Top doc slams ‘maddeningly selfish people’ for not following COVID guidelines and fueling US catastrophe
AS the US sees a staggering 4.7 million coronavirus cases and 155,000 deaths, health experts are pointing to a lack of social distancing and unnecessary gatherings as the root cause.
The United States has seen the largest number of cases of any country. Policies designed to counteract the virus have been ignored by people who consider them violations of their freedom, or not necessary in the first place.
Dr. Jonathan Quick of the Duke Global Health Institute has expressed immense frustration at the disproportionately large number of cases.
“The thing that’s maddening is country after country and state after state have shown us how we can contain the virus,” Quick explained.
Multiple parties in Massachusetts are being traced to at least six new cases, and one Cape Cod house party triggered over a dozen new cases.
Dr. Cindy Prins, an epidemiologist at the University of Florida, believes that the increasing number of cases means that the average American is now at a greater risk of catching the virus. She describes the virus as a “behavioral disease”.
She explains that fighting the pandemic requires “changing our behavior and it’s so hard for humans to do. We’re social creatures”
Also identified as a major accelerant in COVID-19’s spread is contradictory and unclear government policy. In May, President Trump optimistically stated that the nation has despite deaths surpassing 80,000 in that month.
, in the last two weeks, the average number of daily COVID-19 deaths in the US has jumped from 780 to 1,056. One particularly disturbing trend that has emerged is an uptick in cases in rural areas, where open space and sparse population should be mitigating the spread of the disease.
In fact, almost one-fourth of Wisconsin’s 55,000 cases were confirmed in the past two weeks, and although many of those cases occurred in densely populated cities, rural areas have been hit hard as well.
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Zona Wick, who is the Iron County health department’s spokeswoman and contact tracer, attributes this to “quarantine fatigue”, wherein people from around the area, tired of social distancing, went to July Fourth barbecues, parties, and bars.
Quick views the high number of cases and deaths as unnecessary, believing that the US has the tools it needs to deal with the pandemic properly.
“It’s not like we don’t know what works. We do.” He explained.