COVID-19: America’s Rude Awakening

This Thursday, Dec. 3, American hospitals broke a sad record. One hundred thousand people were being treated for COVID-19, of which 29,000 patients were in intensive care. That same day, more than 210,000 new cases were recorded in the United States — a frightening level of contamination. Donald Trump will not talk about these records. The future ex-president of the United States has never mentioned these numbers except to minimize them. He is not about to change his strategy in his last weeks in power.

Since the beginning of the year, the country has lost 280,000 of its citizens to the pandemic. To put things in perspective, the percentage of the population who have died (0.08%) is actually that same as that of France or Brazil. It is less than that of Spain, Italy or the United Kingdom (0.09%), according to Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University, which has become, thanks to its mastery of algorithms, the global source for real time monitoring of the virus’ spread.

But, unlike the European countries that reacted quickly to the emergence of the second wave this fall, the Trump administration preferred to comment on the “imminent” arrival of vaccines. This time, unlike in spring, the virus is hitting all corners of America, something that generates fear of a surge in the number of serious cases. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, predicts: “December and January and February are going to happen several times. I truly believe that they are going to be the hardest time in the public health history of this nation.” And in preparation for this tricky moment, the United States is paralyzed by the interminable presidential transition. Joe Biden may well repeat that he will impose a mask ordinance at the federal level, but his measure will not take effect until after Jan. 20.