played into his hands — more, in fact, than Americans would care to admit. At this point in our history, it’s questionable whether the US is really capable anymore of addressing something like COVID-19. Great leadership might make the difference, but there don’t appear to be any Lincolns or FDRs on the horizon (and would we follow them if there were?).

American individualism (doing one’s own thing) is a famously prominent aspect of our national character that itself militates against cooperative or collaborative efforts, such as a coordinated national response to the coronavirus through agreed-upon rules and regulations. Rampant individualism would be a difficult enough obstacle to overcome in this instance, but lately it’s been twisted into a reprehensible caricature of itself: individual self-expression becoming plain selfishness.

Early 21st century America has devolved into a nation that combines maximum freedom with minimal responsibility. Witness the hordes of people gathering together in defiance of medical experts to hold urban block parties, attend motorcycle rallies, or congregate on crowded beaches, intermingling without protective masks or social distancing. Americans feel they have a God-given right to fun that can’t be abridged, even at the expense of public health. Outside the Northeast, which Trumpsters would disparagingly call European in its sensibilities, a contempt for locking down and covering up has become the quintessential American attitude for at least a large minority of our fellow citizens.

Exaggerated notions of “freedom” go hand in hand with two other cultural characteristics in spreading the virus, impatience and the desire for instant gratification. These traits, which have recently taken on a conspicuous prominence among Americans traveling abroad, have led to the reemergence of a distinct cultural type we thought was consigned to the past: the Ugly American.

In Ireland, one of the few European destinations still available to blacklisted US nationals (because of our COVID-19 infection rate), locals have been horrified by impatient Yankee tourists who arrogantly flout the country’s visitor-quarantine rules, quickly wearing out their welcome. Americans will apparently brook no pandemic restrictions on their behavior, no matter where they go.

At home, resistance to sensible health regulations has drifted toward outright violence, or threats of violence. No other country battling the coronavirus has come anywhere close to producing such a reaction. Much of this is a result of political hatreds in a polarized nation. Americans are so divided between blue and red that they will fight over minimal public-health recommendations, such as mask-wearing and crowd avoidance. Elsewhere in the world, politics is reserved for serious policy differences. Other democracies agree on the basics; we don’t.

Distrust of government and public authorities, a product of four decades of relentless conservative propaganda from outlets like Fox News, adds to our inability to unite against the virus. The same mindset that produced the Tea Party and the right-wing militias contributes to American impotence in the face of the pandemic. Conservative extremists would rather oppose perceived liberal values than take on what literally threatens to kill them.

One example, the ideological refusal to wear face coverings as a safety measure, was on view around the country (especially in red states) in late July, as corporations like Walmart and Walgreens instituted mask-only shopping in their stores, then promptly backed down when belligerent shoppers objected. In retrospect, their unenforced rules were just feel-good initiatives adopted for PR purposes.

The companies in question were the same ones demanding America open for business regardless of medical concerns, which points up another reason why the US can’t beat the virus. President Calvin Coolidge proclaimed it succinctly in the 1920s: “The business of America is business.” Making money, in other words, supersedes everything else, including good health.

Finally, there’s one last reason why the virus is winning in the US, and it’s perhaps the most obvious, namely, our lack of a coherent strategy to combat the threat. This country does not have a pandemic policy; it has 50 policies. The shifting of responsibility to individual governors by default has guaranteed chaos and ineffectuality. Some states are managing adequately, but many are not. Above all, states don’t control their borders (they’re not like countries), so the virus can go where it wants. Prioritizing federalism in a time of pandemic has proven suicidal.

Leave it to the late cartoonist Walt Kelly’s character Pogo to summarize the inept American response to the coronavirus. “We have met the enemy,” said Pogo, “and he is us.”

Wayne O’Leary is a writer in Orono, Maine, specializing in political economy. He holds a doctorate in American history and is the author of two prizewinning books.

From The Progressive Populist, September 15, 2020

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