It has been more than two months since the first case of coronavirus was diagnosed in the US. Since then, the outbreak has spread across the nation, with more than 200,000 cases and nearly 4,000 deaths.
The US is now the global epicentre of the pandemic, surpassing the number of reported cases in China, where the virus began, and Italy, the hardest-hit European nation.
Although public health officials report that the peak of the outbreak in the US is still weeks, perhaps months, away, shortcomings in the US response – as well as some strengths – have already become apparent.
Here’s a look at some of them.
MISTAKES
Medical supply shortages
Masks, gloves, gowns and ventilators. Doctors and hospitals across the country, but particularly in areas hardest hit by the pandemic, are scrambling for items essential to help those stricken by the virus and protect medical professionals.
The lack of adequate supplies has forced healthcare workers to reuse existing sanitary garb or create their own makeshift gear. A shortage of ventilators has state officials worried they will soon be forced into performing medical triage, deciding on the fly who receives the life-sustaining support – and who doesn’t.
On Tuesday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo complained that states, along with the federal government, were competing for equipment, driving up prices for everyone.
“It’s like being on eBay with 50 other states, bidding on a ventilator,” he said.
It didn’t have to be this way, says Jeffrey Levi, a professor of health policy and management at George Washington University. The US government failed to adequately maintain the stockpile of supplies necessary to deal with a pandemic like this – and then moved too slowly when the nature of the current crisis became apparent.
“We lost many weeks in terms of ramping up the production capacity around personal protection equipment and never fully utilizing government authority to make sure that production took place,” he says.
Testing delays
According to Professor Levi, ramping up testing at an early date – as done in nations like South Korea and Singapore – is the key to controlling a viral outbreak like Covid-19. The inability of the US government to do so was the critical failure from which subsequent complications have cascaded.
“All of pandemic response is dependent on situational awareness – knowing what is going on and where it is happening,” he says.
Without this information, public health officials are essentially flying blind, not knowing where the next viral hotspot will flare up. Comprehensive testing means infected patients can be identified and isolated, limiting the need for the kind of sweeping state-wide shelter-in-place orders that have frozen the US economy and led to millions of unemployed workers.
South Korea has set the standard in widespread testingLevi says the responsibility for this failure lies squarely with the Trump administration, which disregarded pandemic response plans dating back more than a decade to the George W Bush presidency and failed to fully staff its public health bureaucracy.
“The political leadership in this administration really doesn’t believe in government,” Levi says. “That has really hampered their willingness to harness the resources the federal government had to respond at a time like this.”
The numbers, particularly on testing, bear this out. The initial tests sent in February to just a handful of US laboratories by the administration were faulty.
By mid-March, the administration was promising at least 5 million tests by the end of the month. An independent analysis of totals on 30 March, however, indicate only a million tests have been conducted. That’s more than any other country but the US population is roughly 329 million people.
What’s more, because of crush of testing that has followed the initial shortages, the labs that analyse the results have been overwhelmed, leading to delays of a week or more before tested individuals can learn if they have the virus.
Messaging ‘whiplash’ and political squabbles
At his press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Donald Trump offered a grim outlook for the nation.
“I want every American to be prepared for the hard days that lie ahead,” he said.
His public health advisers followed that statement up with charts predicting at least 100,000 American deaths from the virus even under the current mitigating efforts.
The president’s comments stood in stark contrast to remarks even just a week earlier, when he expressed hope that the US could begin to reopen businesses by the mid-April Easter holiday.
In January and February, as the viral outbreak devastated Chinese manufacturing and began exacting a high toll in Italy, the president repeatedly downplayed the threat to the US. Following the first few American cases, Trump and other administration officials said the situation was under control and would dissipate in the summer “like a miracle”.
Inconsistent messages from the top are a real problem, Professor Levi says. “Pandemic preparedness is a constantly changing environment, and sometimes your message does change. In this case, however, you’ve also had whiplash around messages that are not necessarily reflecting a change in the science or what’s happening on the ground, but instead reflecting political concerns.”
The president has also feuded with Democratic state governors, criticising New York’s Andrew Cuomo and belittling Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer on Twitter. He said state leaders needed to be “appreciative” of the federal government.
Social-distancing failures
College students on spring break from classes packed Florida beaches. New York City residents filled subway cars. A church in Louisiana continues to welcome thousands despite pastor Tony Spell being criminally cited for violating an order limiting the size of gatherings.
“The virus, we believe, is politically motivated,” Spell told a local television station. “We hold our religious rights dear, and we are going to assemble no matter what someone says.”
Across the country, there have been numerous examples of Americans failing to heed the calls by public health professionals to avoid close social contact, sometimes abetted by local and state government officials who have been reluctant to order businesses to shutter and citizens to shelter in place.
“If I get corona, I get corona,” one Florida beachgoer told CBS News in mid-March. “At the end of the day, I’m not going to let it stop me from partying.”
Even steps taken with the best of intentions might have had adverse consequences. Curtailing public-transportation services, such as New York’s subway, may have led to trains and busses that were more crowded. Universities that sent students home to their families may have contributed to the spread of the virus by returning infected individuals to cities, neighborhoods and homes not yet in full lockdown.
The lack of clarity in the president’s order to halt entry into the US from Europe – which at first seemed to apply US citizens as well as foreign nationals – led to a crushing crowds at airports where unscreened infected passengers could easily transit the disease to others.
Decisions like those may have had dire consequences, hampering efforts to contain the spread of the disease throughout the nation – the public health equivalent of throwing petrol on an already raging fire.
SUCCESSES
Stimulus Goliath
Last week the US Congress passed a $2tn coronavirus relief bill, which included direct cash payments to many Americans, expanded unemployment assistance, aid to states, healthcare facilities and other public services, support for hardest-hit industries, and loans to small- and medium-sized businesses that can be forgiven if they avoid layoffs.
It was a massive, record-breaking piece of legislation that was the result of negotiations involving Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, as well as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and his deputies.
“This should be described as a survival bill, not a stimulus bill,” says Columbia’s Graetz, author of the book The Wolf at the Door: The Menace of Economic Insecurity and How to Fight It.
“Everybody has things they don’t like or they wish for better, no one is going to be satisfied with it,” he says, “but I think it should get pretty high marks for a beginning.”
Part of the challenge for lawmakers, Graetz says, is the current system of unemployment insurance for American workers is woefully outdated – a patchwork of state-run programmes with varying benefits and qualification requirements ill-suited for the modern economy. Congress attempted to address this in the coronavirus legislation by ensuring that freelance and gig-economy workers are covered and temporarily supplementing the existing benefits.
“It’s going to be too little for a lot of people, but it was the only solution available,” he says. “Congress started this process with a very weak hand in terms of a solid system of social protections or safety nets that it could build on.”
Both Trump and Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi have already talked about working on another aid bill, perhaps with infrastructure investment and additional healthcare benefits, suggesting this recent bipartisan co-operation is just a beginning.
Research firepower
If the coronavirus is exposing some of the flaws in the US healthcare system – high costs, a lack of universal coverage and supply chains that are unable to withstand a shock – it also could end up highlighting the strength of the nation’s research and drug development infrastructure.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers and medical researchers are rushing to learn more about the virus in an attempt to devise new strategies to defeat the pandemic.
One company has developed a new fast-response test that can identify those carrying the virus almost immediately, ending the current testing backlog and allowing public health officials to quickly identify new outbreak hotspots and make quarantining decisions.
“The long-term prospects around vaccine and therapeutic development is more encouraging,” Levi says. “The science is getting done.”
He adds that pharmaceutical companies that are researching treatments and cures are receiving assurances from the government that there will be a market for their products and they will be adequately compensated for their investments. The problem, he says, is that the efforts made today will take months – or longer – before they show results.
Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, predicted that it would be at least a year before a widespread vaccine is available. The goal of public health policy for now is to limit the toll the virus takes on the population until that day arrives.
State leadership
The US federal system of government, which delegates broad powers to individual states, has proven to be both a blessing and a curse. In good times, it allows local leaders to experiment individually with various public policy solutions, testing out best practices that can then be adopted across the nation.
In the case of a deadly pandemic, however, a patchwork response can be inadequate – and result in avoidable deaths and economic disruption.
“Every governor is making decisions on their own,” Levi says. “Some are making good decisions; some are not.”
The US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort passes the Statue of LibertyHe points to governors like Gavin Newsom of California and Jay Inslee of Washington, who took early steps to close schools and issue shelter-in-place orders that have resulted in a slower spread of the virus in their populations.
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine has also received praise from many quarters for his decisive early moves that at the time were viewed by some as too drastic.
Health officials say most major US metropolitan areas were going to be hit has hard as New York City has been. That, they said, may not end up being the case.
Some states are working hard to avoid suffering New York’s fate, but Levi warns that their efforts may be hampered by other locations not doing nearly enough.
“The problem we have in the US,” he says, ” is the capacity to respond varies so dramatically on a state-by-state basis because of the willingness to invest in public health.”
“We are only as protected as the weakest states.”
Dozens of Palestinians killed in overnight Israeli strikes in central and south Gaza as Red Sea tensions rise.
Here’s how things stand on Monday, January 15, 2024:
Latest updates and human impact
- Israeli attacks continue unabated overnight killing and wounding dozens of civilians in central and southern Gaza. At least 22 people were killed and a large number injured as a result of Israeli forces targeting al-Thalatheni Street in the central Gaza Strip.
- Yemen’s Houthi rebels fired an antiship cruise missile toward an American destroyer in the Red Sea, which was shot down by a US fighter jet, announced US Central Command (CENTCOM) on X.
- This was the first US-acknowledged Houthi attack since the US strikes on Yemen on Friday.
- Hamas released a 37-second video showing three Israeli captives held in Gaza on Sunday, saying they would reveal the fate of the captives on Monday and urging the Israeli government to stop the offensive.
- The Israeli military says it has shifted to a new phase of the war focused on the southern end of Gaza, where almost 2 million internally displaced Palestinians are running out of safe spaces to shelter.
- The Gaza Ministry of Health has said almost 24,000 people have been killed in the Israeli offensive. More than 60,000 people have been wounded in 100 days of war.
Diplomacy
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday that his country will pursue its war against Hamas until victory and will not be stopped by anyone, including the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
- The White House said on Sunday that “it’s the right time” for Israel to scale back its military offensive in the Gaza Strip.
- Egypt’s State Information Service (SIS) said in a statement on Sunday that one of the biggest obstacles to the timely delivery of sufficient aid to Gaza was Israeli inspection of the aid. The statement came after Israel blamed Cairo for the delay in aid delivery to Gaza during its defence at the ICJ.
- US Secretary of State Antony Blinken posted on X on Monday, calling for the release of the remaining captives held in Gaza on the 100th day since they were taken by Hamas. He did not mention the Palestinian casualties.
- Australia’s Foreign Minister Penny Wong, who described herself as a “friend of Israel” to the press, will travel to Jordan, Israel, the occupied Palestinian Territories and the United Arab Emirates this week, her office said on Monday.
West Bank raids and violence
- Israeli forces arrested 25 students staging a sit-in in protest against high tuition fees at An-Najah University in Nablus. Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut reported that the protesting students received a text message from Israeli forces telling them to “surrender now”.
- Israeli forces have reportedly raided the family home of Nael al-Barghouti, the longest-serving Palestinian prisoner, in the village of Kobar, in Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank.
- The Israeli army said on Friday that it killed three Palestinian men who infiltrated a West Bank settlement and fired upon soldiers.
- The Israeli military killed two Palestinians after accusing them of ramming their car through a checkpoint near Hebron.
- Local sources reported that Israeli forces bulldozed two Palestinian-owned houses during a Sunday midnight raid in the city of Qalqilya, Palestinian news agency Wafa reported.
- Armed Israeli settlers broke into the village of Burin, south of Nablus, and attacked Palestinian residents’ houses and properties after midnight on Sunday, Wafa reported.
- “Violent raids and arrests have become part of the fabric of daily life in the occupied West Bank,” Al Jazeera’s Mohammed Jamjoom, reporting from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, said. At least 347 Palestinians have been killed and thousands have been arrested since October 7.
Flames and smoke billow during Israeli attacks against Gaza on October 9, 2023
Human Rights Watch terms Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s call for a ‘complete siege’ on Gaza a ‘war crime’.
The Hamas movement has threatened to kill an Israeli hostage every time Israel bombs a Palestinian home without warning as Israel mobilised some 300,000 reservists and imposed a total blockade of the Gaza Strip, denying the enclave’s millions of residents access to food, water and fuel.
The warning from Hamas came on Monday as the death toll from the armed group’s surprise weekend attack climbed to 900 in Israel and revenge attacks by Israeli forces on the besieged Gaza Strip killed more than 700 people and left some 3,700 others wounded.
Residential apartment blocks, hospitals, schools and a mosque have been among the sites attacked by Israeli fighter jets, artillery and drones, according to media reports and witnesses.
Hamas spokesperson Abu Ubaida issued the threat to kill Israelis from the dozens held captive by the armed group. He said an Israeli hostage would be killed for every Israeli bombing of a civilian house without warning.
Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said more than 100 people were taken captive by Hamas during the deadly cross-border incursion over the weekend.
As Israeli forces conducted intense retaliatory attacks on Gaza on Monday, Israel’s Defence Minister Yoav Gallant drew international condemnation by announcing a total blockade of the densely populated and besieged enclave, which is home to 2.3 million people.
Gallant said Israel would impose a “complete siege” on Gaza. “No electricity, no food, no water, no gas – it’s all closed.”
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said he was “deeply distressed” by the siege announcement and warned that Gaza’s already dire humanitarian situation will now “only deteriorate exponentially”.
Guterres also said some 137,000 people were taking shelter with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) at schools across Gaza.
UNRWA said on Tuesday that almost 190,000 people have been displaced in Gaza amid the Israeli attacks and the figure is expected to grow further as the violence intensifies.
Nearly half a million people have also not received food rations this week in Gaza as UN food distribution centres have been forced to remain closed amid the Israeli onslaught, UNRWA said.
Human Rights Watch said Israel’s total blockade on the necessities of life for everyday people in Gaza was a war crime.
“Defense Minister Gallant’s statements are abhorrent,” Omar Shakir, Israel and Palestine director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement.
“Depriving the population in an occupied territory of food and electricity is collective punishment, which is a war crime, as is using starvation as a weapon of war. The International Criminal Court should take note of this call to commit a war crime,” he said.
Abhorrent. This is a call to commit a war crime by @yoavgallant. The @IntlCrimCourt should take note.
Quote by @OmarSShakir ⤵️ https://t.co/kKVo6YtpI1 pic.twitter.com/neHQMwnXVn
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) October 9, 2023
Shakir also condemned the threat by Hamas to kill hostages, warning that such action was also a war crime.
“All hostages should be safely released to their families,” he said.
Grotesque. These threatened acts would amount to flagrant war crimes by Hamas’ armed wing. The @IntlCrimCourt will be watching.
Quote from @OmarSShakir ⤵️ https://t.co/FuNtvHe0YG pic.twitter.com/6cnHODLWyZ
— Human Rights Watch (@hrw) October 9, 2023
On the diplomatic front, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Hamas and Israel to immediately end violence and protect civilians, the Egyptian presidency said.
Erdogan urged Israel against “indiscriminately” attacking civilians and delivered measured criticism of Hamas, urging both sides to respect the “ethics” of war.
The United Kingdom, French, German, Italian and US governments issued a joint statement on Monday recognising the “legitimate aspirations” of the Palestinian people and supporting equal measures of justice and freedom for Israelis and Palestinians alike.
But the prospect that fighting could spread also alarmed the region and the world.
Lebanese armed group Hezbollah fired rockets into northern Israel in response to at least three of its members being killed in Israeli shelling of Lebanon.
Israel said one of its deputy commanders was also killed in an earlier cross-border raid from Lebanon.
US President Joe Biden holds a bilateral meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly in New York City, the US, September 20, 2023
Social media users, including journalists and observers, are calling out what they call a ‘double standard’.
After Saturday’s surprise attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Israel, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy took to the social media platform X to offer “condolences go out to everyone who lost relatives or close ones in the terrorist attack”.
He also stated, “Israel’s right to self-defence is unquestionable.”
Many world leaders, including US President Joe Biden and UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, shared similar sentiments.
The world is seeing appalling images.
Thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli cities. Hamas terrorists killing not only Israeli soldiers, but civilians on the streets and in their homes.
It’s unconscionable. Israel has a right to defend itself – full stop.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 7, 2023
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen stated, “Israel has the right to defend itself – today and in the days to come. The European Union stands with Israel.”
Accusations of Western ‘double standards’
Some social media users have criticised these statements, saying they highlight a double standard.
The world is seeing appalling images.
Thousands of rockets raining down on Israeli cities. Hamas terrorists killing not only Israeli soldiers, but civilians on the streets and in their homes.
It’s unconscionable. Israel has a right to defend itself – full stop.
— President Biden (@POTUS) October 7, 2023
Ukraine’s right to defend itself is praised by most international leaders while Russia’s invasion is condemned, but commentators said the same cannot be said about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
Aaron Bastani, a leftist British journalist, said on X that there’s a “clear double standard in endorsing terrorism against civilian targets in Ukraine … and condemning it by Palestinians”.
Many users said Western diplomats and media support the Ukrainians who defend their land, but label the Palestinians fighting against Israel as “terrorists”.
https://twitter.com/KhaledBeydoun/status/1710787817415082349?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710787817415082349%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
An illustration of a woman’s face, in which one eye is closed beside a Palestinian flag, and one eye open beside a Ukrainian flag, has been regularly shared as a symbol of the West’s alleged double standards in how the two conflicts are viewed.
https://twitter.com/OnlinePalEng/status/1710994682883273172?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710994682883273172%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
Clips also emerged on social media from a CNN interview with Mustafa Barghouti, the general secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, in which he posed the rhetorical question, “Why does the United States support Ukraine in fighting occupation – while here they support the occupier, who continues to occupy us?”
The hypocrisy and double standards of western governments and media platforms dealing with situations in Ukraine-Russia and Palestine-Israel blow the mind. Absolute disgrace.
— Said Yacoubi (@AlyacoubiSaid) October 8, 2023
It is not the first time Western nations have been accused of double standards in their stance on the Ukraine war.
Earlier in the year, Amnesty International published a report highlighting the West’s “double standards” on global human rights.
Agnes Callamard, Amnesty’s secretary-general, told Al Jazeera at the time that the occupation of Palestinian territory was a “particularly important one”.
“Without making any comparison between Russia’s aggression and Israel … it is clear the Palestinian people are under a regime of oppression – a regime of occupation and a regime of apartheid,” Callamard told Al Jazeera.
Over the last three days, X users recirculated earlier statements calling out what they called Western hypocrisy, sharing video by the Irish lawmaker Richard Boyd Barrett from March 2022 in which he berated the Irish government’s double standards regarding Ukraine and Palestine:
“You’re happy to use the most strong and robust language to describe the crimes against humanity of [Russian President] Vladimir Putin, but you will not use the same strength of language when it comes to describing Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.”
Barrett on Sunday again called out what he described as “shocking double standards of Western leaders supporting Ukraine resistance but condemning Palestinian[s].”
Meanwhile, others warned against comparing conflicts.
https://twitter.com/denfordauthor/status/1710993737738768607?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1710993737738768607%7Ctwgr%5E6acf829869e993177f32aa38aa48c02f38cb7f61%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aljazeera.com%2Fnews%2F2023%2F10%2F9%2Fwestern-leaders-accused-of-hypocrisy-over-response-to-palestine-ukraine
And some cautioned that Hamas and the Palestinians should not be seen as one and the same.
Just to clarify:
Palestine did not mount an attack on Israel. An Iranian proxy militia did. Palestinians are by and large huddled in their homes praying that an Israeli airstrike won't kill them or theirs. Hamas is the culprit here. This isn't a decentralized grassroots thing.
— Romeo Kokriatski (@VagrantJourno) October 9, 2023
Ukrainian footballer Oleksandr Zinchenko, who plays for Arsenal, posted on Instagram, stating he “stands with Israel”.
Zinchenko has been a vocal supporter of his home country in its ongoing defence against Russia, and he participated in a Game4Ukraine charity match in London earlier this year to raise money for Ukraine.
After online backlash, with some questioning an alleged double standard in his support of Israel, the footballer removed the post and switched his social media account to private.
Several people claimed that Zinchenko’s football club, in not responding to his comments, was guilty of hypocrisy after they had distanced themselves from former player Mesut Ozil’s comments in 2019 over alleged human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in China.
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