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The Atlantic: How the Pandemic Defeated America
The Atlantic ^ | 08/03/2020 | Ed Yong

Posted on 08/03/2020 3:39:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.

In the first half of 2020, SARS‑CoV‑2—the new coronavirus behind the disease COVID‑19—infected 10 million people around the world and killed about half a million. But few countries have been as severely hit as the United States, which has just 4 percent of the world’s population but a quarter of its confirmed COVID‑19 cases and deaths. These numbers are estimates. The actual toll, though undoubtedly higher, is unknown, because the richest country in the world still lacks sufficient testing to accurately count its sick citizens.

Despite ample warning, the U.S. squandered every possible opportunity to control the coronavirus. And despite its considerable advantages—immense resources, biomedical might, scientific expertise—it floundered. While countries as different as South Korea, Thailand, Iceland, Slovakia, and Australia acted decisively to bend the curve of infections downward, the U.S. achieved merely a plateau in the spring, which changed to an appalling upward slope in the summer. “The U.S. fundamentally failed in ways that were worse than I ever could have imagined,” Julia Marcus, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at Harvard Medical School, told me.

Since the pandemic began, I have spoken with more than 100 experts in a variety of fields. I’ve learned that almost everything that went wrong with America’s response to the pandemic was predictable and preventable. A sluggish response by a government denuded of expertise allowed the coronavirus to gain a foothold.

(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS: america; bioweapon; chinesevirus; defeat; jeffreygoldberg; johnbolton; pandemic; sarahhuckabeesanders; scamdemic; shamdemic; theatlantic
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THE AUTHOR THEN ADDS THE FOLLOWING TO THE LIST:

Chronic underfunding of public health neutered the nation’s ability to prevent the pathogen’s spread.

A bloated, inefficient health-care system left hospitals ill-prepared for the ensuing wave of sickness.

Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19. T

The decades-long process of shredding the nation’s social safety net forced millions of essential workers in low-paying jobs to risk their life for their livelihood.

The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.

1 posted on 08/03/2020 3:39:15 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

How leftist mayors and govenors destroyed America.


2 posted on 08/03/2020 3:40:56 PM PDT by 2banana (Common ground with islamic terrorists-they want to die for allah and we want to arrange the meeting)
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To: SeekAndFind

And the Communists/Marxists/Neo-Marxists/Socialist that have worked against us are going to pay dearly.


3 posted on 08/03/2020 3:41:03 PM PDT by JoeRender
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To: SeekAndFind

It’s a frigging flu strain , good grief, and what about H1N1 under bozo the clown racist.


4 posted on 08/03/2020 3:41:32 PM PDT by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: SeekAndFind

How did it come to this? Cowardly response by dhimmicrats.


5 posted on 08/03/2020 3:41:53 PM PDT by rockrr ( Everything is different now...)
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To: SeekAndFind

The pandemic didn’t defeat us.

At times we were our own worst enemy in making decisions on how to deal with it though.


6 posted on 08/03/2020 3:42:26 PM PDT by Buckeye McFrog (Patrick Henry would have been an anti-vaxxer)
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To: 2banana

If they say Trump did a bad job then why do they say Fauci is doing a great job when he is telling Trump what to do on this? All about the election


7 posted on 08/03/2020 3:42:31 PM PDT by manc ( If they want so called marriage equality then they should support polygamy too.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Will not click on article, but lemme guess. The summary of the Atlantic article is that this is all Trump’s fault, right.

The left did the exact same thing to Bush with Katrina. COVID is nothing more than a political tool to politically bludgeon Trump. Saw a Biden ad where they are blaming Trump for the chaos in Portland!


8 posted on 08/03/2020 3:43:25 PM PDT by Obadiah
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To: SeekAndFind

Good Lord, what ridiculous editorializing

And of course, even the Pandemic is “racist”

Because EVERYTHING’s RACIST


9 posted on 08/03/2020 3:43:36 PM PDT by A_Former_Democrat (See St George's Rap Sheet . . . TAG PedoJoe with "DEFUND the POLICE")
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To: SeekAndFind

Ed could do us all a favor and take the gas pipe


10 posted on 08/03/2020 3:44:16 PM PDT by V_TWIN
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To: SeekAndFind

Yeah, well this is from The Atlantic.

As we know, nothing but leftist drivel oozes like pus out of this magazine.


11 posted on 08/03/2020 3:44:50 PM PDT by Responsibility2nd (Click my screen name for an analysis on how HIllary wins next November.)
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To: manc

I want to see a montage of Fauci contradicting himself over and over again.


12 posted on 08/03/2020 3:45:20 PM PDT by Obadiah
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To: SeekAndFind
"Racist policies that have endured since the days of colonization and slavery left Indigenous and Black Americans especially vulnerable to COVID‑19." https://webmail.lerctr.org/~transit/healy/crap.wav
13 posted on 08/03/2020 3:45:22 PM PDT by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either opinion or satire. Or both.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Ummm.... other countries are lying about their numbers?

The Atlantic is an MSM lefwing rag which alters facts to worsen any situation. That’s what the media does. They are Merchants of Fear.


14 posted on 08/03/2020 3:47:08 PM PDT by Seruzawa (TANSTAAFL!)
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To: SeekAndFind

total BS, the virus had already been here for before we even knew of it.

There was NOTHING we could of done better, EXCEPT, NOT OVER-REACT!

Over-reacting was the only thing we did wrong.

In the past... this would of just been considered a bad flu season and we would of moved on.


15 posted on 08/03/2020 3:48:41 PM PDT by TexasFreeper2009
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To: manc

EXACTLY. ...ONE of the two is wrong...and it’s FAUCI the virus fairy


16 posted on 08/03/2020 3:49:23 PM PDT by goodnesswins (The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution." -- Saul Alinksy)
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To: SeekAndFind

1) We’re not defeated
2) Our political posturing dysfunction is our own worst enemy, and also our collective greatest asset
3) The Alphabet Swamp is squarely to blame; this is the entire job of the HHS, CDC, FDA et al. They never replenished the PPE after depleting it all a decade ago. They never warned about the oursourcing of medicine production. We spend tens of billions (or more) on these agencies but they failed us horribly. I simply don’t believe that contingencies for this kind of illness do not exist. Someone wrote a plan for it, but the Alphabet Swamp likely just filed it away and it’s still on a shelf somewhere. Bureaucrat bosses don’t answer to underling technocrats.


17 posted on 08/03/2020 3:50:11 PM PDT by monkeyshine (live and let live is dead)
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To: SeekAndFind

So the Spanish Flu failed to destroy the nation but the Wuhan Flu has.Why? Because the President,as well as Governors and Mayors or all parties,respected the rights guaranteed to *all* citizens in *all* states by the United States Constitution.


18 posted on 08/03/2020 3:50:20 PM PDT by Gay State Conservative (The Rats Just Can't Get Over The Fact That They Lost A Rigged Election!)
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To: SeekAndFind
You'd think this author believes the rest of the world is humming along just fine, except for us.

Does he know that two cruise lines just restarted, one in Norway and the other in French Polynesia, and they both got Covid infected on their first voyages?

-PJ

19 posted on 08/03/2020 3:51:15 PM PDT by Political Junkie Too (Freedom of the press is the People's right to publish, not CNN's right to the 1st question.)
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To: SeekAndFind

Dust mote, that is serious. We are all going to die again.


20 posted on 08/03/2020 3:54:40 PM PDT by mountainlion (Live well for those that did not make it back.)
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