One of the questions I’m most asked as host of the Coronavirus: The Truth podcast is: “How did other nations get the pandemic right?”and “Why can’t America copy its success?”
For months, fitness experts have answered those questions by indicating a mix of science and strategy. Other countries, they say, are testing more often, imposing stricter social restrictions and boasting more powerful national leadership. of those areas.
But neither science nor strategy explains why the United States is guilty of more than 20% of Covid-19 deaths worldwide, when it accounts for only 4% of the world’s population. The challenge is not that Americans lack clinical wisdom or better strategic functions of more productive global practices. On the contrary, the challenge can be more productive summarized through a word from control guru Peter Drucker: “Culture eats a breakfast strategy. “
To perceive how other countries have well (or radically slowed) the coronavirus is to recognize the influence of culture on our thoughts, attitudes and behaviors.
When we compare American culture with that of other countries, we can hope with certainty that the United States will never tolerate national methods of the kind that have worked elsewhere. As a result, our country will lose a total of 500,000 lives before the end. of this pandemic Here are two examples of these cultural differences:
South Korea’s collectivist culture has helped curb
In February, South Korea and the United States faced similar demanding situations in Covid-19. Cases went off, little was known about the virus and public fitness officials were panicking. The two countries had shown their first instances of COVID-19 approximately. at the same time, around 20 January, however, the two countries reacted very later.
The tests played a role in South Korea’s effective response: by early March, the United States had conducted only 2,000 tests, while South Korea had conducted more than 140,000 tests.
But the test, in itself, is a fairly low containment measure, so this is the next step in South Korea that has controlled the virus. Unlike the United States, South Korea followed a rigorous national contact search program connecting giant databases of cellular, credit card and CCTV data to a so-called Immediate Response Team (IRT), which was called to eliminate potential outbreaks and threats of overpropagation.
South Koreans have sacrificed their privacy and allowed the government unrestricted access to their non-public data, allowing fitness officials to identify and isolate all potentially inflamed people. Although 50 countries around the world have followed some form of virtual touch tracking to help save it. the spread of the disease, Americans those tactics to be unacceptably Orwellians. In a study of 2,000 Americans, 71% said they would not download a touch search app due to privacy issues.
This is a difference: while many points distinguish South Korea’s successful reaction from the useless and dispersed approaches followed in the United States, none has influenced overall mortality more than culture.
Throughout South Korea, cultural values come with obedience to the family, acceptance of authority, and action by the nation’s intelligents. These collectivistic guidelines allow for the types of commitments needed to involve the virus: others renounce their preference for privacy in exchange for a rapid, effective and complete reaction to the pandemic While it would be wrong to characterize South Korea’s intelligent fortune only to cultural differences or the homogeneity of society, there is no denying that the public’s willingness to place the public interest above individual rights has contributed to their fight opposed to the Covid-19.
On the other hand, the concept of ceding electronic privacy to public agencies simply does not fly in the United States. As a result, South Korea reported fewer than 500 deaths in a country of 50 million people, with 210 billion deaths of three hundred million. American.
New Zealand’s confidence in government succeeds
New Zealand is approximately the length of Colorado with a population (between five and 6 million). Partly due to its low footprint and geographical isolation, the Pacific Island nation experienced only two five deaths in total due to the Covid-19.
There are, broadly speaking, wonderful cultural similarities between New Zealand and the United States. Cultural atlases describe the other people of New Zealand in the same way they describe Americans: affable, social, and individualistic. However, there is a vital cultural nuance that is helping New Zealand’s incredibly low mortality rate. Its population boasts a higher point of public cooperation and respect for the government, and is more willing to give up individual freedom for the common good.
According to one survey, 88% of New Zealanders accept as true with their government to make the right decisions about Covid-19, compared to only 59% of citizens of G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan and the United States).
This constant wave of public confidence has given New Zealand’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern significant scope and latitude to put in place a strict national response of containment. immediate and almost universal reopening. It’s very hard to believe in a government-ordered six-week closure in a state like New Hampshire, where the emblem says “Live free or die. “
Ultimately, without a citizen willing to compromise privacy or sacrifice individual freedom, it is highly unlikely that he will contract this virus. New Zealand and South Korea have these cultures. Not the United States.
Culture: Why America Will See 500,000 Covid-19-Related Deaths
Science and strategy are for effective coronavirus containment; however, science and strategy are not the biggest obstacles to progress in the United States.
After all, Americans are not inherently anti-scientists. Surveys recommend that most people in this country respect science and see it as a positive force in society. Nor is there a shortage of strategic thinkers in aptitude or public policy.
The truth is, we know what to do. We just won’t do that. We Americans do not have a cultural commitment to do what it is to stop the spread of this specific virus. If it were an outbreak of Ebola, a virus that kills 50% of all other people it infects, the dangers of the disease would exceed any cursed norm or cultural price that can simply prevent the protection of Americans. But with a mortality rate close to 0. 5%, Covid-19 does not set the risk point for keeping Americans hidden, away from society, or indoors as scientists recommend.
Similarly, if it were simple to run into other inflamed people, we could simply find the virus through approaches that Americans can readily accept (temperature detection, symptom checklists, etc. ). or asymptomatic, other people can spread the disease before they delight in a sore throat, fever, or other telltale symptoms of infection.
Unfortunately, with its “acceptable” mortality rate and strangely high rate of asymptomatic transmission, Covid-19 presents an intractable challenge in a country known for the words “give me freedom or give me death. “In other words, the same freedom lover The individualistic values that Americans appreciate, those who gave us rock and roll, the civil rights movement, and the culture of Silicon Valley startups, are the same virtues that will save us from controlling this insidious virus. the same concessions as other people in South Korea and New Zealand.
A striking example of the influence of culture on america’s pandemic reaction to the US and its allies in the Middle East has been a major example of the influence of culture on the pandemic reaction of the US. But it’s not the first time He is taking a position in Iowa, a key state in the upcoming presidential election, where polls show that only 28% of citizens wear masks when they pass out. According to KHN’s report, Iowa fitness officials joined forces with the University of Iowa in April to design the effect of the epidemic and found that more than a thousand Iowans can be stored simply by adopting a universal mask policy. and his recommendations to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who concluded that a state-wide mask court order would “not be enforceable. “
As a cultural principle, the governor understood that Iowans, like tens of millions of Americans, would reject even the most modest violations of their civil liberties or privacy, in the worst circumstances.
Given our national culture, the United States will continue to enjoy the highest rates of cases and deaths until a safe and effective vaccine is widely administered. And that time is over. In a recent interview, the CEO of Moderna, one of the leading vaccine developers, told the Financial Times that he did not expect approval until spring 2021. Meanwhile, CDC Director Robert Redfield told the Senate Appropriations Committee that it would take six to nine months. to vaccinate the US public. Once a vaccine is approved. This brings us to the fourth quarter of 2021 at the very soonest. And, according to the leading immunologist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chances of a highly effective undergraduate vaccine that opposes coronaviruses “are not great,” meaning viruses nationwide won’t happen until later.
At that time (late 2021 or early 2022), estimates imply that the death toll in the United States will succeed in a portion of one million, assuming that the current count of 720 deaths is maintained consistent with the day of October and that the deadlines for a vaccine are correct, then another 260,000 to 320,000 more people will die over the next 12 to 15 months , bringing the total number of deaths to a portion of a million.
Of course, I hope I’m wrong. And it would be negligent if I recognized that to the fullest anything can happen, adding a miraculous medical discovery or a useful viral mutation. But waiting for a solution from “Hail Mary” is a viable strategy. All we can say with confidence is that there will be no significant replacement in American culture for the next year and a half. As a result, the death toll from the existing coronavirus will accumulate much longer and be much higher than Americans recognize or are willing to acknowledge.
I am passionate about transforming the American health care formula and helping others perceive the consequences of their medical decisions.
I am passionate about transforming the American fitness care formula and helping others perceive the consequences of their medical decisions. Previously, I was executive director of The Permanente Medical Group, the country’s largest medical organization, and as president of Mid-Atlantic Permanente Medical In those positions, I am guilty of 10,000 doctors, 38,000 employees, and health care for five million Americans on the West and East Coasts. I wrote the Washington Post bestseller, “Abused: Why We Think We Get Good Health Care – and Why We’re Generally Bad,” and I’m a board-certified plastic surgeon and reconstructor, clinical professor of surgery at Stanford University and Stanford Business School. The revisions I explain here are mine and do not necessarily constitute those of Kaiser Permanente. Follow me on Twitter @RobertPearlMD.