COVID: A tale of two countries
In the summer of 2020, Wade Davis found the United States in the throes of the pandemic, overwhelmed by death, staggered by ineptitude and dysfunction. He saw a failed state.
Davis, an esteemed author, anthropologist and professor at the University of British Columbia, declared the pandemic had “reduced to tatters the illusion of American exceptionalism.”
His essay, published in Rolling Stone, was a sensation. Many of its five million or so readers recoiled. How dare he! On social media, he was flooded with valentines soaked in vitriol.
That was eight months ago. The number of dead from COVID-19 in the U.S. was 151,557 on Aug. 6, 2020, the day Wade's The Unraveling of America appeared. On April 6, 2021, it was 554,420. In absolute terms, the United States has the highest number of deaths in the world. In relative terms, it is 12th.
Curiously, the countries with more deaths per capita are European, including
Italy, the United Kingdom and Belgium. That does not excuse the U.S. It is the world's richest country, from which we expect competence, ingenuity and leadership.
Today the story there is brighter. The U.S. is behind but inoculating quickly. Having reached the target of 100 million shots in his first 100 days after just 60 days, Joe Biden calls for 200 million vaccinations by May 1. The daily rolling average is 3.1 million.
One-third of Americans have received at least one dose. Biden announced Tuesday that the vaccine will be available to all adults starting April 16.
This has been a stunning technological and logistical challenge for the Americans. Rich and generous, they don't much care where and who you are. “We believe in science, not citizenship,” a doctor explained as he jabbed a Canadian in California.
So here is a different chapter in the dark story:
This one is about innovation, determination, organization. It isn't possible to stop the contagion, which still rages, or erase tens of thousands of unconscionable, unnecessary deaths. But it shows a beleaguered country's capacity to reverse a train — or train wreck — of events.
It says something about character, too, the American resiliency that allows it to recover from misfortune and misstep. After Pearl Harbor, its Pacific Fleet largely destroyed, the republic was suddenly at war. It had a tiny military and a small arms industry.
Audaciously, four months later, it bombed Tokyo, a daring raid to show it was alive. It retooled its economy, producing two Liberty (cargo) ships every three days. It armed the Russians. It fought successfully in North Africa, Italy, Normandy, Germany. Its role was decisive.
In this COVID -19 war, Canada has relatively fewer deaths (23,132). If we were the size of the U.S., we would have 197,000 dead. Whether it's our deference to authority, our public health system or our general consensus, we've managed better in protecting people.
But in developing and distributing the vaccine, we are mediocre. We can't make it, and when we got it, we fumbled its delivery.
Where is the national plan? Who should get it first? Where and how? In our earnestness, we refused to vaccinate early the officers of our government, from parliamentarians to the cabinet to the Supreme Court. Americans had no such worries; while Justin Trudeau waits his “turn,” Biden got his shot on television.
In Ontario we turned to a congenial retired general, whose foot soldiers took off Christmas, to plan the rollout. The federal government imposed a carbon tax to fight climate change, but, deferring to the provinces, refused to invoke a national emergency to create a national response.
This is Canada, the most decentralized country in the world, unrushed and unconscious. Things happen when they happen, and if you live in Ottawa, you're unwelcome to be vaccinated across the river in Gatineau.
The Americans have their pathologies that have killed too many. Canadians have our conceits that have saved too few.
Neither country has done as well as New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan. But if Americans have lost their exceptionalism, we have yet to find ours.