For all the zeal Congress has shown in investigating America’s response to the covid-19 pandemic, it has been strangely uninterested in exploring a basic question: why did so many Americans die relative to the numbers who succumbed to the virus in other rich countries? Understanding the answer would seem relevant to guarding against the next, inevitable pandemic.
Many countries were slow to react, but as they learned about the transmissibility of the virus, and as vaccines became available, they rapidly cut their death rates. Not so America. „The death rate is now about eight times higher in America than in the rest of the rich world,” The Economist reported in September 2021. In all, America lost more than 1.1m people to covid, or roughly 3,500 lives out of every million. This should haunt every official who was in a position to combat the pandemic. Germany’s death rate was about 2,000 per million people and Canada’s fewer than 1,400, notes Donald McNeil in his book „The Wisdom of Plagues”. Had America managed to split that difference, at about 1,700 per million, „We would have lost about 540,000 fewer dead,” he writes. „Who speaks for them?”
De redactie van NRC selecteert de beste artikelen uit The Economist voor een breder perspectief op internationale politiek en economie.
