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« Americans Continue to Associate. For What Cause?
How Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part I »

The Covid Experience Reveals How Weird America Is

September 6, 2022 by Claude Fischer

When the Covid pandemic erupted in America in early 2020 one might have predicted that the United States would weather it relatively well, better than most other western nations. We are a rich, well-educated people with a sophisticated medical system, advanced pharmaceutical research, and hospitals full of high-tech equipment, all regulated by watchful government agencies.

Yet, we did the worst.

The figure below displays one measure of Covid’s destruction: Cumulative excess deaths per million people, a measure that helps correct for missing diagnoses. (Simply counting deaths officially attributed to Covid reveals the same pattern.) Early on, the U.S. had about an average rate of excess deaths among several comparable western nations. (Adding more western nations yields the same pattern.) By February, 2021, the U.S. rates had risen to tie Italy at the top. By Thanksgiving, 2021, the U.S. stood on top alone, exceptional in excess deaths.

One reason is vaccination rates. We would have expected the U.S. to lead the world in Covid vaccination. In addition to the reasons listed above, the U.S. led vaccination development at “Warp Speed” and we bought up a lot of the early doses. For the first six months or so, as shown in the next figure, America did lead in vaccinations. A few months later, Americans fell behind, became, and then stayed exceptionally, tragically unvaccinated.

What is going on?

The Covid story displays the many ways that the U.S. is an exceptionally weird nation. (My earlier, 2020, take on this appears here.)

Exceptionalisms

I’ll get back to the “weird” label in a bit; before that, a note about the “exceptional” label As I have written before, social scientists who describe the U.S. as exceptional are not claiming it to be superior, gifted, or blessed (as some political rhetoric would suggest). We simply mean that it is very different in important ways from other nations–from even other rich, western democracies. It is, for better or for worse, very often an outlier. How so? Here are several ways.

Political Exceptionalism. The U.S. is unusual, perhaps unique, in (1) the fragmentation of its national power. We have three branches of government to check each other. One branch itself has two often-quarreling houses. Our judiciary, especially the Supreme Court, has exceptional power over policy. Therefore, many veto points block national action. This is what the Founding Fathers wanted, a government that would be neither the tool of a would-be monarch nor of populist street rabble, a government designed to not act. (2) Also unusual, American authority is highly decentralized: 50 states; over 3,000 counties or their equivalents; 18,000 police districts; 13,000 school districts; 3,500 local health departments–all this also by design and also further blocking, diffusing, and confusing action. And (3) unlike the great majority of comparable nations, we have a two-party system, which means that many decisions have zero-sum implications. A win for one party is a loss for the other. The fierce party polarization of the last generation (about which I will soon post) has exacerbated this dynamic. These three elements contribute to American policy delay and paralysis–all on display in the Covid experience.

Structural Exceptionalism. (1) The first example here is our mishmash of a health system: socialized medicine for the over-65, a confusing maze for the rest. We have both the most expensive health system per capita and the least successful one in the western world. Diseases and accidents cost Americans far more in lost years of life than they have cost residents of comparable countries and the disadvantage has been growing since the 1970s. (2) American economic inequality has come to exceed that of other western nations over recent decades. This topic has been well-covered. (3) Unusual racial divisions rooted in the history of slavery still persist in the U.S. and still shape people’s fates and the nation’s policies.[1] All three examples played out in the Covid story, too.

Cultural Exceptionalism. I refer to perspectives and preferences that Americans share– Americans of both the right and left. (1) One is a preference for the local, the assumption that the local is more virtuous, that power should be local, the ideology of “community control.” The Covid story was in tune, entailing resistance to national authorities and national media. (2) Also notably American is suspicion and dismissal of elites and experts, founded in the egalitarian assumption that Everyman is as wise and worthy as the high-and-mighty and the highly credentialed. This world-view has been seen as particularly American for centuries. In the Covid experience, we heard the call to “Do your own research.” (3) The most general exceptionalism is the centrality in American culture of personal choice. This is where we are the weirdest of the weird.

WEIRDest

Starting with a 2010 paper, and extended in books by Joseph Henrich, psychologists have argued that residents of Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Developed (WEIRD) nations differ greatly in several ways–perception, values, reasoning, and more–from the greater part of humanity today and humanity in earlier eras. (And, therefore, Henrich and others argued, basing academic psychology on lab studies of western college students is a big mistake.) The core of the weirdness is the western presumption that the world is and ought to be the product of individual free will unencumbered by society. American culture contains the most extreme version of this view and is thus exceptional.

I have claimed (in Made in America and in blog posts–e.g., here and here) that what characterizes American culture most is voluntarism, the principle that people freely choose and ought to the choose their communities. A prime example is the conviction–foolish by world historical standards–that young people should freely choose their life partners based on “love.” Another example is the abortion debate, where the “choice” side appeals to individual autonomy and the “life” side appeals increasingly to the unborn child’s individual rights. (In Europe, the abortion debate is not couched in choice terms.) Then there is the example of the ACLU defending the rights of the psychotic to live on the streets if they so choose. It’s all about free choice.

And so revealed by Covid: The anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers have gladly adopted the slogan, “My body, my choice.” We argue about whose individual freedom is most impinged on, those who feel forced to wear a mask and vaccinate or those who feel forced to take risks in public settings. (To which the first group answers, It’s your choice to take the risk or not.)

Covid has brought much to America–fear, disruption, street fights, political gamesmanship, and much, much death. The experience has also put on display the ways that the United States, the most suffering nation in the West, is so exceptional.

 

Update, January 30, 2023:  A newly-published study reveals that Republicans are less likely to say they would take a “personalized cancer vaccine” that was “both safe and effective at preventing cancer” than Democrats and especially so if the vaccine was the product of President Biden’s efforts.

Update, April 25, 2023: A blue-ribbon commission investigating the U.S.’s great Covid failure focused on governing. Among the blameworthy (besides a president who basically opted out), they note “that here is no U.S. national public health operational capability — practically all of it is in a patchwork quilt of states and localities, an anachronism from an earlier age.”

…………………………………………………………

Notes

[1] By this I mean the well-documented fact that many American policy decisions are driven by their racial implications–most often by whether a policy is viewed by many Whites as “for the Blacks.” See this recent paper, for example.

 

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  • Pages

    • About the book
      • Corrections & Updates
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  • Previous Posts

    • How We Know that Slavery Caused the Civil War (and Race Didn’t)
    • Baseball and Originalism: Opening Day, 2023
    • Why Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part II
    • How Red v. Blue Became Me v. You: Polarization, Part I
    • The Covid Experience Reveals How Weird America Is
    • Americans Continue to Associate. For What Cause?
    • Slavery, Capitalism, and Reparations
    • Opening Day, 2022: Still Unresolved
    • No Peace, No Justice
    • The Right’s Reaction to Americans’ Leftward Shift: A Supreme Example
    • The Culture Has Moved Left… So the Right has Mobilized
    • Overcoming Distance and Embracing Place: Personal Ties in the Age of Persistent and Pervasive Communication
    • The Death Surge Before Covid-19: Who, What, and Why.
    • Women Rising: Life Stories from the Last Century
    • Whither Big Tech, or When Novelties Become (Regulated) Necessities
    • Opening Day, 2021: Baseball’s Crises
    • First Takes on the Election #2: What About the Polls?
    • The Political Census
    • First Takes on the Election: #1, What Happened?
    • Now for Something Different: Is Sex Wilting?
    • Explaining Trump: The Next-to-Last Time (I Hope)
    • Covid-19: Exceptionalism with a Vengeance
    • Is Left Cancel Culture Cancelling Left Culture?
    • BLM Protests: Surprisingly Successful… So Far. Why?
    • White Liberals’ Political Correctness Could Help Trump Get Re-Elected
    • Asteroidal Change or Glacial Change? Peering Over the Covid-19 Horizon
    • Opening Day Under Covid-19: Do Fans Matter?
    • COVID-19: Balancing Short-Term Solutions and Long-Term Effects. Are There Lessons from 1918?
    • Bernie: The Left is Still Waiting for the Proletariat Vote
    • AG Barr says attacks on religion are loosening the hounds of hell. Are they?
    • One Year Down, One to Go: Still Explaining Trump
    • Lead, Brains, and Behavior: Sociology Meets Biology
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    • [Bracket] Political Commentary [End Bracket]
    • Parental Love, Opportunity Markets, and Inequality
    • Brain Twisting, or How We Evolved
    • Opening Day, 2019: Data-Crunching, Inequality, and Baseball
    • Fixing Inequality: More Opportunity is Not the Answer
    • A Christian America? The Talk and the Walk
    • Shareholder Value: Law, Inequality, and the Doubting Justice
    • After the Election: More Polarization or Less?
    • Searching for the Authentic Self (… and Finding Trump)
    • The Politics-Religion Vortex Spins
    • Loneliness Epidemic: An End to the Story?
    • Get by with a Little Help from…
    • Feel-Good or Do-Good Politics
    • Do Americans Tolerate Zero Tolerance?
    • How Can Size of Community Still Matter?
    • Sending a Message by Pollster
    • Loneliness Scare Again… and Again… and…
    • Where Have You Gone, “Alienation”?
    • Opening Day, 2018: Politics, Race, and Baseball
    • Local Cultures
    • Chain Migration
    • Explaining Trump Some More
    • “Okie from Muskogee” a Half-Century On
    • Reversing American Voluntarism
    • National Character? A Reply to Stearns
    • Do We (Still) Value Family?
    • Is Marriage Over? For Whom?
    • Bannon, Brown, and the Identity Debate
    • The Great “American” (or is it New York?) Songbook
    • Is Health Care a Right?
    • Church Social
    • Inequality is about Security and Opportunity
    • Democracy in America, France, and “Hamilton”
    • Opening Day, 2017: Inequality on the Field, in the Stands
    • Voting for the Five Percent
    • More (on) Polarization
    • Americans and the Unassimilables
    • Explaining Trump
    • ***** Hiatus *****
    • The Great Settling Down
    • Election Reflection
    • Is the U.S. No Longer Religiously Exceptional?
    • Technology and Housework: Other Tasks for Mother?
    • Can Sociability Blunt Political Polarization?
    • The End of Good Work?
    • RFD, Media, and Democracy
    • Long Tails, Big Cities, Critical Masses
    • A Woman President?
    • Magazines: 19th Century Internet
    • Friends and “FB Friends”
    • Reversal of Fortune: American Cities
    • Does Education Work?
    • A Tony by Any Other Name…
    • Bernie, Hillary, and Historical Memory
    • Driving Cattle, Driving Exceptionalism
    • Build Bigger Wall? Get More Undocumented.
    • Opening Day 2016
    • Great Again
    • A Celebrity Strong Man
    • Survey Says . . .
    • Veterans and Suicides?
    • Odd Man In
    • The Pace, the Pace
    • A Street Divided
    • A History of Health and Health Inequalities
    • Why Diversity
    • Family Wages
    • What Happened When They Came?
    • The Grandma (and pa) Effect
    • Turkle, Times, Technology, Trauma–Yet Again
    • Just Deserts
    • Cell Phone Etiquette
    • Changing Hearts, Changing Matters, 2011-2015
    • American Self-Creation
    • The Immigrant-Crime Connection
    • Black by Choice?
    • The Marriage Contract
    • Attaining Adulthood
    • Left Out: Working-Class Kids
    • Life is a Stage, or Several
    • Family Farms vs. Americanism
    • Censor This, Political Correctness
    • Opening Day 2015
    • Science vs. Religion… or Science and Religion?
    • Building the Natural Market
    • Dressing Down
    • Untangling the Race Gap
    • Finding Public Relief
    • Surveying Change
    • Snap Decisions and Race
    • Holy-Day Exceptionalism
    • Where Does the “Don’t Shoot” Movement Go?
    • Reporting from America’s “Slums”
    • Racism as Mental Illness?
    • Which University?
    • The “Shared” Economy
    • Of Places Past
    • Long Story of the “Long Tail”
    • The Blameless Only
    • When Epidemic Hysteria Made Sense
    • Latest News on “No Religion”
    • Vocabulary Retrogression
    • American Way-Differentism: More a Club than a Family
    • Do Ideas Matter?
    • Alternative to Empathy
    • Women Dining
    • Too Much Social Science?
    • Ferguson and Social Media
    • Blame Who or What
    • “Libertarianism is Strange” Revisited
    • All Tech Is Social
    • How Ideas Make Themselves Matter
    • Women in Politics 1780-2014
    • Government Works
    • Telling Stories vs. Telling Data
    • Persistence of Race, 2014
    • Selfishness or Self-Awareness?
    • Virtuous Debt
    • Work Hours and the Pay Gap
    • Life in Public, Then and Now
    • Mourning 9/11 Victorian Style
    • A “Friends” Gripe
    • Bible Readings
    • Old Days, Fast Times
    • De-Democratizing?
    • Eco-Puritanism
    • Bring Me Your….
    • Thinking Inequality
    • Which Radical Ideas Come True?
    • Pastime – Opening Day 2014
    • Where Did “Hispanics” Come From?
    • Kitty Genovese: The Emblematic Story
    • Public Health
    • Exceptionalism Ending?
    • Risk-Sharing
    • Folktales of the Policy Elites
    • Male (Job) Insecurity
    • Libertarianism is Very Strange
    • Art and the Machined World
    • The Public Housing Experiment
    • The S-Curve of Cultural Change
    • Artful History
    • Inventing the Social Network
    • American Dream, Twisting
    • Deservingness
    • Place Matters More
    • Squirrely History
    • Atheist Evangelism: “Nothing New Under the Sun”
    • The Giving Season… and Era
    • Cell Phone Science
    • Boo! Americans and the Occult
    • You Call That a Shutdown?
    • More Inequality Updates
    • Political Responses to the Crash
    • Child Labors
    • Word Counts and What Counts
    • Loss of Economic Exceptionalism
    • Learning Sympathy
    • Respecting the Science
    • Economic Equality, 1774 and Beyond
    • Declaring You’re a “None”
    • Extremely Local
    • Robert Bellah
    • Inequality Hits Home
    • The Supreme Court Ducks Immutability
    • Postcard from Paris
    • America’s Religious Market
    • American-Made Ethnic-Americans
    • New Media and Old Manifestations
    • Novel Data: Promise and Perils
    • Immigrants and Historical Amnesia
    • Inequality Update
    • Psychologically Damaged
    • Race in the Eye of the Beholder
    • Getting Smarter
    • Suicide Boom?
    • Tweedledee-Tweedledum Nostalgia
    • Sexual License, Sexual Limits
    • Markets, Prices, and Justice
    • Immigration and Political Clout
    • Is the Gender Revolution Over?
    • Writerly Baseball – Opening Day 2013
    • Back Home
    • Catholic Schism
    • How Material Are We?
    • Unholy Alliance: Laissez Faire and the Church
    • The ’60s Turn 50
    • The Left’s Religion Problem
    • Paying Attention to the Kids
    • We’re # Last!
    • Risk Taking
    • The Elderly and Their Children
    • Guns
    • A Modern “Antebellum Puzzle”?
    • Makes One Anxious
    • Psychological Labeling … and Enabling?
    • The Giving Nation? Philanthropy’s Problems
    • Religion, Politics, and the Sunday Mail
    • The Happiness Boom
    • What Americans Have Been Thinking
    • The Verdict on Class and Voting
    • Panderocracy
    • 9/11 Reaction and Resilience
    • A Cost of Inequality: Growth
    • Obama’s Racial Penalty
    • Choose Your Choice
    • To the Poorhouse
    • The Polarizing Political Paradox Redux
    • The 47% Charge in U.S. History
    • The Survey Crisis
    • Competitive Intelligence
    • Execution Songs
    • Spiritual and/or Religious
    • “Who Built That?”: Chance and History
    • Meeting, Mating, and the Web
    • Live Long and Prosper — and Plan
    • Voting Violence
    • Sex and the American Car
    • The Assets Gap
    • Differences Under the Differences
    • Why Americans Don’t Vacation
    • Virtuous Voting
    • Clothes Make the Common Man
    • Driving Blind
    • Geography of Inequality
    • Slavery’s Heavy Hand
    • Gay Vows
    • Explaining Poverty (Again)
    • Out- and Insourcing
    • Still Under God
    • The Loneliness Scare is Back
    • Sunday Pleasures, Private Faith
    • Between Dole and Market
    • Opening Day 2012 – Worldwide
    • Tolerating Americans
    • What’s the Common in the Common Good?
    • End Times and Presidents
    • The Abortion Puzzle
    • The Army of Black Liberation
    • The South Has Risen
    • Can’t Believe It
    • Marrying — Up, Down, Sideways
    • Occupy 2012: Another 1968?
    • Over-Impacted
    • How Bad is “European”?
    • Unique, Sovereign, American
    • The Working Class’s Party
    • Reconstructing Memory
    • Make-Your-Own Religion
    • Consume This
    • Self-Absorbed: Emerson & Thoreau
    • What Works? Votes.
    • Stumbling in the Dark
    • More on Occupy
    • Occupy! Now What?
    • Lost Children
    • Cheerful Yanks?
    • Tolerating Ambiguity
    • New News, Old News
    • Unequal Denial
    • Timing is (Not?) Everything
    • Breastfeeding History
    • What’s a Life Worth?
    • Homesick Blues
    • Summer Break
    • Spinsters No More
    • Missing Tramps
    • City Crime; Country Crime
    • Living Togetherness
    • Naturally Clean
    • Women Graduating
    • Home Owning Dreams
    • Technology and Fundamentals
    • Protected Class
    • Faith Endures
    • American Exceptionalism
    • Buying a Head Start
    • A. Lincoln, Socialist?
    • Opening Day 2011
    • Shaken but Secure
    • Jobs Go and Come
    • Heavy Hand
    • The Big Change
    • American Ties (III)
    • Money and Character
    • Going Out–or Home?
    • Degree Inequality
    • American Ties (II)
    • Ugly or Needy
    • 18th-Century Twitterfeed
    • American Ties (I)
    • Grammar Rules
    • Christmas Struggle
    • Ancestor Worship
    • Was Slavery, Is Slavery
    • Hanukkah or Vanish?
    • Pilgrims, Puritans, Americans?
    • Return on Investment
    • Solidarity, Soldiers, and Baseball
    • Win Stay, Lose Change
    • Why Vote?
    • We’re All Geniuses
    • Caring More or Less
    • Life Begins
    • Equal Visions
    • No Dinner Invitations?
    • Depressing Comparisons
    • Labor’s Laboring Efforts
    • Multiculturalism Lite and Right
    • Who Has Your Back
    • A Natural Romance
    • Alone or Lonely?
    • Sentimental Journey
    • LeBron & the 10th
    • We’re #1 !
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 2
    • A Fragmenting America? – Pt. 1
    • Fighting for the 4th
    • Gentrified Memories
    • Juneteenth: Race? Slavery?
    • Boomer Blues
    • No Longer the Tall American
    • A Crime Puzzle
    • Memorial-izing Day
    • Angry Old White Men
    • Sisters Take the Streets
    • Brooks, Policy, and History
    • Tongue-Tied to America
    • Happiness Happy
    • Inventing Friendship
    • American Individualism – Really?
    • Tax Day: The Government-Enterprise System
    • Opening Day 2010
    • Did “Consumerism” Blow Up the Economy?
    • A Christian America? What History Shows
    • The Myth that Never Moves
    • Good Health, Long Life, and Big Government
    • Announcing the “Made in America” Site

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