Speaking of the United States, the errors of the early response were not the product of one person, whether it be the President or any other one leader. I saw an article in The Atlantic recently saying that the coronavirus debacle is "Trump's Fault", an assertion ridiculous on its face. The debacle is the product of a country in denial as a whole - that these periodic epidemics break out elsewhere, but they'll never really harm the United States. SARS and Ebola both made it to our proverbial "front door". But then they subsided. We'd been repeatedly spared the worst, so why would coronavirus be any different? After all, this was yet another outbreak of an exotic, alien pathogen on the far side of the world.
But this time was different, and having been spared repeatedly in the past, there was a denial that permeated virtually everything. This was exacerbated by inaccuracies and fabrications of a periodically hostile foreign government ruling the country where the virus originated. We had a state of denial that permeated the U.S. - that global trade and ease of travel did not have severe drawbacks. We ignored the lessons of things like the Emerald Ash Borer and other invasive plants and animals that were brought here as a byproduct of global trade. Our country, as a whole, asked for cheap goods, electronics and other items that come from trade, but never considered the darkside of it - the rapid transmission of pathogens and invasive things from other places. If we are as connected as we are to foreign countries, we must be prepared for the darkside of globalization as well. Nothing comes free.
As far as the U.S. is concerned, this is not about Trump. Clinton, Biden, and the whole lot of the present political leadership would have fallen into the exact same traps. This is about our country living in denial of how dangerous the world can actually be, and in a state where this sort of thing happened in other countries, but "never here". We fell into the old trap that our prosperity and vast distances would protect us again. But like past times, we are finding our feet more and more as time goes on as a country - most people are trying to slow or stop the spread of the virus, and various levels of government are beginning to churn their machinery to protect people. But the country should also learn the lesson that if we're going to have travel and trade as we do - on a global basis, we need to be prepared for the downsides and to have a plan in place to address it.
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