A Divided America Feeds the Crisis

than one hundred and twenty seven thousand. The reasons for that are, at least in part, very American ones, politicized science, a fragmented media landscape, and inequality. I talked to Brian about how decades of political division have made the country a coronavirus superpower in the worst way, an outcome that was entirely avoidable. How have we come to a point in the United States where an element of public health

a face mask? How has that become so politicized? I think the reason things have become so politicized are kind of come from two buckets. I mean, the near term one has been the response of the Trump administration to this crisis. The mixed messaging between the president and his top scientific advisors certainly has created a fog around what the real risks are the vulnerabilities that have developed in

the US. It actually go back decades and have made this pandemic perhaps even worse than you know one would expect. What are some of these elements that perhaps have led us to this moment in the United States? Science has become politicized, not always, but in certainly kind of controversial, big public policy moments. There often isn't a standard set effects that everyone agrees to, and that's not a recent phenomenon.

It actually goes back, if you think about it, to the nineteen fifties when the scientific community started to recognize health threats from cigarettes. Science was kind of caught up in a taffy pole between competing interests over a very big, multibillion dollar industry. We're also seeing this kind of politicization of science in the debate over climate change and the risks that go with that. We're all familiar with the anti vax or movement, you know, the concerns about the

safety of vaccines. That's been going on for quite quite some time. So what we're experiencing now is not new in that sense when governments and particularly say the scientific community is recommending something like say the wearing of face masks, and we don't see necessarily the same politicization or even say a negative reaction to these kinds of recommendations globally except in the US. Is this something that speaks to

perhaps Americans unique distrust of science. In Europe, where the disease curve on COVID nineteen is trended down, I think there is a more of a willingness to accept the advice of public health authorities. Not every country does it perfectly. One could argue that the United Kingdom has had some issues, but by and large, I think people the public does buy in to what the experts tell them about public

health guidance. Situation in the US is interesting. You know, one would would immediately assume that, well, maybe there's an issue with education that most Americans don't grasp scientific concepts, but that's actually not true. I mean, if you look at a lot of the international testing data on high school students in the US, they score above average of the O E c D in basic science aptitude. If you look at the science aptitude of registered Democrats and

registered Republicans. There are no big differences there either, and I think most a majority of Americans see the value of science. However, when science intersects with controversial public policy in the U S. Something kind of runs off the rail and it doesn't quite happen to the same degree and in other parts of the industrialized world. And a lot of polling data has kind of looked at this, and it does seem that Democrats and Democratic leaning voters

are willing to accept what Dr Fauci tells them. Uh, And it's about thirty points less lower in the in the Republican Party in the public or Republican orbit. A lot of that has to do with kind of the changing political basis of the major parties. You know, a lot of people forget that. You know, in the nineteen eighties, the Republican Party was the party of the well educated the suburban world. That shifted over the last couple of

decades to a less educated base of reporters. But also the rhetoric employed by Republican politicians can be different at tons and we've seen that certainly with the trumpet illistration.

Just not having a grasp of the basic facts, um kind of a wishful thinking in the public discourse, and as I said, it's created a tremendous amount of confusion, and particularly I was wondering if you might speak to maybe the differences we've seen and perhaps lack of leadership we've seen both on the federal level with the Trump administration, but also of course we have each of the fifties states taking their their own path essentially that you know,

we haven't necessarily seen a unified approach in how state should go about addressing this pandemic, reopening, locking down, those

kinds of elements. Well, that's interesting thought, because when you have a rapidly moving, shape shifting pandemic across a huge country on the size of the US, where you have urban centers with heavy population density, uh and then rural parts of the country where the health care systems aren't quite as developed, you would think a rational way of doing this would be to have a kind of a one size fits all directive where everything is kind of synchronized,

so everyone kind of went into the same degree of lockdown more or less. I'm sure there would be nuances here and there, because there are differences, UM, But by and large, same policy, same lockdown, same re emergence, and of course that's not what happened here. And if you contrast that with different political systems, maybe at the far extreme China, which an autocratic system, when their crisis broke out,

they basically quarantined fifteen million people. They had no no say in the matter, they had no choice in the matter, and it was a draconian, you know, top down we're not messing around approach. Now, in open societies and democratic society, you can't do that, of course, But if you look at Germany, which has done pretty well, there was kind of a concerted approach that was communicated very clearly. There was no contradicting between what Merkel said and her top

science advisors uh and the population UH. Maybe a little bit more culturally cohesive than heterogeneous society like the US, but that point aside, you know, they got it and there was a concerted move and they had a good outcome. The US has been very chaotic, and so I was wondering maybe if we could also unpack perhaps the extent to which this pandemic has exposed existing cracks in the US system um in terms of income, inequality, racial inequality.

I mean, how is the US, say, uniquely positioned to be so adversely affected by this pandemic in contrast to say, some of these other countries. There is a very interesting link between inequality, which has been a corrosive problem for several decades in the US, and the experience of the pandemic. If you have a good job, you're part of the knowledge economy, you work in an urban center, you are able to work from home, your company is still doing

pretty well. The pandemic has certainly been disruptive to your life, but it hasn't been an outright crisis. Unfortunately. The burden of this pandemic is really falling on lower income, minority segments of the society. I mean, that's clear in the data. Uh, it's clear in the black mortality rate, which is more than twice that of the white population of the United States.

So people are experiencing the pandemic and in different ways, and that's creating a lot more cultural resentment and misunderstanding about how serious this is. If you're you know, highly educated, as I said, white collar worker, and you've got a secure job, the money is still coming through the door, this may not seem quite as life altering as if you were working in the hospitality industry and kind of living paycheck to paychecks, certainly, and so is there a

way forward for the US? I suppose is the big question. We are looking at record case counts. Now, is there a path forward for the US to navigate this crisis? Well, there seemed to be too broad possibilities. I mean, one is a decision has been made that we have to kind of let this thing run its course. Is as awful as it can be, it will be. But the alternative of shutting down the economy in any kind of serious this way creates another set of problems, and we

need to just kind of soldier through this. That is the kind of the choice that some people in Washington, particularly on the Republican side, are kind of positioning out there that it's an either or either we muscle our way through this or we do so much economic damage

that is just going to be as awful. I think the public health experts offer a different kind of possibility and describe that as kind of a false choice that until we get really deadly serious about you know, social distancing, mass handwashing, altering our lifestyle in such a way to get this the spread, the community spread down to a reasonable level, the economy is never going to come back because you're going to be in this fits and starts

kind of scenario. So one thing we might to look for, I think, is whether you start to see mandatory rules at the local level that you know you need to wear a mask. If you don't wear a mask, you will be fine. If you are a business and you have not rethought your business process is to make it as safe as possible, your license is going to get pulled.

I mean, more of a hardcore government lead policing of of of the preventative behaviors that we need to see to get through this crisis, because what we've had so far has been kind of a giant honor system where we've been kind of assuming that Americans will kind of figure this out, they'll read up on it, they'll do whatever they have to do at the household level to

keep everyone as safe as possible. And you know, I think a lot of Americans have done that, but unfortunately, it doesn't take a a lot of people to trigger the super spreader incidents that set this virus on fire. And unfortunately, that's kind of where we're at right now. That was Brian Bremner. His essay, the virus and America's Divisions can be read on Bloomberg dot com. And that's

it for our show. For coverage of the outbreak from one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com Flash Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's the best way to help more listeners find our global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's main story was reported by Brian Bremner. Original music by

Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. Francesco Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. H