Justin Feldman and Mary Bassett describe how diminished political will to use government powers for service provision hampered the US response to the covid-19 pandemic and what needs to change
The US response to the covid-19 pandemic failed in its central task of protecting life. When the government’s public health emergency declaration ended on 11 May 2023, more than 1.1 million people in the US had died, the covid-19 death rate was higher than in comparable wealthy nations,1 and gaping racial and ethnic inequalities in mortality remained.2 In public health circles, chronic underfunding of public health agencies is often used to explain the shortcomings of the US covid-19 pandemic response.3 If only health departments had larger budgets, these arguments go, government could have expanded efforts to prevent SARS-CoV-2 transmission, promote vaccination, and deliver early treatment to medically vulnerable people.
The budgetary concerns are warranted. Only 1% of the country’s total
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Many U.S. health experts underestimated the coronavirus until it was too late [Los Angeles Times]
A year ago, while Americans were finishing their holiday shopping and finalizing travel plans, doctors in Wuhan, China, were battling a mysterious outbreak of pneumonia with no known cause.
Chinese doctors began to fear they were witnessing the return of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, a coronavirus that emerged in China in late 2002 and spread to 8,000 people worldwide, killing almost 800.
The disease never gained a foothold in the U.S. and disappeared by 2004.
But SARS cast a long shadow that colored how many nations and U.S. scientists reacted to its far more dangerous cousin, the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19.