Download This PaperSummary Report to the Global Pandemic Network Concerning Responses to COVID-19 in the USA
5 Pages Posted: 13 Sep 2021 Last revised: 16 Dec 2021
Date Written: June 6, 2021
Abstract
The thesis of this paper is that the initial response to COVID-19 in the U.S. was hampered by structural weaknesses in the U.S. political and healthcare systems that caused them to be ill-adapted to deal decisively with a pandemic on the scale of COVID-19 but presumably have numerous advantages and offsetting benefits in other areas. These structural features did not inevitably doom the U.S. to respond as it did; individual actors in politics, the administrative state, and the media all could have behaved differently. Rather, those features constituted weaknesses that created incentives for the counter-productive but predictable behaviors that we describe.
In the long run, however, the U.S.’s technological and administrative ability to develop and deploy an effective vaccine may eventually overcome some of the U.S.’s initial administrative problems and mis-steps, but not until after we suffered a large number of deaths and illnesses, some of which might have been avoided by better planning and preparation. This pattern is not atypical of other responses by the U.S. to crises, which has been compared to that of a “sleeping giant” that is slow to awaken but can deploy strong measures once it does.
One over-riding lesson to be learned from the U.S. response to the COVID-19 pandemic is “Don’t try to hold a U.S. presidential election while trying to contain a pandemic.” The on-going presidential election made it very difficult to coordinate a unified national response.
Note: Funding: None to declare
Declaration of Interests: None to declare.
Keywords: COVID, Pandemic, U.S. politics
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation
E. Donald Elliott (Contact Author)
Yale University - Law School ( email )
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