And most individuals can exercise great control over preventing the illness for themselves, their loved ones and anyone they contact. Preventive measures include wearing masks and practicing social distancing, at least 6 feet especially when indoors along with avoiding crowds and staying home when displaying symptoms including coughing or fever.
Again, this was well documented in mid-March after governments in East Asia responded swiftly with discipline to the virus.
The United States has less than 5 percent of the world's population and represents more than 20 percent of global Covid-19 cases and 20 percent of deaths. Analysts offer a mix of reasons for the country's high Covid-19 rates: impatience and, in some cases, desperation to open businesses and return to normal; failure of leaders to allow public health officials to establish timelines for reopening; a yearning quick fixes including vaccines and medicines; assumptions that healthy, comfortable and young Americans could not possibly succumb; inattention to lag times after infection and exponential rise; and politicization of the simple precaution of wearing a mask along with a lack of self-discipline or consideration for the elderly and others who might be vulnerable.
Ed Yong writes for the Atlantic:"Many Americans trusted intuition to help guide them through this disaster. They grabbed onto whatever solution was most prominent in the moment, and bounced from one (often false) hope to the next. They saw the actions that individual people were taking, and blamed and shamed their neighbors. They lapsed into magical thinking, and believed that the world would return to normal within months. Following these impulses was simpler than navigating a web of solutions, staring down broken systems, and accepting that the pandemic would rage for at least a year.
"These conceptual errors were not egregious lies or conspiracy theories, but they were still dangerous. They manifested again and again, distorting the debate around whether to stay at home, wear masks, or open colleges. They prevented citizens from grasping the scope of the crisis and pushed leaders toward bad policies."
Denial and political polarization have disrupted the Covid-19 response, this despite the many future unknowns anyone infected, even those who are asymptomatic, as warned by researchers since the pandemic's beginning.
The pandemic will continue throughout the winter, and a new normal is unlikely before spring of 2021. Still, as other countries demonstrated earlier this year, individuals hold immense power over preventing the rapid and deadly spread of this disease. Hundreds of new cases and deaths each day are simply unacceptable and unnecessary.
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