8 new york | march 16–29, 2020
lunches in the case of closures, but that only raises the next
question: Who will take care of these kids outside of
school, and how will their parents continue to earn a liv-
ing? So many of them are so close to the edge already, with
no social safety net below them to count on. In the richest
country the world has ever known, everyone is on their
own, and everything seems broken.
Of course, there have been pockets of leadership here and
there in the U.S.—governors Andrew Cuomo in New York,
Jay Inslee in Washington, and Gavin Newsom in California,
to name three. But even their efforts have been halting, slow,
uncoordinated. There has been no meaningful centralized
authority of any kind, and, perhaps more important, no reli-
able source of information or guidance for how to behave as
individuals. Instead, there is only a vacuum of authority and
the vague advice that we should wash our hands, suspend
nonessential travel, stay six feet from one another. For
months, almost everywhere you looked, public anxiety was
met with total silence, which sent this message: Fend for
yourself. This is not how a functioning society responds to a
crisis. And while it is important to keep in mind that even
the worst-case scenarios for covid-19 stop far short of pro-
ducing total social and political disarray—producing merely
widespread death and suffering and an almost incalculable
burden on our already stretched-thin medical capacity—it
is nevertheless astonishing, and horrifying, just how quickly
we have arrived here, almost totally distrustful of the civic
institutions we expect to protect us.
And how did we arrive here? Part of it is, of course,
Trump, who has so accelerated the decades-long Repub-
lican war on government, which is to say good gover-
nance, that it can now seem as if the only two people actu-
ally working in the federal government are Jared Kushner
and Stephen Miller. Part of it is the long story of neolib-
eralism, which taught us all that we shouldn’t expect
much but economic management from government, and
that citizens are meant to be unleashed into unencum-
bered markets. Part of it is a cultural transformation
involving an increasing skepticism of authority and the
growth of go-it-alone American life, as was documented
in Chris Hayes’s book The Twilight of the Elites. And part
of it is, I think (in the term Ross Douthat has deployed in
the title of his new book), decadence—the ancient impe-
rial cycle of rising power and competence followed by
avarice and narcissism and shortsightedness, but acceler-
ated, in the case of the U.S., for a hypermodern age.
Barely more than two decades ago, the United States saw
itself as a kind of eternal empire, the indispensable nation.
It would have seemed laughable then to be told that China
would have produced a far better and more comprehensive
pandemic response—a shamefully superior response. But
today, distressingly, we take that relative failure for granted
and don’t expect to outperform the Chinese on matters like
these, let alone South Korea or Singapore. What feels new
is that we are well behind Italy and seem somewhat closer,
in the effectiveness and coordination of our response, to
Iran, where it’s estimated that millions may be infected,
including many senior figures in government, and where
they are already digging mass graves to accommodate the
bodies. When countries like these are desperate, they now
turn to China, which is sending a huge supply of necessary
equipment and human resources to Italy. The United States
used to play that role not that long ago. Now, in this crisis
and future ones, who will help us? ■The issue isn’t so much that competent officials, like
Obama’s Ebola czar, Ron Klain, have been replaced by less
competent ones. It’s that Trump, who took three months
even to focus on the threat, had eliminated the office of
pandemic response entirely, so that until he appointed
Mike Pence—who bungled Indiana’s response to an HIV
crisis a few years ago—no one in the White House even
had a pandemic-disease portfolio. Why? It is hard to even
imagine the reason, aside from the fact that the office was
established under Obama and that this president has
operated with reflexive spite and even sadism toward any-
thing his predecessor touched, whatever the costs to the
country—and even his own supporters.
But the dysfunction goes much deeper than the
president—even deeper than the levels of the bureaucracy
he controls through appointments and executive directives.
In a functional system, much of the preparation and mes-
saging would have been undertaken earlier this winter by
the CDC. In this case, it chose not to simply adopt the World
Health Organization’s covid-19 test kits—stockpiling them
in the millions in the months we had between the first
appearance of the coronavirus in China and its widespread
arrival here—but to try to develop its own test. Why? It isn’t
clear. But they bungled that project, too, failing to produce
a reliable one and delaying the start of any comprehensive
testing program by a few critical weeks.
The testing shortage has been catastrophic: It means
that no one knows how bad the outbreak already is and
that we still can’t take effectively aggressive measures
even if we want to. There are so few tests available, or so
little capacity to run them, that they are being restricted
to only the most obvious candidates, which practically
defeats the purpose. It is not those who are very sick or
who have traveled to existing hot spots abroad who are
most critical to identify but those less obvious, gray-area
cases—people who may be carrying the disease around
without much reason to suspect they’re infecting others.
Into this vacuum has stepped the Gates Foundation and
Amazon, which are trying to deliver large-scale testing
capacity at least within Seattle, and Alibaba co-founder
Jack Ma, who pledged to send 500,000 test kits and a
million face masks to the U.S. But in what awful, dysfunc-
tional universe do we live that it has fallen to private com-
panies and billionaire philanthropists to deliver neces-
sary medical support, in empty parking lots, in a time of
American pandemic? There is probably no stronger argu-
ment for public health care than the crisis we are living
through today, and no more grotesque indictment of our
system than that leading providers and insurers had to be
cajoled into waiving fees and co-pays to even deliver tests.
What kind of society behaves this way, with a complete
lack of institutional guidance and coordinated purpose,
subjecting the vulnerable and scared to the terrors of pan-
demic disease? America, apparently. Our distressingly
inept response brings to mind an essay by Umair Haque,
first published in 2018 and prompted primarily by the
opioid crisis, about the U.S. as the world’s first rich failed
state. Every day it seems more prescient but perhaps never
more so than when it was announced that New York City
schools could be closed down only as a last-resort measure
because more than a hundred thousand of its students
depend on the school system for food and would, if they
closed, go hungry. A backup plan has since been devel-
oped that would allow the cafeterias to distribute to-gointelligencerCollapse by a
Thousand Cuts“In 2018,
President
Trump
abolished the
White House
office on
pandemic
preparedness,
so there was a
whole bunch
of people who
were supposed
to be getting
ready for this
event, and we
got rid of
them. That
didn’t help.
The president
has cut the
Centers for
Disease
Control, the
people who
were supposed
to find these
diseases
around the
world. He cut
three-quarters
of those
offices. So we
were less
prepared to
deal with [the
coronavirus]
the day it
arrived than
we were three
years earlier.”
—former
ebola czar
ron klainTRANSMITTED________ COPY ___ DD ___ AD ___ PD ___ EIC0620INT_Column_1_lay [Print]_36888223.indd 8 3/13/20 8:19 PM8 newyork| march16–29, 2020
lunches in the case of closures, but that only raises the next
question: Who will take care of these kids outside of
school, and how will their parents continue to earn a liv-
ing? So many of them are so close to the edge already, with
no social safety net below them to count on. In the richest
country the world has ever known, everyone is on their
own, and everything seems broken.
Of course, there have been pockets of leadership here and
there in the U.S.—governors Andrew Cuomo in New York,
Jay Inslee in Washington, and Gavin Newsom in California,
to name three. But even their efforts have been halting, slow,
uncoordinated. There has been no meaningful centralized
authority of any kind, and, perhaps more important, no reli-
ablesourceof informationorguidanceforhowtobehave as
individuals. Instead, there is only a vacuum of authority and
the vague advice that we should wash our hands, suspend
nonessential travel, stay six feet from one another. For
months, almost everywhere you looked, public anxiety was
met with total silence, which sent this message: Fend for
yourself. This is not how a functioning society responds to a
crisis. And while it is important to keep in mind that even
the worst-case scenarios for covid-19 stop far short of pro-
ducing total social and political disarray—producing merely
widespread death and suffering and an almost incalculable
burden on our already stretched-thin medical capacity—it
is nevertheless astonishing, and horrifying, just how quickly
we have arrived here, almost totally distrustful of the civic
institutions we expect to protect us.
And how did we arrive here? Part of it is, of course,
Trump, who has so accelerated the decades-long Repub-
lican war on government, which is to say good gover-
nance, that it can now seem as if the only two people actu-
ally working in the federal government are Jared Kushner
and Stephen Miller. Part of it is the long story of neolib-
eralism, which taught us all that we shouldn’t expect
much but economic management from government, and
that citizens are meant to be unleashed into unencum-
bered markets. Part of it is a cultural transformation
involving an increasing skepticism of authority and the
growth of go-it-alone American life, as was documented
in Chris Hayes’s book The Twilight of the Elites. And part
of it is, I think (in the term Ross Douthat has deployed in
the title of his new book), decadence—the ancient impe-
rial cycle of rising power and competence followed by
avarice and narcissism and shortsightedness, but acceler-
ated, in the case of the U.S., for a hypermodern age.
Barely more than two decades ago, the United States saw
itself as a kind of eternal empire, the indispensable nation.
It would have seemed laughable then to be told that China
would have produced a far better and more comprehensive
pandemic response—a shamefully superior response. But
today, distressingly, we take that relative failure for granted
and don’t expect to outperform the Chinese on matters like
these, let alone South Korea or Singapore. What feels new
is that we are well behind Italy and seem somewhat closer,
in the effectiveness and coordination of our response, to
Iran, where it’s estimated that millions may be infected,
including many senior figures in government, and where
they are already digging mass graves to accommodate the
bodies. When countries like these are desperate, they now
turn to China, which is sending a huge supply of necessary
equipment and human resources to Italy. The United States
used to play that role not that long ago. Now, in this crisis
and future ones, who will help us? ■The issue isn’t so much that competent officials, like
Obama’s Ebola czar, Ron Klain, have been replaced by less
competent ones. It’s that Trump, who took three months
even to focus on the threat, had eliminated the office of
pandemic response entirely, so that until he appointed
Mike Pence—who bungled Indiana’s response to an HIV
crisis a few years ago—no one in the White House even
had a pandemic-disease portfolio. Why? It is hard to even
imagine the reason, aside from the fact that the office was
established under Obama and that this president has
operated with reflexive spite and even sadism toward any-
thing his predecessor touched, whatever the costs to the
country—andevenhisownsupporters.
But the dysfunctiongoes much deeper than the
president—evendeeperthanthelevelsofthebureaucracy
hecontrolsthroughappointmentsandexecutivedirectives.
Ina functionalsystem,muchofthepreparationandmes-
sagingwouldhavebeenundertakenearlierthiswinterby
theCDC.Inthiscase,it chosenottosimplyadopttheWorld
HealthOrganization’scovid-19test kits—stockpilingthem
inthemillionsinthemonthswehadbetweenthefirst
appearanceofthecoronavirusinChinaanditswidespread
arrivalhere—buttotry todevelopitsowntest. Why?It isn’t
clear.Butthey bungledthat project, too,failingtoproduce
a reliableoneanddelayingthestartofany comprehensive
testingprogrambya few criticalweeks.
Thetestingshortagehasbeencatastrophic:It means
thatnooneknowshowbadtheoutbreakalreadyis and
thatwestillcan’t take effectivelyaggressivemeasures
evenif wewantto.Therearesofew tests available,orso
littlecapacity torunthem,that they arebeingrestricted
toonlythemostobviouscandidates,whichpractically
defeatsthepurpose.It is notthosewhoarevery sickor
whohavetraveledtoexistinghotspotsabroadwhoare
mostcriticaltoidentify butthoselessobvious,gray-area
cases—peoplewhomaybecarryingthediseasearound
withoutmuchreasontosuspectthey’reinfectingothers.
IntothisvacuumhassteppedtheGatesFoundationand
Amazon,whicharetryingtodeliverlarge-scaletesting
capacityat least withinSeattle,andAlibabaco-founder
JackMa,whopledgedtosend500,000test kitsanda
millionfacemaskstotheU.S.Butinwhat awful,dysfunc-
tionaluniversedowelivethatit hasfallentoprivatecom-
paniesandbillionairephilanthropiststodeliverneces-
sary medicalsupport, inempty parkinglots,ina timeof
Americanpandemic?Thereis probablynostrongerargu-
mentforpublichealthcarethanthecrisisweareliving
throughtoday, andnomoregrotesqueindictmentofour
systemthanthat leadingprovidersandinsurershadtobe
cajoledintowaivingfeesandco-paystoevendelivertests.
Whatkindofsocietybehavesthisway, witha complete
lackofinstitutionalguidanceandcoordinatedpurpose,
subjectingthevulnerableandscaredtotheterrorsofpan-
demicdisease?America,apparently. Ourdistressingly
ineptresponsebringstomindanessaybyUmairHaque,
first publishedin 2018 andpromptedprimarilybythe
opioidcrisis,abouttheU.S.astheworld’s firstrichfailed
state.Everyday it seemsmoreprescientbutperhapsnever
moresothanwhenit wasannouncedthatNewYorkCity
schoolscouldbecloseddownonlyasa last-resort measure
becausemorethana hundredthousandofitsstudents
dependontheschoolsystemforfoodandwould,if they
closed,gohungry. Abackupplanhassincebeendevel-
opedthatwouldallowthecafeteriastodistributeto-go
intelligencer
Collapse by a
Thousand Cuts“In 2018,
President
Trump
abolished the
White House
office on
pandemic
preparedness,
so there was a
whole bunch
of people who
were supposed
to be getting
ready for this
event, and we
got rid of
them. That
didn’t help.
The president
has cut the
Centers for
Disease
Control, the
people who
were supposed
to find these
diseases
around the
world. He cut
three-quarters
of those
offices. So we
were less
prepared to
deal with [the
coronavirus]
the day it
arrived than
we were three
years earlier.”
—former
ebola czar
ron klain