The World Is Taking Pity on Us
Will
American prestige ever recover?
Contributing
Opinion Writer
·
May 8, 2020, 5:00 a.m. ET
In
1847, members of the Choctaw Nation sent relief money across the Atlantic to a
starving Ireland — something the Irish, who lost more than a million people in
a famine made worse by British indifference, have never forgotten. The Irish
are now giving financial aid to Native American tribes hit with a pandemic that
has been made worse by American incompetence.
This
is a gracious act, a
boomerang of good will, as reported by my colleagues Ed O’Loughlin and Mihir
Zaveri. But it also shows how much of the world has started to feel sorry for a
nation laid low by the lethal ineptitude of President Trump.
“The
country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so
pitiful,” wrote Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times. And he asked:
“Will American prestige ever recover from this shameful episode?”
Before
we take up O’Toole’s question, let’s look at where we rank in the worst global
crisis since World War II. In Trump’s assessment, his government has done a “spectacular job” with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“And
I’ll tell you, the whole world is excited watching us because we’re
leading the world,” he said, in an updated pat on the back this week.
He’s
right about the leading part: Every 49 seconds or so, throughout the first week
in May, an
American has been dying of this disease. With 1.3 million reported cases, the
United States, just five percent of the world’s population, has nearly 33
percent of the sick.
With more than 75,000 deaths, we’re at the front of the pack as well. No
country comes close on all three measures.
Globally,
the average death rate is 34 people per million residents. In the United
States, it’s more than six times higher — 232 per million.
South
Korea and the United States both reported their first cases of Covid-19 at the
same time, in the third week of January. South
Korea immediately
started testing on a mass scale and socially isolating. The United States
denied, dithered and did next to nothing for more than two months.
By
the end of April, new cases in South Korea were down to less than 10 a day. In the United States at that time,
the pandemic raged at a daily rate of more than 25,000 newly sick. New Zealand,
which also quickly went into lockdown, reported
no new cases earlier
this week for the first time since mid-March.
“The
United States reacted like Pakistan or Belarus, like a country with a shoddy
infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or
stupid to head off mass suffering.” That’s the indictment of The Atlantic’s George Packer, calling the United States a failed
state.
He’s
half right. As scientists note, you can’t stop an outbreak from happening, but
you can stop it from becoming a catastrophe that brings down a society. The
United States spends
more on health care,
per capita, than any other rich nation. And yet, here we are: a full-blown
disaster, in lockdown with a narcissist for a president.
A
country that turned out eight combat aircraft every hour at the peak of World
War II could not even produce enough 75-cent masks or simple cotton nasal swabs
for testing in this pandemic.
A
country that showed the world how to defeat polio now promotes quack remedies
involving household disinfectants from the presidential podium.
A
country that rescued postwar Europe with the Marshall Plan didn’t even bother
to show up this week at the teleconference
of global leaders pledging
contributions for a coronavirus vaccine.
A
country that sent George Patton and Dwight Eisenhower to crush the Nazis now
fights a war against a viral killer with Jared
Kushner,
a feckless failed real estate speculator who holds power by virtue of his
marriage to the president’s daughter.
Let’s
not put too much of the blame on Kushner. After all, he’s also got Middle East
peace, the border wall, the opioid crisis and reinventing the government on his
plate. “Who’s in charge of it?” Trump said recently,
about the “Warp Speed” vaccine development program. “Honestly? I am. I’ll tell
you, I’m really in charge of it.”
Well,
then: Where is the test and trace program needed to safely reopen the country?
Where is the national plan even to consider such an effort? Trump has
surrendered. He never looked smaller or more pathetic than when sitting last
Sunday on his little chair in front of the Lincoln Memorial.
America
has a failed federal government, laughed at and pitied the world over. But
America is not a failed state. It will be saved by its scientists and doctors,
its hospitals and universities, its nimble and creative companies, and leaders
in the statehouses who act more decisively than the family of frauds in the
White House.
Perhaps
it is best to let the coronavirus task force die a miserable death. It’s mostly
show and ego projection.
As
to the Irishman’s question: Will American prestige ever recover? Not for some
time. Our image abroad took a real hit after Trump’s election, and it has
continued to fall. Most of the world now has no confidence in the president’s
leadership.
But then, the same is true with most
Americans. Welcome to our nightmare.
Timothy Egan
(@nytegan) is a contributing opinion writer who covers the environment, the
American West and politics. He is a winner of the National Book Award and
author, most recently, of “A Pilgrimage to Eternity.”