Opinion | Why America’s pandemic carnage is a tragedy of global proportions

In his inaugural address, US President Donald Trump said: “For too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealised potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

To stop the carnage, Trump cut taxes and started a trade war with China that has escalated to fever pitch ahead of the November presidential election. As Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi puts it: “It seems as if every Chinese investment is politically driven, every Chinese student is a spy and every cooperation initiative is a scheme with a hidden agenda.”

Yet the strongest nation in the world, with the best technology, medical and managerial skills, is braced for its pandemic death toll to rise to almost 225,000 deaths by November 1, according to forecasts as of Friday by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. The model ranges from just under 200,000 deaths if 95 per cent of the population wear masks vs nearly 300,000 if lockdown mandates are eased.

Political scientist and World Values Survey director Ronald Inglehart argued that economic and physical insecurity is “conducive to xenophobia, strong in-group solidarity, authoritarian politics and rigid adherence to their group’s traditional cultural norms”. This explains why wearing a mask in the US is a political issue. The consequences of unmasked young people mixing freely after Memorial Day are evident: with crowded hospitals and further lockdowns delaying economic recovery.

As the world’s largest economy loses control of the pandemic, a global tragedy unfolds, with a longer economic depression, rising unemployment, declining trade, and shrinking monetary and fiscal space to combat crises. Rational solutions and policies cannot work when people are blinded by the pandemic’s growing emotional trauma, and opposing sides are polarised by deep emotion on many cultural and political values.