The COVID-19 Plight in the United States

"Never before have so many citizens had so much access to information and simultaneously protested public health recommendations with such full-throated denial of the medical facts."

"[Case for engaging psychoanalysts to help treat] mass denial and mass non-adherence [to medical advice]."

Dr.Austin Ratner, Nisarg Gandhi, Saint Barnabas Medicine Center, Livingston, NJ : The Lancet

"The perception that public health authorities have done a good job is starting to decrease."

"Some of these things [that COVID was engineered as a bioweapon in a Chinese lab, disbelief that a vaccine will soon be widely available] may seem absurd and it may be frustrating for those of us who are adhering to the science, but it's clearly having an impact."

"It really demonstrates the incredible science communication challenge in front of us."

Timothy Caulfield, professor of health law and policy, University of Alberta

"It's not easy to unseat an incumbent, an American president, if the economy is going well, no matter how controversial he is to large segments of the population."

"Let's take the first six months [where COVID was seen to represent a New York City and Northern California and west-coast crisis]. A lot of the rest of the country could think, 'well, that's too bad, but it doesn't have too much to do with me'."

"And yet because the Trump administration refused to get on top of it early on, it ended up doing the most extreme kind of call for shutdowns, along with many governors, by March and April, and that caused a lot of people out there in the heartlands of America, particularly in the non-metropolitan areas that are the base of the increasingly radicalized American Republican party to think, 'well, they're telling me that all the businesses that my neighbours and I work in or go to have to close down and maybe go under, and it's not even something that's happening that much in my community."

Theda Skocpol, sociologist, political scientist, Harvard University

People line up at a mobile Covid-19 test center staffed by members of the Wisconsin National Guard on the grounds of Miller Park in Milwaukee on Thursday.   Scott Olson / Getty Images

 

"[It was like a] tribal political statement, a red badge of courage [when he made a show of whipping off his mask, when Trump said] I beat this crazy, horrible, China virus [that he was] immune, [that he was in] great shape."

"The reddest and most loyal Trump states are precisely the ones that have the highest rates of new cases, death and suffering."

Dr.Allen Frances, psychiatrist, former chair of psychiatry, Duke University

Millions of Americans are awaiting the long-overdue message of instruction and confidence in the deliverer of the message that COVID-19 is the big deal that the current administration downplays in its focus, front and centre, on the economy. The painful fact is, that though the U.S. has only four percent of the global population, it accounts for 20 percent of deaths worldwide, as a result of the novel pandemic. As the virus continues to rage across the United States, with over 100,000 new daily cases recorded in recent days an average of close to 900 daily deaths have been logged over the past week.

A staggering loss of life. In total there has been 235,000 deaths to date due to the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the United States since March, with modelling forecasting another 100,000 or greater number of deaths as winter approaches. "We're not in a good place", stated Dr.Anthony Fauci, immunologist and since 1984, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a man whom President Donald Trump describes as "a disaster". The result of President Trump's downplaying the need to practise social distancing and mask-wearing is that psychological denial is now viewed by experts as a genuine public health crisis.

 

Approximately 66 percent of Republicans believe that the global pandemic threat has been overblown; the typical molehill made into a mountain, whereas 15 percent of Democrats and 39 percent of Americans overall share that belief, according to a Pew Research Center poll of a month ago. In Canada, close to one in four believe the threat posed by COVID-19 has been exaggerated, including instructions for social distancing and mask wearing, a finding of an online poll by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies.

Health-care worker (Graham Hughes/The Canadian Press)

People willing to believe misinformation become less likely to adopt preventive practises like distancing and mask wearing. In smaller cities and towns the pandemic arrived slowly; first making its appearance in nursing homes or prisons, that made it appear as though the virus might somehow be contained. Middle-aged workers and middle-income men who make up Mr. Trump's base, followers may respond at variance to the crisis than would their wives or mothers. The economy and science denial are shaped by partisan predispositions. 

Professor Lebo of Western University points out that should President Trump ultimately lose the election "he's still going to be in charge for two-and-a-half months. Especially with COVID raging worse than ever, it could be the worst two-and-a-half months of his presidency, and his worst behaviour of his presidency. There's nothing at all reining him in anymore.The numbers are horrible." 

 

Joe Biden, says Dr.Skocpol, has promised widespread and free testing, ramping up contact tracing, emergency paid leave for people exposed to or sick with the virus, support to workers, families and businesses to build cooperation across party lines, and distribute vaccines when they become available.

"[For a republican], voting against the Republicans would be to deny part of their identity. To side with Joe Biden is to deny part of their identity. So, they reach for things that help rationalize that, such as believing Donald Trump if he says there's going to be a vaccine next month, or that this really isn't affecting anybody ... Or we can't shut everything down."

"[Biden needs to make his health messages bipartisan] He needs to stand up to Democrats and Republicans and say, 'this is what the science says. Put your mask on'. That would be a great start."

Matthew Lebo, chair, department of political science, Western University