How the Pandemic Defeated America

Pandemic
All these images were taken during the shelter-in-place order in New York City, at the peak of the Covid19 pandemic. The night offered a cinematic glimpse of the city plunged into one of its bleakest times. By losing its social purpose, the familiar landscape of the city’s bars, restaurants, intersections and squares, became unrecognizable. The empty streets transformed into a Hopperesque space of the ultimate night punctuated by lit windows and glowing streetlights. These few remaining sources of light offered a sanctuary against the alienating darkness, providing glimpses of domestic warmth and giving refuge to the lonely passersby, shuffling in and out darkness. Disoriented by the city I have called home for the last 20 years, I was reminded of a dystopian sci-fi film, Dark City, where a dreamlike metropolis is trapped in eternal nightfall. New York City has since returned to a semblance of normalcy, and those few weeks already seem to be a vision of another world.

Today I’m doing something a little different. I’m pointing you at an Article that has just been published within The Atlantic titled “How the Pandemic Defeated America”.

Ed Young, a staff science writer at the Atlantic since 2015, is a truly outstanding word-smith for all things science based. Generally anything and everything he writes is deeply researched and backed by a vast font of knowledge and insight. You can find out lots more about him on his Wikipedia page.

This latest is not his First COVID-19 Article

Previous articles (also well worth reading) include …

What has gone wrong?

The newly published article is not just more of the same, but instead takes his writing to a new level by addressing one of the key questions of our time.

Incidentally, you might wonder if I’m being paid to promote it. I’m not, it simply resonated with me as a brilliant insightful piece, so without being nudged to do so, I’m promoting it because I believe it to be of vital importance.

The Folks over at The Atlantic hold a similar view. Normally they have a paywall, but for Ed’s writing concerning the Pandemic they don’t …

I’m also not alone in recognising his article as truly outstanding …

When others heap praise upon Ed, he humbly pushes back and gives credit to them …

Ed has basically distilled many months of thought and hundreds interviews to spell out step by step what has gone so very wrong. He highlights the thousands of missed opportunities and explains why the world’s most powerful nation, with resources like no other, has managed to be so inept and fail in such a devastating manner.

It is of course tempting to start quote mining, but I won’t, I’ll simply permit myself the luxury of just one teaser quote to encourage you to go read it all

No one should be shocked that a liar who has made almost 20,000 false or misleading claims during his presidency would lie about whether the U.S. had the pandemic under control; that a racist who gave birth to birtherism would do little to stop a virus that was disproportionately killing Black people; that a xenophobe who presided over the creation of new immigrant-detention centers would order meatpacking plants with a substantial immigrant workforce to remain open; that a cruel man devoid of empathy would fail to calm fearful citizens; that a narcissist who cannot stand to be upstaged would refuse to tap the deep well of experts at his disposal; that a scion of nepotism would hand control of a shadow coronavirus task force to his unqualified son-in-law; that an armchair polymath would claim to have a “natural ability” at medicine and display it by wondering out loud about the curative potential of injecting disinfectant; that an egotist incapable of admitting failure would try to distract from his greatest one by blaming China, defunding the WHO, and promoting miracle drugs; or that a president who has been shielded by his party from any shred of accountability would say, when asked about the lack of testing, “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”

I will add one rather obvious thought. If you have had enough, then your opportunity for an end to incompetence is coming up next November. It is not simply about Trump, but is also about all those that enabled the worst administration in US history. They all need to be shown the door.

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