USA is Failing to Protect Its Most Vulnerable
The number of COVID-19
confirmed cases are rising alarmingly in many parts of the US. Many of the governors explain away the rise as a result of increased testing.
To some extent this is true. The number of tests per day has increased from an April plateau around 150,000
tests per day to near 600,000 tests per day (brown squares against the left
axis plotted in thousands in the figure below). This occurred despite the President’s constant criticism of testing for Americans even as he requires everyone
around him to be tested multiple times a week.
Some governors base their claim of victory on this improving trend as the average percent
of positive results (blue diamonds against the right axis) have fallen below 5% in
June for the US as a whole. Many epidemiologists
believe that driving this number below 1% as South Korea and Australia have
done will be required to truly control the pandemic. A few states are close to achieving this target but most are not.
In addition, some
governors point to the fact that widespread testing has allowed them to sample
more mildly symptomatic and asymptomatic cases, who are generally younger
adults. So all this testing has
increased case counts but not hospitalizations and eventually death
counts. They conclude this is all good
because this will lower the case fatality rate (CFR) for their state and show that
they are managing their epidemic better.
Unfortunately, this
approach makes it extremely difficult for older and more vulnerable Americans to
survive. The strongest driver
of COVID-19 mortality is age with the same phenomena seen in every country. In California those over 80yrs
old are over 1000 times more likely to die (36%) than those younger than 17yrs
old (< 0.03%). So many young people flaunting the rules of masking and social distancing (encouraged by the President and his allies) which is causing a higher percentage of the
population to become infectious. More vulnerable Americans will also get
COVID-19 and many of them will die. In fact, hospitalizations are now edging up in Florida, Arizona, Texas, California, and
many other states. This laissez-faire
attitude was also adopted by Sweden and Brazil where
effective lockdowns were never imposed. Now
more Swedes are realizing that their government has failed to protect its most vulnerable. Mahatma Gandhi suggested
that “the true measure of any society can be found in how it treats
its most vulnerable members”. Currently, this country is not adequately protecting those who are most harmed by the pandemic, including sick, old, poor, and black Americans. Worse, this President is actively working to disenfranchise the most vulnerable, by continuing to fight against mail-in voting, their only means to vote safely in a Pandemic.