
Eric Berne, a famous psychiatrist, wrote that there is a psychological difference between winners and losers. The winner’s goal is victory, and the winner hopes and expects to win despite any temporary defeats. The loser’s goal is to avoid defeat, and the loser fears and expects to lose despite any temporary victories.
It seems to me that there is a similar sorting of winners and losers among countries in regard to the pandemic. There were some nations who sought to eradicate the virus, and largely succeeded. There are others who sought to bring down the rate of infection to something they could live with, like polio before the Salk vaccine.
A few countries, mainly in the Far East, including China, Vietnam, Australia, New Zealand, South Korea [1] and Japan, had a goal of eradicating the disease, and largely succeeded.
Their lockdowns, if they had any. were short and sharp. Their governments by and large used the lockdowns to track down and quarantine persons who were infected before the disease took hold and there were too many to trace. Many cut off air travel to countries that were centers of the disease.
Here in the USA, the initial reaction was to dismiss COVID-19 as just a more severe version of the ‘flu. Michael Lewis has a new book coming out, The Premonition, about how Americans in authority failed to react.
In January and February of 2020, hundreds of Americans in Wuhan, China, were flown back to the U.S. Considering how many people had died of COVID-19 in China at that point, it would have made sense to test those Americans who were coming back. But according to Lewis and his sources, then-CDC Director Robert Redfield refused to test them, saying it would amount to doing research on imprisoned persons. [snip]
According to Lewis’ reporting, the CDC basically had two positions on the pandemic early on. Early on it was that there was nothing to see here — that this is not a big deal. It’s being overblown. And then there was this very quick pivot when it started spreading in the U.S. and the position became it’s too late and there’s nothing we can do.
Source: NPR
The United States had partial lockdowns. Some Americans were able to work from home or, like me, had sufficient retirement income to stay at home. Some lost their livelihoods and were forced into poverty. Some had no choice but to continue working, many under extremely unsafe conditions.
The center of infection in the USA was New York City, and the source of the infection was passengers arriving by air from virus hot spots in Europe. This was known at the time.
It should have been possible to take the temperatures of incoming passengers, given COVID tests for those running a fever and quarantined or sent back those who tested positive.
But neither Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Bill de Blasio did this. They would have been severely criticized if they had, because the seriousness of the problem would not have been obvious. Instead they waited until the problem did become obvious.
At first we were told that the virus spreads in droplets, and we needed to be careful to keep our distance even out of doors, and to avoid touching surfaces including touching our faces.
Now we know that the virus spreads as a kind of mist, and you are at risk anytime you are indoors for a long time in a space without good ventilation, even if you are six feet from anybody else. But we still act as if the problem was droplets.
The good thing is that vaccines were developed faster than many people expected, but many of us Americans don’t want to get vaccinated. The idea of getting to “herd immunity” has been quietly dropped.
Sadly, the USA is not an outlier. The virus is hanging on in other countries, including rich countries, just as much as here, while it is spreading to India and other poor countries.
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