Reason for US pain is simple and sad, writes DAVID PENBERTHY

A PHOTOGRAPH of my father and I was taken in a world that no longer exists.

It was taken last year on the banks of the Mississippi as we prepared to board New Orleans’ much-loved Steamboat Natchez for a 4th of July jazz and fireworks cruise, followed by a late and loose evening at a sensational dive bar called Vaughan’s Lounge.

July 4, 2019, now feels like a distant era. The manner in which the photograph was taken is itself a thing of the past. It was taken by a complete stranger who was standing right behind us in the steamboat queue, an African-American woman whose hand I shook as a thank you.

Remember handshakes? They were good, hey.

The photograph was also taken as a result of flying.

It was taken as a result of boarding a plane from Adelaide to Sydney to Dallas then on to the world’s best-named airport, Louis Armstrong International.

Everything my old man and I did in New Orleans now feels like it is under threat.

Back on February 21 of this year, Australia (population 24.5 million) had 17 cases of coronavirus, one more than the United States (population 327 million) which had 16.

Fast forward to this week and if you look purely at the state of Louisiana, which has a population of just 4.6 million, the infection and death rates in that state are off the charts compared to Australia.

By last Wednesday, Louisiana, with one-fifth of Australia’s population, had 10 times the number of deaths.

The reason so many people are dying in America is sad and simple. They don’t have a functioning public health system, whereas we do.

For America, with its more individualistic culture and hostility toward big government, there are now signs that universal health care is being considered as less of a socialist conspiracy than a vital means of collective selfpreservation.