While Trump touted America’s reopening and watched infections climb, European leaders maintained strict rules and drove cases down.
Three months ago, public health officials feared that America would be swamped by Covid-19 like Italy. Today, the U.S. would be lucky to swap its coronavirus crisis for theirs.
Italy’s sudden surge of coronavirus in March swamped hospitals, pushed the nation into a strict lockdown and forced its doctors to ration life-saving ventilators. About 200,000 Italians were sickened and 29,000 died from the virus by May 1 alone. Global health officials seized on Italy — as the first country outside of China to be battered by the virus — as a disturbing case study for the rest of the world. In private meetings, White House officials worried that Italy was a preview of the storm about to hit the U.S. health system.
But Italy announced just 264 new Covid-19 cases on Saturday — the same day that the United States reported nearly 32,000. The European nation opened its restaurants and stores a month ago, albeit under new, national safety measures, even as U.S. states wrestled with inconsistent, hasty reopening efforts that have been blamed for new virus spikes. And Italy’s outbreak has dramatically ebbed from its mid-March peak, while America’s new per capita cases remain on par with Italy’s worst day — and show signs of rising further, with record hospitalizations in states like Arizona, Florida and Texas last week.
President Donald Trump and some Republican governors have bristled at public health experts’ advice, questioning predictions on viral spread and pushing back on recommended lockdowns. GOP-led states like Georgia and Texas reopened their economies despite requests from public health experts to wait for more testing and fewer cases.
Meanwhile, Trump’s allies and pundits on Fox News pushed malaria drugs as possible Covid-19 cures, despite scant evidence, leading to largely fruitless efforts that consumed the time of senior federal officials — including scientists whose time would have been better spent pursuing other therapies.
“There are plenty of people, on cable TV and elsewhere, who exploited that the virus was primarily in New York and other places to say that it’s a blue state problem,” said Harvard’s Jha. “They’d ask, ‘Why are we shutting down Montana when the problem is Manhattan?’
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/22/united-states-italy-traded-places-coronavirus-333122