NY Times Op-Ed: How Did the ‘Best-Prepared Country’ Become a Horror Story?

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NY Times published an excellent opinion piece by columnist Nicholas Kristof this past weekend. By yesterday night, it generated over 1,000 comments from readers. As of Sept 12, the total Covid-19 cases in the country exceed 6.5 million and the death count stood at 193,948. While the next grim milestone will be 200,000 deaths, some models are projecting another 200,000 deaths by the end of the year. Relative to other developed countries, the US has handling of the virus has been a disaster indeed. It is also shocking that the country is ahead of emerging countries like Brazil and India. Probably even the general population in those countries are wondering how the richest country in the world is performing worse than their own countries.

Below is the snapshot of the top 10 countries by cases:

Click to enlarge

Source:  Covid World Map: Tracking the Global Outbreak, NY Times

The following is an excerpt from Mr.Kristof’s piece titled “How Did the ‘Best-Prepared Country’ Become a Horror Story?“:

It wasn’t as if the United States was unready. A 324-page study in October 2019 found that America was the best-prepared country in the world for a pandemic — but it didn’t imagine that the United States would fumble testing, data collection, contact tracing, communications and just about every other facet of managing a novel virus.

“The administration made every single mistake you could possibly make,” Larry Brilliant, an epidemiologist who early in his career helped eradicate smallpox, told me.

“We could have beaten it back,” Brilliant said. “We could have prevented the horror story we have now.”

Jeffrey Shaman, a public health expert at Columbia University, calculated that if each county in the United States had acted just two weeks earlier to order lockdowns or other control measures, then more than 90 percent of Covid-19 deaths could have been avoided through early May.

Shaman told me that his team didn’t model even earlier interventions, in January or February, but that he believes it would have been plausible for the United States to enjoy the Covid-19 mortality rate of South Korea. That would mean almost a 99 percent reduction in mortality.

Linsey Marr, an expert on disease transmission at Virginia Tech, isn’t sure that we could have achieved South Korean or (somewhat higher) Japanese levels of mortality, because both of those countries have more of a tradition of mask-wearing. But she does believe that we could have perhaps achieved German levels (meaning an 80 percent reduction in deaths).

“We would have saved a lot of lives,” she said. “Kids would be going back to school.”

Source: How Did the ‘Best-Prepared Country’ Become a Horror Story?, NY Times

The following chart shows the top ranked countries to deal with a pandemic from the study the author references:

Source: These are the countries best prepared for health emergencies, WEF

Of course, the above study was done last year before the world was hit with Covid-19. How wrong the study’s conclusions. Academic or theoretical reports such as these are made with a lot of assumptions. For example, they do not account for incompetence, overconfidence , chaos, etc. that have been glaringly revealed by the current coronavirus statistics in the country.

Years from now hundreds of books will be written about the pandemic and how the US bungled it so badly. It will even mention President at the time acted as a cheerleader for the country as thousands died on a daily basis. As one reader commented in the NY Times this is similar to the acting performed by infamous Baghdad Bob during the US invasion of Iraq.

China’s Economic Achievements Over 70 years: Infographic

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China is the world’s populous country with a population of about 1.4 billion in 2018. China became a communist country in 1949. Since the 1980s China adopted “market socialism” form of government which involves one-party control of the government (communism) and capitalism for the market. This unique form of government has unshackled the potential of the economy leading to China becoming the second largest economy in the world  secondly only to the US. Similar to the explosive growth of Asian Tigers China’s economic growth can be called a miracle. In 2018, China’s GDP per capita stood at $18,200 based on Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) according to CIA Factbook.

The below infographic some of the other important stats on China’s economic achievements:

Click to enlarge

Source: China Daily

Putting Average Cost of a New Vehicle Sold in the U.S. in Perspective

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Prices of automobiles continue to soar year after year in the U.S. as automakers add more gadgets and features. Things like a rear-view camera, nice-sized “infotainment system” for all the internet-enabled apps, etc. are common in most cars today. However all these features are priced into the cost of the vehicle. A vehicle that cost $20,000 twenty years ago may easily go for $30,000 or more now.

According to a recent article in the journal, the average new vehicle sold in August cost a record $35,420 based on research by J.D. Power.

Source: Car Sales Are Down Almost 20%, but Prices Are Setting Records, WSJ, Sept 5-6, 2020

To put that $35,000+ in perspective:

  • The current U.S. Federal Minimum Wage = $7.25 per hour

– This rate has been the remained the same since July, 2009.

  • The current Federal Poverty Guideline = $26,200 for a family of four.

Sources: HHS, NCSL

So someone working for minimum wage would need to work 4,885 hours (or) 30.5 months (or over 2.5 years) to buy a new vehicle that costs over $35,000 with cash. Of course, this does not take into account living expenses like food, rent, utilities, etc.