Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"America's superlatively poor performance cannot solely be blamed on either the Trump or Biden administrations, although both have made egregious errors. Rather, the new coronavirus exploited the country's many failing systems: its overstuffed prisons and understaffed nursing homes; its chronically underfunded public-health system; its reliance on convoluted supply chains and a just-in-time economy; its for-profit health-care system, whose workers were already burned out; its decades-long project of unweaving social safety nets; and its legacy of racism and segregation that had already left Black and Indigenous communities and other communities of color disproportionately burdened with health problems. Even in the pre-COVID years, the U.S. was still losing about 626,000 people more than expected for a nation of its size and resources. COVID simply toppled an edifice whose foundations were already rotten.

"In furiously racing to rebuild on this same foundation, America sets itself up to collapse once more. Experience is reputedly the best teacher, and yet the U.S. repeated mistakes from the early pandemic when faced with the Delta and Omicron variants. It got early global access to vaccines, and nonetheless lost almost half a million people after all adults became eligible for the shots. It has struggled to control monkeypox-a slower-spreading virus for which there is already a vaccine. Its right-wing legislators have passed laws and rulings that curtail the possibility of important public-health measures like quarantines and vaccine mandates. It has made none of the broad changes that would protect its population against future pathogens, such as better ventilation or universal paid sick leave. Its choices virtually guarantee that everything that's happened in the past three years will happen again."

-- Ed Yong (edyong209), "The Pandemic’s Legacy Is Already Clear: All of this will happen again", The Atlantic, 2022-09-30