WEBVTT - A Divided America Feeds the Crisis 0:00:02.400 --> 0:00:07.360 Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred 0:00:07.360 --> 0:00:12.400 and fourteen since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today 0:00:12.680 --> 0:00:16.120 we go straight to our main story. As the United 0:00:16.160 --> 0:00:20.959 States prepares to celebrate its independence this weekend, Bloomberg Executive 0:00:21.040 --> 0:00:24.239 editor Brian Bremner reflects on what the spread of the 0:00:24.320 --> 0:00:29.240 virus tells us about our country. The US is home 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:32.760 to the highest number of COVID nineteen cases two point 0:00:32.800 --> 0:00:37.839 six million and counting, and the most deaths at more 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:41.879 than one hundred and twenty seven thousand. The reasons for 0:00:41.960 --> 0:00:47.800 that are, at least in part, very American ones, politicized science, 0:00:48.200 --> 0:00:53.360 a fragmented media landscape, and inequality. I talked to Brian 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.640 about how decades of political division have made the country 0:00:56.760 --> 0:01:02.639 a coronavirus superpower in the worst way, an outcome that 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:14.120 was entirely avoidable. How have we come to a point 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:18.880 in the United States where an element of public health 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:24.840 a face mask? How has that become so politicized? I 0:01:24.880 --> 0:01:29.360 think the reason things have become so politicized are kind 0:01:29.360 --> 0:01:31.560 of come from two buckets. I mean, the near term 0:01:31.600 --> 0:01:35.039 one has been the response of the Trump administration to 0:01:35.120 --> 0:01:39.160 this crisis. The mixed messaging between the president and his 0:01:39.360 --> 0:01:44.959 top scientific advisors certainly has created a fog around what 0:01:45.120 --> 0:01:49.080 the real risks are the vulnerabilities that have developed in 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.880 the US. It actually go back decades and have made 0:01:52.960 --> 0:01:57.960 this pandemic perhaps even worse than you know one would expect. 0:01:58.240 --> 0:02:02.240 What are some of these elements that perhaps have led 0:02:02.320 --> 0:02:06.000 us to this moment in the United States? Science has 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:10.640 become politicized, not always, but in certainly kind of controversial, 0:02:11.320 --> 0:02:16.880 big public policy moments. There often isn't a standard set 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:21.240 effects that everyone agrees to, and that's not a recent phenomenon. 0:02:21.360 --> 0:02:23.720 It actually goes back, if you think about it, to 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.160 the nineteen fifties when the scientific community started to recognize 0:02:28.160 --> 0:02:32.720 health threats from cigarettes. Science was kind of caught up 0:02:32.760 --> 0:02:37.520 in a taffy pole between competing interests over a very big, 0:02:37.600 --> 0:02:43.360 multibillion dollar industry. We're also seeing this kind of politicization 0:02:43.440 --> 0:02:47.520 of science in the debate over climate change and the 0:02:47.639 --> 0:02:50.720 risks that go with that. We're all familiar with the 0:02:50.760 --> 0:02:54.240 anti vax or movement, you know, the concerns about the 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:58.080 safety of vaccines. That's been going on for quite quite 0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:02.639 some time. So what we're experiencing now is not new 0:03:02.919 --> 0:03:07.280 in that sense when governments and particularly say the scientific 0:03:07.360 --> 0:03:11.760 community is recommending something like say the wearing of face masks, 0:03:11.840 --> 0:03:17.119 and we don't see necessarily the same politicization or even 0:03:17.120 --> 0:03:21.720 say a negative reaction to these kinds of recommendations globally 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:25.560 except in the US. Is this something that speaks to 0:03:25.960 --> 0:03:35.200 perhaps Americans unique distrust of science. In Europe, where the 0:03:35.400 --> 0:03:40.080 disease curve on COVID nineteen is trended down, I think 0:03:40.120 --> 0:03:44.840 there is a more of a willingness to accept the 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:49.119 advice of public health authorities. Not every country does it perfectly. 0:03:49.160 --> 0:03:52.680 One could argue that the United Kingdom has had some issues, 0:03:52.920 --> 0:03:57.120 but by and large, I think people the public does 0:03:57.280 --> 0:04:01.920 buy in to what the experts tell them about public 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:06.640 health guidance. Situation in the US is interesting. You know, 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:09.360 one would would immediately assume that, well, maybe there's an 0:04:09.360 --> 0:04:14.520 issue with education that most Americans don't grasp scientific concepts, 0:04:15.000 --> 0:04:16.760 but that's actually not true. I mean, if you look 0:04:16.800 --> 0:04:20.640 at a lot of the international testing data on high 0:04:20.680 --> 0:04:24.560 school students in the US, they score above average of 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:29.080 the O E c D in basic science aptitude. If 0:04:29.080 --> 0:04:34.760 you look at the science aptitude of registered Democrats and 0:04:34.839 --> 0:04:39.880 registered Republicans. There are no big differences there either, and 0:04:39.920 --> 0:04:43.920 I think most a majority of Americans see the value 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:51.839 of science. However, when science intersects with controversial public policy 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.440 in the U S. Something kind of runs off the 0:04:54.560 --> 0:04:58.599 rail and it doesn't quite happen to the same degree 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:01.919 and in other parts of the industrialized world. And a 0:05:01.960 --> 0:05:04.240 lot of polling data has kind of looked at this, 0:05:04.960 --> 0:05:10.520 and it does seem that Democrats and Democratic leaning voters 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:16.200 are willing to accept what Dr Fauci tells them. Uh, 0:05:16.279 --> 0:05:20.320 And it's about thirty points less lower in the in 0:05:20.360 --> 0:05:24.960 the Republican Party in the public or Republican orbit. A 0:05:25.000 --> 0:05:27.080 lot of that has to do with kind of the 0:05:27.200 --> 0:05:31.080 changing political basis of the major parties. You know, a 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:35.279 lot of people forget that. You know, in the nineteen eighties, 0:05:35.320 --> 0:05:39.080 the Republican Party was the party of the well educated 0:05:39.160 --> 0:05:44.719 the suburban world. That shifted over the last couple of 0:05:44.760 --> 0:05:50.360 decades to a less educated base of reporters. But also 0:05:51.040 --> 0:05:56.920 the rhetoric employed by Republican politicians can be different at 0:05:56.960 --> 0:06:00.600 tons and we've seen that certainly with the trumpet illistration. 0:06:01.960 --> 0:06:04.680 Just not having a grasp of the basic facts, um 0:06:04.960 --> 0:06:08.560 kind of a wishful thinking in the public discourse, and 0:06:08.600 --> 0:06:11.240 as I said, it's created a tremendous amount of confusion, 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:15.400 and particularly I was wondering if you might speak to 0:06:16.320 --> 0:06:20.280 maybe the differences we've seen and perhaps lack of leadership 0:06:20.360 --> 0:06:24.240 we've seen both on the federal level with the Trump administration, 0:06:24.279 --> 0:06:27.040 but also of course we have each of the fifties 0:06:27.040 --> 0:06:31.240 states taking their their own path essentially that you know, 0:06:31.320 --> 0:06:35.400 we haven't necessarily seen a unified approach in how state 0:06:35.440 --> 0:06:41.200 should go about addressing this pandemic, reopening, locking down, those 0:06:41.279 --> 0:06:46.320 kinds of elements. Well, that's interesting thought, because when you 0:06:46.440 --> 0:06:52.480 have a rapidly moving, shape shifting pandemic across a huge 0:06:52.600 --> 0:06:55.839 country on the size of the US, where you have 0:06:56.480 --> 0:07:01.480 urban centers with heavy population density, uh and then rural 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:04.680 parts of the country where the health care systems aren't 0:07:04.720 --> 0:07:07.960 quite as developed, you would think a rational way of 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:09.720 doing this would be to have a kind of a 0:07:09.800 --> 0:07:14.600 one size fits all directive where everything is kind of synchronized, 0:07:15.240 --> 0:07:17.760 so everyone kind of went into the same degree of 0:07:18.240 --> 0:07:21.600 lockdown more or less. I'm sure there would be nuances 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.240 here and there, because there are differences, UM, But by 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:30.960 and large, same policy, same lockdown, same re emergence, and 0:07:31.000 --> 0:07:33.880 of course that's not what happened here. And if you 0:07:33.960 --> 0:07:37.440 contrast that with different political systems, maybe at the far 0:07:37.560 --> 0:07:43.119 extreme China, which an autocratic system, when their crisis broke out, 0:07:43.240 --> 0:07:47.800 they basically quarantined fifteen million people. They had no no 0:07:47.920 --> 0:07:50.080 say in the matter, they had no choice in the matter, 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:55.320 and it was a draconian, you know, top down we're 0:07:55.360 --> 0:08:00.240 not messing around approach. Now, in open societies and democratic society, 0:08:00.440 --> 0:08:02.560 you can't do that, of course, But if you look 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:06.680 at Germany, which has done pretty well, there was kind 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:11.800 of a concerted approach that was communicated very clearly. There 0:08:11.880 --> 0:08:16.600 was no contradicting between what Merkel said and her top 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:21.440 science advisors uh and the population UH. Maybe a little 0:08:21.440 --> 0:08:25.880 bit more culturally cohesive than heterogeneous society like the US, 0:08:26.680 --> 0:08:29.520 but that point aside, you know, they got it and 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.560 there was a concerted move and they had a good outcome. 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.160 The US has been very chaotic, and so I was 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:39.960 wondering maybe if we could also unpack perhaps the extent 0:08:40.080 --> 0:08:46.240 to which this pandemic has exposed existing cracks in the 0:08:46.320 --> 0:08:52.280 US system um in terms of income, inequality, racial inequality. 0:08:52.360 --> 0:08:56.800 I mean, how is the US, say, uniquely positioned to 0:08:56.960 --> 0:09:03.199 be so adversely affected by this pandemic in contrast to say, 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:07.480 some of these other countries. There is a very interesting 0:09:07.520 --> 0:09:10.520 link between inequality, which has been a corrosive problem for 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.920 several decades in the US, and the experience of the pandemic. 0:09:14.520 --> 0:09:17.640 If you have a good job, you're part of the 0:09:17.760 --> 0:09:22.480 knowledge economy, you work in an urban center, you are 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:26.959 able to work from home, your company is still doing 0:09:27.000 --> 0:09:32.320 pretty well. The pandemic has certainly been disruptive to your life, 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:37.840 but it hasn't been an outright crisis. Unfortunately. The burden 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:42.520 of this pandemic is really falling on lower income, minority 0:09:43.160 --> 0:09:47.400 segments of the society. I mean, that's clear in the data. Uh, 0:09:47.520 --> 0:09:52.040 it's clear in the black mortality rate, which is more 0:09:52.080 --> 0:09:56.080 than twice that of the white population of the United States. 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:00.959 So people are experiencing the pandemic and in different ways, 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:06.839 and that's creating a lot more cultural resentment and misunderstanding 0:10:06.880 --> 0:10:11.200 about how serious this is. If you're you know, highly educated, 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.000 as I said, white collar worker, and you've got a 0:10:14.000 --> 0:10:17.040 secure job, the money is still coming through the door, 0:10:17.679 --> 0:10:22.800 this may not seem quite as life altering as if 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:25.680 you were working in the hospitality industry and kind of 0:10:25.679 --> 0:10:29.760 living paycheck to paychecks, certainly, and so is there a 0:10:29.800 --> 0:10:32.440 way forward for the US? I suppose is the big question. 0:10:32.559 --> 0:10:36.400 We are looking at record case counts. Now, is there 0:10:36.400 --> 0:10:40.959 a path forward for the US to navigate this crisis? Well, 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.960 there seemed to be too broad possibilities. I mean, one 0:10:45.200 --> 0:10:49.160 is a decision has been made that we have to 0:10:49.240 --> 0:10:51.800 kind of let this thing run its course. Is as 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:56.040 awful as it can be, it will be. But the 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.560 alternative of shutting down the economy in any kind of 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:04.480 serious this way creates another set of problems, and we 0:11:04.559 --> 0:11:08.679 need to just kind of soldier through this. That is 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:14.040 the kind of the choice that some people in Washington, 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.880 particularly on the Republican side, are kind of positioning out 0:11:17.920 --> 0:11:21.640 there that it's an either or either we muscle our 0:11:21.679 --> 0:11:24.880 way through this or we do so much economic damage 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:27.360 that is just going to be as awful. I think 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:31.440 the public health experts offer a different kind of possibility 0:11:32.000 --> 0:11:34.320 and describe that as kind of a false choice that 0:11:35.200 --> 0:11:40.679 until we get really deadly serious about you know, social distancing, 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:46.080 mass handwashing, altering our lifestyle in such a way to 0:11:46.679 --> 0:11:50.080 get this the spread, the community spread down to a 0:11:50.160 --> 0:11:53.840 reasonable level, the economy is never going to come back 0:11:53.880 --> 0:11:55.800 because you're going to be in this fits and starts 0:11:56.480 --> 0:11:59.600 kind of scenario. So one thing we might to look for, 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:04.240 I think, is whether you start to see mandatory rules 0:12:04.520 --> 0:12:07.160 at the local level that you know you need to 0:12:07.200 --> 0:12:09.600 wear a mask. If you don't wear a mask, you 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.920 will be fine. If you are a business and you 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:18.360 have not rethought your business process is to make it 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:21.280 as safe as possible, your license is going to get pulled. 0:12:21.559 --> 0:12:28.760 I mean, more of a hardcore government lead policing of 0:12:28.760 --> 0:12:32.160 of of the preventative behaviors that we need to see 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.959 to get through this crisis, because what we've had so 0:12:35.040 --> 0:12:39.240 far has been kind of a giant honor system where 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:44.040 we've been kind of assuming that Americans will kind of 0:12:44.080 --> 0:12:47.240 figure this out, they'll read up on it, they'll do 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:50.440 whatever they have to do at the household level to 0:12:50.520 --> 0:12:54.360 keep everyone as safe as possible. And you know, I 0:12:54.400 --> 0:12:57.160 think a lot of Americans have done that, but unfortunately, 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:02.440 it doesn't take a a lot of people to trigger 0:13:02.480 --> 0:13:06.960 the super spreader incidents that set this virus on fire. 0:13:07.120 --> 0:13:09.319 And unfortunately, that's kind of where we're at right now. 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:15.480 That was Brian Bremner. His essay, the virus and America's 0:13:15.520 --> 0:13:19.800 Divisions can be read on Bloomberg dot com. And that's 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:22.400 it for our show. For coverage of the outbreak from 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:27.080 one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com Flash 0:13:27.120 --> 0:13:31.200 Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us 0:13:31.200 --> 0:13:35.200 a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. 0:13:35.640 --> 0:13:38.319 It's the best way to help more listeners find our 0:13:38.360 --> 0:13:43.480 global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher 0:13:43.559 --> 0:13:49.800 foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's 0:13:49.800 --> 0:13:54.040 main story was reported by Brian Bremner. Original music by 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:58.520 Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi. 0:13:59.280 --> 0:14:03.959 Francesco Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening. 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:15.599 H