By Rosa Gomez
If you ask anyone they will tell you that we are living through and witnessing history. Ten years from now, I am willing to bet that this will be written, annotated, and analyzed in various textbooks worldwide. But not many people will tell you whether the pandemic was handled in a good or a bad way in the United States. Because very frankly, the United States could have carried it out better. How and where specifically did the U.S. fail to keep the Coronavirus as controlled as possible?
While other countries were not more successful at containing the virus, the United States in particular had some faults and missteps. As much as I love this country there are some truths that need to be told in order to work on this nation and keep it flourishing. This is only one of those truths.
First off, not all states issued a stay at home order. What a “stay at home order” means is basically an instruction from the government calling for the state’s citizens to remain at home unless it is for necessities and essentials. Iowa, Arkansas, Nebraska, South Dakota, and North Dakota are among those with no order given, despite the uproar amongst citizens calling for it. According to arkansasonline.com, “Governor Asa Hutchinson, of Arkansas, said that the state will “help cities enforce restrictions on social interaction designed to slow the spread of the coronavirus, but he won’t allow them to impose stay-at-home orders.”
Iowa’s government had decided to reopen movie theaters, museums, and zoos, as well as wedding receptions, auctions, and pools, with precautions. Ironically the state of Iowa had also built three new COVID-19 testing sites along with those. “Reopening Iowa: Everything Opening, and Still Closed, in the State Today” KCCI News, reported, “the Iowa Medical Board begging Governor Kim Reynolds for a statewide stay at home order”. This statement carries a lot of weight because you know that a measure is necessary when doctors and nurses themselves are the ones telling you something’s wrong.
President Trump failed to call for a nation-wide lockdown. Even though President Trump did take some precautions such as restricting travel to and from China, those measures were just not enough, presumably because the virus had already been spreading inside the United States.
While it is a difficult thing to do, considering how enormous the United States is in terms of landmass, not issuing a nation-wide lockdown left states to decide on their own if it was a measure they wanted to take. Not to mention when as some states were on a state-wide lockdown others took longer to follow suit, which caused the virus to spread as well. This factor along with the lack of testing, was an immediate recipe for disaster.
The Centers for Disease Control within the United States had taken 12 days from when the first case of COVID-19 was announced to approve and ship their own testing kits, while South Korea had shipped their own in just four days from when the first case of COVID-19 was announced in their country (they had announced their own case the same day as the U.S. did), according to the BBC News.
Testing in the U.S. was also very slow and rare within the first few weeks. So much so, that the CDC had to set specific guidelines as to who exactly got to be tested. They included patients who showed extreme symptoms. Which completely excluded those who were asymptomatic and those with minor symptoms, ultimately exposing even more people with Coronavirus.
The CDC website had the following to say regarding COVID-19 testing on March 31, 2020, “If you have symptoms of COVID-19 and want to get tested, try calling your state or local health department or a medical provider. While supplies of these tests are increasing, it may still be difficult to find a place to get tested.”
Which indeed shows that there were initial struggles with finding and getting tests, adding to the mishandling of the situation.
And that leaves me to my third and final point. Citizens are just as guilty as our governors and our president. Many people themselves have been protesting the lockdown as if it was something we can control. They forget to realize that we are all going through the same things and that as much as we all want stores, restaurants, and businesses to reopen, it is still very early to do so. In Missouri there was a huge pool that opened its doors up to people. This specific case along with many others due to the Memorial Day Weekend caused Missouri’s cases to soar up to 11,988 cases, up 236 new cases.
As experts have said, the most crucial point in time during this whole pandemic is within the first few days of a breakout. In the U.S.’s case, COVID-19 was prevented too little, too late. We are just now seeing what the aforementioned factors meant for us. Fast forward to this present-day week and we see what a catastrophe it has turned out to be. The coronavirus continues to rampantly spread. With more and more states reopening, many wonder if a second wave is likely. And truthfully, only time will tell.
