Life in Albert Camus’s America

The quick answer, of course, is most everything.

But, really, why is America still in a ditch with this virus, stumbling like a wino out of an alley in search of more grog?

Here’s a short list to start:

A reckless, desperate President with a sadistic ego, to be kind who fumbled, used, and ignored a raging global pandemic for reasons only he knows.

A society for generations now to think for itself mostly and have little concern for their fellow countrymen or others on the planet. (Not everyone but enough)

An anti-government culture that is embedded in society, communities, and the government itself since the Reagan era (really since the Powell Memo, but I won’t go there)
Anti-intellectualism.

Economic inequality and low wages. The anxiety of the worker.

I won’t go on. There’s more but you get it. The United States did it wrong totally from Day 1. President Joe Biden has gotten a lot right but he was handed a disaster. He is going to be digging out of the ditch for his entire term.

This is, thus, officially now, Albert Camus’s America. An America like the city of Oran in Camus’s novel, The Plague (La Peste)

That classic is about a deadly disease that devastates a North African city. Camus might chuckle about America if he were alive because everything that has happened here in America, happened in Oran in the story.

The denial of the facts of the pandemic. The frustration and selfish resistance to lockdowns and taking nominal steps to stop the disease from spreading. The initial hope of a cure being found and the plague would be contained. And finally, the reality. We got it wrong. We didn’t listen. We didn’t collectively decide to conquer it.

We are now in our third year with Covid-19 and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Right now there isn’t even a tunnel.

When it first began, a friend asked me, can this go on forever? This lockdown, mask-wearing, get a shot culture? Yes. Easily, I said. Why not?

Cases are surging everywhere. A new variant has arrived in the world and in America like a contagion in one of those last man on earth flicks. We are lucky the symptoms are not as bad and the mortality rates are much lower. But, America has another problem: America is America.

America is where everything is for sale. America is the country where corporations pay (and consider the costs) to kill people by doing their profit chasing. In other words, America is what it is. After a while, you have to conclude that this is what the country wants. Not every person but enough people to achieve this result.

Once the per day case count lowered and the death count lowered during the Delta variant, society got lax. Politicians got lax. The culture went back to the reckless culture that got the country in the pandemic mess it is in.

When the previous administration knew that the virus was hottest in densely populated, urban areas where liberals and people of color reside in large numbers, they forced the economy back open. It was a stupid decision but also sick in the mind. Of course, it would eventually spread to the rural areas and suburbs and it has done so, and will again, and again.

I got my first masks from China in March 2020. I have never stopped wearing them except outside, spread out, and in the summer. I have also never stopped distancing.

I was at the airport recently and the distancing protocols are basically being ignored now. It was madness.

I noticed this during the holiday shopping season. People just are ignoring the protocols. People walk around with a mask on, but many of them have their noses open.

I traveled to Pennsylvania and many times when I stopped for gas, no one had on a mask. The workers in the stores were behind plexiglass and had on no masks.

I got strange looks from some people for wearing a mask. One Black man passed me in the rest stop bathroom and nodded. He and I were the only people who were wearing masks. The nod was like that silent code people engage in which says — what the hell is wrong with these people?

There is a way to handle a plague (that is what this is) and there is a way how to not deal with a plague. America is doing the latter (or did the latter). President Biden has done many great things in dealing with as have some state executives.

But the damage was done in the early days. Here is some of the lunacy that occurred under the previous President (I cannot bring myself to type out his name) —

As far back as January 27, 2020, our prior President who was in office when the virus arrived didn’t take the threat of a coronavirus pandemic seriously and claimed it would soon disappear. In addition, he worked daily to prevent scientific personnel in the government to take an unimpeded role in shaping the government response to a public health crisis.
Specifically, “all federal scientists’ public communications on COVID-19” were “required to undergo a White House clearance check” with that administration.
Additionally, “Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” was forced to “cancel five Sunday talk show appearances,” early in the pandemic due to interference by the White House.
And finally, the White House barred “experts from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)” from attending classified Covid-19 meetings.

It was a series of disturbing, reckless decisions that had tragic, destructive consequences. But then that administration doubled down on its death march through the crisis when it removed recommendations put forth by the CDC with respect to a policy of “elderly and physically fragile Americans” to not fly on commercial airlines.

It also removed a vaccine expert in the administration due to the fact that the expert (Dr. Rick Bright) expressed skepticism regarding two proposed drugs to treat the virus. And when the CDC published a report in order to guide local authorities on how and when to open their economies, the administration blocked the release of the report.

These decisions, as it is well known now, were made by the administration despite direct knowledge that the coronavirus is (and was at the time) quite dangerous and lethal and easily spread without proper precautions taken.

In now well-known interviews with journalist, Bob Woodward, it was revealed exactly what that President knew and did not act upon.

The virus, during this interview, was described as “deadly stuff” and “so easily transmissible, you wouldn’t even believe it.” In addition, that President told Woodward that the virus “moves rapidly and viciously. If you are the wrong person and if it gets you, your life is pretty much over if you’re in the wrong group.”

Yet, most destructively, the President admits that he “always wanted to play it down” and that he still liked “playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

The result of the decisions of the administration, to date, has been catastrophic.

In addition, the administration was a central part of what has been deemed an “infodemic” of misinformation related to the coronavirus and the treatments for Covid-19. By examining over 38 million news articles since the pandemic began the following was determined:

The previous President and his administration made up 37% of the overall “misinformation conversation,” released initially in the pandemic. The study also concluded that our prior President was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation “infodemic.”

At the end of 2020, the United States, for a variety of reasons, reported over 20 million coronavirus infections, and over 348,000 dead from Covid-19 (there are now over 800,000 dead).

Dr. Anthony Fauci in an interview on January 2, 2021, stated that he never believed the country would have this many deaths. He added, “there is simply no running away from the numbers.”

In the same broadcast, that President tweeted that the number reported by the CDC, where Fauci works, is exaggerated and that the reports are “Fake News.” (Imagine, trashing the government you are administering).

This was the leadership, without question, that got the country in the pandemic ditch unable to dig out. It is also why I can’t use the person’s name and President in the same sentence.

The by-product of that leadership is the chaos we see each day. People still claim that masks don’t and the vaccines do not work either. Millions still make this claim despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

Millions continue to refuse to get vaccinated even though the people who are dying from Covid-19 (any variant) are unvaccinated. Once again, unvaccinated people, dying of Covid-19, are jamming the health care systems in America.

Schools open for children, then they close again because of this recklessness. The economy booms a bit and then flounders again as workers get sick.

Many faith institutions remain closed for in-person worship because such gatherings are super spreader events. Social and community events are erratic. Music concerts, the same.

Who is getting it right to let people know there is a right way?

South Korea is getting it right. This is unrefutable proof of competent, civic leadership with some sacrifice from the population. South Korea has had 680,000 cases by the most recent count and 5600 people have died. South Korea is a country of 51 million. It has a vaccination rate of 91 percent.

Yes, it is smaller than the U.S. but if you apply the multiplier, to South Korea, they would still have just 35,000 deaths. The U.S. has 834,000 deaths. It is astonishing how incompetent, careless, and downright, nonchalant that number is in the context of this pandemic. It is downright criminal.

So, let us go back to the original question — what did America get wrong about the pandemic?

The answer is, maybe America didn’t get it wrong. Maybe this is what America is now. Albert Camus’ America.

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM and is republished with permission.

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