A year after a new coronavirus was identified as the cause of a mysterious pneumonia in China, SARS-CoV-2 has redefined life around the world, but it is nowhere more sharply felt than in the United States.
In the United States, about one in four of the 97 million infected worldwide – more than 24 million. And it was responsible for one in five of the world’s 2 million people who died from COVID-19, more than 400,000 deaths.
The country has seen more than twice as many coronavirus infections as India, of which 10.6 million cases are the world’s second most in a country with four times as many people. And U.S. deaths are nearly twice the 212,000 in Brazil, with the second highest toll in the world and about two-thirds of the U.S. population.
How in the world did that happen here?
“Something went desperately wrong here in the United States,” said Dr. John Swartzberg, clinical professor emeritus of infectious diseases and vaccination at The UC Berkeley-UCSF Joint Medical Program, said.
Public health agencies have been underfunded for decades. The U.S. federal government plays a less direct role in public health than in many other states, and requires that there be significant leadership at the federal level to draw up a response. And it does not come from the Trump White House, Swartzberg said, while the president has often reinforced skepticism about science.
The US experience with SARS and MERS, the closest cousins of the new virus, may also have deceived officials into thinking that it would not break out 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 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Treatment. prevention. Most cases were in Asia, with only eight U.S. residents infected, and none of them dead. No known SARS cases have been reported in the world since 2004, the CDC said.
The deadliest respiratory syndrome in the Middle East, first reported in Saudi Arabia in 2012, has since infected and killed 791 people, according to the World Health Organization. It was spread mainly by infected camels, and the CDC reported only two U.S. cases, both surviving.
So after the new coronavirus was identified with outbreaks in China a year ago, there was resistance in the United States to consider it a significant threat. Even after the first Bay Area business, events such as San Francisco’s Chinese New Year celebrations and professional hockey and basketball games continued.
“No one wanted this pandemic to interfere with their lives,” Swartzberg said. “It’s a great lesson for all of us – we need to respond with greater awfulness.”
By mid-March last year, the Bay and California would emerge as national leaders in the fight against the virus, implementing the first coordinated local and then nationwide home orders. This action took place a few weeks after the first documented case of the virus being transmitted by the community.
But things were getting worse than health officials feared. A 57-year-old San Jose woman who died in her home on Feb. 6 after a short illness, was determined to be the first U.S. victim of the virus two and a half months later.
California’s early action received praise after the state avoided massive deadly spring outbreaks such as in New York, where hospitals are overwhelmed. However, the Golden State has been criticized for easing restrictions on business and activities too soon last year, leading to a summer boom. And like most of the country, it has been hit hard this winter by a spate of falls.
Santa Clara County Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody, who led the Bay in instituting the original home order, said the rapid action of the region and the state avoided early on a pressure on infections when little was known about the treatment of COVID-19. Although California now has some of the worst outbreaks in the country, improved treatment has helped more of the infected survive.
“With a tremendous boom in the fall compared to the spring when it was really new, we have experience caring for COVID patients now, and overall better results,” Cody said.
A year after California reported the first U.S. infections, the state’s more than 3 million cases account for one in eight in the country. But even after some of the country’s worst outbreaks in recent months – nearly two-thirds of all COVID-19 cases in California and nearly half of the state’s deaths since December 1 – the Golden State has improved danger than some others.
According to data compiled by the New York Times, the per capita infection rate is on average in the country with the largest population, behind 23 other states. The highest rates are in sparsely populated North and South Dakota.
And California’s 35,000 deaths COVID-19, about one in 12 deaths in the U.S., are less than the more than 41,000 people who died in New York, the most of any U.S. state. New York, with half as many people as California, came in second place among the population, behind neighboring New Jersey, while California was 39th, according to data from the New York Times.
The virus was just as economical as a health disaster, and experts believe California paid a price in lost work for its aggressive efforts to control virus outbreaks by limiting business operations.
Nationally, even after a record $ 2.2 billion on economic stimulus in March last year and an additional $ 900 billion relief last month, the U.S. has shaken off nearly 10 million jobs since the pandemic, and only 56% of those which was lost last spring is recovering.
The national unemployment rate, which was a 50-year low of just 3.5% before the pandemic, was almost twice as low as 6.7% in December after rising to 15% last year. By comparison, the Eurozone was 8.3% in November, the most recent figure available.
But the 9% unemployment rate in California 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 legal counsel at law firm Duane Morris and a former director of the state employment department, said this was due to the fact that the Golden State is closing down its business operations more than others.
“California’s economic barriers were worse than those imposed by other states,” Bernick said. “States like Texas and Florida that have not had such serious closures have fared better.”
Southern California’s virus outbreaks were much worse than Northern California. Major provinces in Southern California, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Imperial and Riverside, have more than 10,000 cases per 100,000 residents. According to the data compiled by this news organization, the case is less than half less than in large provinces in the Bay Area such as Santa Clara, Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco and San Mateo. The pattern is similar for COVID-19 deaths.
Infectious disease experts have offered a variety of explanations – more poverty and population density and the relaxation of health care in Southern California. Santa Clara County Health Officer Cody could not explain what was behind the winter infection wave and why it was worse in Southern California.
However, Swartzberg said the Bay’s experience of HIV tested and improved its public health systems in the 1980s.
“The Bay Area management of the HIV infection was an example to the rest of the world,” Swartzberg said. “It left us with a culture that is still with us.”