Opinion | America’s battle with the coronavirus looks grim thanks to dire working conditions and Donald Trump’s incompetence

The hypercapitalist US system can force millions to carry on with their jobs even if they are sick. Meanwhile, the fractious and irresponsible US president is more concerned with his election chances than curbing the virus

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A person wears a protective mask while walking with an umbrella in New York’s Chinatown neighbourhood. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 3:00am, 4 Mar 2020Updated: 4:49am, 4 Mar 2020

New York has finally cottoned on to the threat posed by the coronavirus. On Friday my wife and I went to stock up on tinned food and enough hand sanitiser to make Howard Hughes call an intervention, and business was proceeding as normal.

Since then, Covid-19 has caused six deaths on US soil, and stores across the city are packed out with folks – mostly white and black – preparing for what will either be the apocalypse or an excellent opportunity to catch up on Netflix (my wife, who is Chinese, was delighted to note that New York’s Asians prepared long before everyone else).

To outsiders, such anxiety may seem odd. After all, with its wealth, substantial medical resources and technologically advanced health care, America looks better placed to weather the oncoming storm than most other nations.

But the country’s hypercapitalist mindset, and the exploitation and financial consolidation practised by the rich at the expense of the middle and working classes over the past few decades (and in some cases centuries), has left it dangerously vulnerable to such an epidemic.

The first issue is that there is no federal – i.e. countrywide – law requiring paid sick leave for employees. So in many places if you can’t work, you don’t get paid.

This isn’t universal: 10 of the 50 states, the country’s capital and some cities have mandated some kind of paid sick leave, but the avaricious nature of American politics has left them badly compromised.