You Can Do Better Than America During the Pandemic

By Otto Do

We will sweat in the humid tail end of New Hampshire summer, huddled around spikeball nets with smiles wider than ever. Coffee Kahlua brownie will drip onto the sidewalk and sizzle on Quad pavement. It’s a perfect day. It’s the day that keeps many of us going. But, it’s also a day that epitomizes American ignorance. It’s a day that will not happen again, unless we change.

We’re at war—that’s the stark reality of the present. Undoubtedly, America will suffer economically, but what about culturally? Change in culture—both negative and positive—is arguably the greatest indicator of an event’s effect on a nation. To predict America in the aftermath of COVID-19, let us turn to the present—greater America during the battle.

Just two days ago, I stepped out to our front porch to check the mail. Across the street, several neighbors assembled for a gathering. They placed five red lounge chairs in a circle, spaced only three feet apart. 

Their behavior may not be representative of America holistically; I live in a predominantly white area of Los Angeles, 81% white, to be exact, where the median income is just a little over $200,000, quadruple the national average. Though my neighborhood isn’t a universal example, the image weighs on my mind.

To properly understand this moment’s meaning, I looked to an excerpt from James Davison Hunter’s To Change the World: The Irony, Tragedy, and Possibility of Christianity in the Late Modern World. “The deepest and most enduring forms of cultural change nearly always occurs from the ‘top down.’ In other words, the work of world-making and world-changing are, by and large, the work of elites: gatekeepers who provide creative direction and management within spheres of social life,” Hunter wrote.

“Even where the impetus for change draws from popular agitation, it does not gain traction until it is embraced and propagated by elites,” Hunter added. If wealthy America, those who have the most to lose financially, shows no fear, perhaps the rest of America won’t do anything either. Or maybe it’s their wealth that gives them such comfort.

But even when I step back from my own life, larger America seems to lack in its response to COVID-19, especially in comparison to other nations. With East Asia fronting the COVID-19 case count leaderboard at the onset, America had the privilege of preparation. But business-as-usual bureaucracy and lack of leadership at multiple levels did not make quick testing accessible across the country until recently, at best. 

To measure the success of supposed American strides, results from a Harvard study prove useful. According to their research, “intermittent distancing may be required into 2022 unless critical care capacity is increased substantially or a treatment or vaccine becomes available.” Sure, America may be in the process of “flattening” its curve, but our arc may stretch on for years to come. That’s not a future I look forward to.

We had a chance to fix this, many chances actually. As the world’s champion of modern medicine and its economic powerhouse, we had the means and the notice to prepare before the rise of the novel virus. And we were warned—YouTube’s search algorithm recently directed me to a TED talk from five years ago, “The Next Outbreak? We’re Not Ready” by Bill Gates. Youtube truly does have a wicked sense of humor. To summarize, after the 2014-2019 Ebola crisis, Gates outlined plans which would prevent future outbreaks. But we didn’t act. America let the prime means of combat slip through its fingers.

Our national resistance to forward-thinking reason is nothing new. In fact, it dates all the way back to the debate surrounding America’s first national bank. To provide context, the dispute primarily turned on the meaning of the Necessary and Proper Clause. The source of all power imbued by the Constitution flows from the provision which authorizes Congress to “make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into execution the foregoing powers, and all other powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.”

The debate honed in on the word “necessary,” and whether “convenience” or “usefulness” equated to “necessity.” Hamilton contended that “necessity” should not be interpreted as narrowly as his opponent Jefferson insisted upon a narrow, closed definition. Hamilton claimed, rightfully, that the national bank was vital because it would indisputably aid the government in the exercise of its “fiscal powers.”

Although Hamilton’s intentions were infamously flawed, his logic was stellar. America at the time needed to act decisively, not reactively.  But, we did not listen and we did not act preventatively nor proactively—instead, we acted responsively. 

But, our response was meager at best. Images circulating throughout various social media platforms depict New York parks seething with picnickers and Los Angeles beaches brimming with tanners. When the United States failed to employ preventative measures, the responsibility to eradicate COVID-19 fell on individual Americans, and we are failing. 

It’s uncertain whether or not our efforts to combat this viral pandemic can be categorized as merely late, but I fear and believe that America will fall back into our cyclic ignorance. I challenge America to prove otherwise. After all, it’s become necessary—by any definition.