A year after a new coronavirus was identified as the cause of a mysterious pneumonia outbreak in China, SARS-CoV-2 has redefined life around the world, but nowhere has this been felt more than in the United States .
The United States is home to about one in four of the 97 million infected globally – more than 24 million. And it was responsible for one in five of the 2 million deaths of COVID-19 in the world, surprisingly more than 400,000 deaths.
The country has seen more than twice as many coronavirus infections as India, whose 10.6 million cases are the second most numerous in the world in a country with four times as many people. And deaths in the USA are almost double the 212,000 in Brazil, with the second highest number of deaths in the world and about two-thirds of the US population.
How in the world did this happen here?
“Something went very wrong here in the United States,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccinology at the UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program.
Public health agencies have not had enough resources here for decades. The United States federal government has a less direct role in public health than in many other countries, requiring significant leadership at the federal level to intensify and coordinate a response. And that didn’t come from Trump’s White House, said Swartzberg, with the president often increasing skepticism about science.
The United States’ experience with SARS and MERS, the closest cousins of the new virus, may also have led authorities to think that it would not explode in a global health crisis. Although more deadly than the new virus, the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome virus, which first appeared in Asia in 2003, infected only 8,098 people worldwide, of whom 774 died, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. United States diseases. Most cases occurred in Asia, with only eight US residents infected, none of whom died. Since 2004, there have been no known cases of SARS reported anywhere in the world, said the CDC.
The most deadly respiratory syndrome in the Middle East, first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has infected just over 2,200 people since then and killed 791, according to the World Health Organization. It has spread mainly to infected camels, and the CDC reported only two cases in the United States, both survivors.
Therefore, after the new coronavirus was identified with outbreaks in China a year ago, there was resistance in the United States to treat it as a significant threat. Even after the first cases in the Bay Area, events like the San Francisco Chinese New Year celebration and professional hockey and basketball games continued.
“Nobody wanted this pandemic to interfere with their lives,” said Swartzberg. “This is a big lesson for all of us – we need to respond more vividly.”
In mid-March last year, the Bay Area and California would emerge as national leaders in the fight against the virus, implementing the first orders to stay at home coordinated regional and then state. These actions took place a few weeks after the first documented case of community transmission of the virus.
But things were already worse than health officials feared. A 57-year-old San Jose woman who died at her home on February 6 after a short illness was determined two and a half months later as the first victim of the virus in the United States.
California’s initial action gained praise after the state prevented massive spring outbreaks, like those in New York, where hospitals were overbooked. But the Golden State was criticized for easing restrictions on business and activities too early last spring, leading to a sudden increase in cases in the summer. And like most of the country, it was hit hard by a wave of cases this winter.
Santa Clara County Health Officer, Dr. Sara Cody, who led the bay area in enacting the original home order, said the swift action by the region and the state prevented a crush of infections in the beginning, when little was known about the treatment of COVID-19. Although California has some of the worst outbreaks in the country now, improvements in treatment have helped more infected people survive.
“Having a big increase in autumn compared to spring, when it was really new, we have experience taking care of COVID patients now and, in general, better results,” said Cody.
A year after California reported some of the first infections in the United States, the more than 3 million cases in the state are equivalent to one in eight in the country. But even after some of the country’s worst outbreaks in recent months – almost two-thirds of all California COVID-19 cases and nearly half of the deaths in the state have been reported since December 1 – the Golden State has fared better than some others.
The infection rate per capita in the country’s most populous state is average, behind 23 other states, according to data compiled by the New York Times. The highest rates occur in the sparsely populated regions of South and North Dakota.
And the 35,000 deaths of COVID-19 in California, about one in 12 deaths in the U.S., are less than the more than 41,000 who died in New York, most of any US state. New York, with half the population of California, ranked second in population deaths across states, behind neighboring New Jersey, while California ranked 39th, according to data from the New York Times.
The virus was both an economic and health disaster, and experts say California has paid a price with job losses for its aggressive efforts to control virus outbreaks by restricting commercial activities.
Nationally, even after a record $ 2.2 trillion in economic stimulus last March and an additional $ 900 billion in relief last month, the US has cut nearly 10 million jobs since the pandemic, having recovered only 56% of jobs. lost in the locks last spring.
The national unemployment rate, which was at a 50-year low of just 3.5% before the pandemic, was almost double 6.7% in December, after reaching 15% last spring. In comparison, the euro area stood at 8.3% in November, the most recent figure available.
But the 9% unemployment rate in California in December is higher than the national average and in other major states, including 8.2% in New York, 7.2% in Texas and 6.1% in Florida. Michael Bernick, a labor lawyer at the Duane Morris law firm and a former director of the state’s Department of Employment Development, said that this is because the Golden State blocks commercial activities more than others.
“California’s economic blockages were more severe than those imposed by other states,” said Bernick. “States like Texas and Florida, which did not experience such severe blockages, did better.”
Southern California virus outbreaks were much worse than those in northern California. Major southern California counties, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Imperial and Riverside, have more than 10,000 cases per 100,000 residents. The case rate is less than half that in large Bay Area counties, such as Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Mateo, according to data compiled by this news organization. The pattern is similar for deaths from COVID-19.
Infectious disease specialists offered a variety of explanations – more poverty and population density and more negligent compliance with health orders in Southern California. Santa Clara County Health Officer Cody cannot explain what is behind the winter infection wave and why it has been worse in Southern California.
Swartzberg, however, said that the Bay Area’s HIV experience in the 1980s tested and improved its public health systems.
“The management of HIV infection in the Bay Area was a model for the rest of the world,” said Swartzberg. “It left us with a culture that is still with us.”