Speaker 1: Welcome to Prognosis. I'm Laura Carlson. It's day one hundred
Speaker 1: and fourteen since coronavirus was declared a global pandemic. Today
Speaker 1: we go straight to our main story. As the United
Speaker 1: States prepares to celebrate its independence this weekend, Bloomberg Executive
Speaker 1: editor Brian Bremner reflects on what the spread of the
Speaker 1: virus tells us about our country. The US is home
Speaker 1: to the highest number of COVID nineteen cases two point
Speaker 1: six million and counting, and the most deaths at more
Speaker 1: than one hundred and twenty seven thousand. The reasons for
Speaker 1: that are, at least in part, very American ones, politicized science,
Speaker 1: a fragmented media landscape, and inequality. I talked to Brian
Speaker 1: about how decades of political division have made the country
Speaker 1: a coronavirus superpower in the worst way, an outcome that
Speaker 1: was entirely avoidable. How have we come to a point
Speaker 1: in the United States where an element of public health
Speaker 1: a face mask? How has that become so politicized? I
Speaker 1: think the reason things have become so politicized are kind
Speaker 1: of come from two buckets. I mean, the near term
Speaker 1: one has been the response of the Trump administration to
Speaker 1: this crisis. The mixed messaging between the president and his
Speaker 1: top scientific advisors certainly has created a fog around what
Speaker 1: the real risks are the vulnerabilities that have developed in
Speaker 1: the US. It actually go back decades and have made
Speaker 1: this pandemic perhaps even worse than you know one would expect.
Speaker 1: What are some of these elements that perhaps have led
Speaker 1: us to this moment in the United States? Science has
Speaker 1: become politicized, not always, but in certainly kind of controversial,
Speaker 1: big public policy moments. There often isn't a standard set
Speaker 1: effects that everyone agrees to, and that's not a recent phenomenon.
Speaker 1: It actually goes back, if you think about it, to
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties when the scientific community started to recognize
Speaker 1: health threats from cigarettes. Science was kind of caught up
Speaker 1: in a taffy pole between competing interests over a very big,
Speaker 1: multibillion dollar industry. We're also seeing this kind of politicization
Speaker 1: of science in the debate over climate change and the
Speaker 1: risks that go with that. We're all familiar with the
Speaker 1: anti vax or movement, you know, the concerns about the
Speaker 1: safety of vaccines. That's been going on for quite quite
Speaker 1: some time. So what we're experiencing now is not new
Speaker 1: in that sense when governments and particularly say the scientific
Speaker 1: community is recommending something like say the wearing of face masks,
Speaker 1: and we don't see necessarily the same politicization or even
Speaker 1: say a negative reaction to these kinds of recommendations globally
Speaker 1: except in the US. Is this something that speaks to
Speaker 1: perhaps Americans unique distrust of science. In Europe, where the
Speaker 1: disease curve on COVID nineteen is trended down, I think
Speaker 1: there is a more of a willingness to accept the
Speaker 1: advice of public health authorities. Not every country does it perfectly.
Speaker 1: One could argue that the United Kingdom has had some issues,
Speaker 1: but by and large, I think people the public does
Speaker 1: buy in to what the experts tell them about public
Speaker 1: health guidance. Situation in the US is interesting. You know,
Speaker 1: one would would immediately assume that, well, maybe there's an
Speaker 1: issue with education that most Americans don't grasp scientific concepts,
Speaker 1: but that's actually not true. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at a lot of the international testing data on high
Speaker 1: school students in the US, they score above average of
Speaker 1: the O E c D in basic science aptitude. If
Speaker 1: you look at the science aptitude of registered Democrats and
Speaker 1: registered Republicans. There are no big differences there either, and
Speaker 1: I think most a majority of Americans see the value
Speaker 1: of science. However, when science intersects with controversial public policy
Speaker 1: in the U S. Something kind of runs off the
Speaker 1: rail and it doesn't quite happen to the same degree
Speaker 1: and in other parts of the industrialized world. And a
Speaker 1: lot of polling data has kind of looked at this,
Speaker 1: and it does seem that Democrats and Democratic leaning voters
Speaker 1: are willing to accept what Dr Fauci tells them. Uh,
Speaker 1: And it's about thirty points less lower in the in
Speaker 1: the Republican Party in the public or Republican orbit. A
Speaker 1: lot of that has to do with kind of the
Speaker 1: changing political basis of the major parties. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people forget that. You know, in the nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: the Republican Party was the party of the well educated
Speaker 1: the suburban world. That shifted over the last couple of
Speaker 1: decades to a less educated base of reporters. But also
Speaker 1: the rhetoric employed by Republican politicians can be different at
Speaker 1: tons and we've seen that certainly with the trumpet illistration.
Speaker 1: Just not having a grasp of the basic facts, um
Speaker 1: kind of a wishful thinking in the public discourse, and
Speaker 1: as I said, it's created a tremendous amount of confusion,
Speaker 1: and particularly I was wondering if you might speak to
Speaker 1: maybe the differences we've seen and perhaps lack of leadership
Speaker 1: we've seen both on the federal level with the Trump administration,
Speaker 1: but also of course we have each of the fifties
Speaker 1: states taking their their own path essentially that you know,
Speaker 1: we haven't necessarily seen a unified approach in how state
Speaker 1: should go about addressing this pandemic, reopening, locking down, those
Speaker 1: kinds of elements. Well, that's interesting thought, because when you
Speaker 1: have a rapidly moving, shape shifting pandemic across a huge
Speaker 1: country on the size of the US, where you have
Speaker 1: urban centers with heavy population density, uh and then rural
Speaker 1: parts of the country where the health care systems aren't
Speaker 1: quite as developed, you would think a rational way of
Speaker 1: doing this would be to have a kind of a
Speaker 1: one size fits all directive where everything is kind of synchronized,
Speaker 1: so everyone kind of went into the same degree of
Speaker 1: lockdown more or less. I'm sure there would be nuances
Speaker 1: here and there, because there are differences, UM, But by
Speaker 1: and large, same policy, same lockdown, same re emergence, and
Speaker 1: of course that's not what happened here. And if you
Speaker 1: contrast that with different political systems, maybe at the far
Speaker 1: extreme China, which an autocratic system, when their crisis broke out,
Speaker 1: they basically quarantined fifteen million people. They had no no
Speaker 1: say in the matter, they had no choice in the matter,
Speaker 1: and it was a draconian, you know, top down we're
Speaker 1: not messing around approach. Now, in open societies and democratic society,
Speaker 1: you can't do that, of course, But if you look
Speaker 1: at Germany, which has done pretty well, there was kind
Speaker 1: of a concerted approach that was communicated very clearly. There
Speaker 1: was no contradicting between what Merkel said and her top
Speaker 1: science advisors uh and the population UH. Maybe a little
Speaker 1: bit more culturally cohesive than heterogeneous society like the US,
Speaker 1: but that point aside, you know, they got it and
Speaker 1: there was a concerted move and they had a good outcome.
Speaker 1: The US has been very chaotic, and so I was
Speaker 1: wondering maybe if we could also unpack perhaps the extent
Speaker 1: to which this pandemic has exposed existing cracks in the
Speaker 1: US system um in terms of income, inequality, racial inequality.
Speaker 1: I mean, how is the US, say, uniquely positioned to
Speaker 1: be so adversely affected by this pandemic in contrast to say,
Speaker 1: some of these other countries. There is a very interesting
Speaker 1: link between inequality, which has been a corrosive problem for
Speaker 1: several decades in the US, and the experience of the pandemic.
Speaker 1: If you have a good job, you're part of the
Speaker 1: knowledge economy, you work in an urban center, you are
Speaker 1: able to work from home, your company is still doing
Speaker 1: pretty well. The pandemic has certainly been disruptive to your life,
Speaker 1: but it hasn't been an outright crisis. Unfortunately. The burden
Speaker 1: of this pandemic is really falling on lower income, minority
Speaker 1: segments of the society. I mean, that's clear in the data. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's clear in the black mortality rate, which is more
Speaker 1: than twice that of the white population of the United States.
Speaker 1: So people are experiencing the pandemic and in different ways,
Speaker 1: and that's creating a lot more cultural resentment and misunderstanding
Speaker 1: about how serious this is. If you're you know, highly educated,
Speaker 1: as I said, white collar worker, and you've got a
Speaker 1: secure job, the money is still coming through the door,
Speaker 1: this may not seem quite as life altering as if
Speaker 1: you were working in the hospitality industry and kind of
Speaker 1: living paycheck to paychecks, certainly, and so is there a
Speaker 1: way forward for the US? I suppose is the big question.
Speaker 1: We are looking at record case counts. Now, is there
Speaker 1: a path forward for the US to navigate this crisis? Well,
Speaker 1: there seemed to be too broad possibilities. I mean, one
Speaker 1: is a decision has been made that we have to
Speaker 1: kind of let this thing run its course. Is as
Speaker 1: awful as it can be, it will be. But the
Speaker 1: alternative of shutting down the economy in any kind of
Speaker 1: serious this way creates another set of problems, and we
Speaker 1: need to just kind of soldier through this. That is
Speaker 1: the kind of the choice that some people in Washington,
Speaker 1: particularly on the Republican side, are kind of positioning out
Speaker 1: there that it's an either or either we muscle our
Speaker 1: way through this or we do so much economic damage
Speaker 1: that is just going to be as awful. I think
Speaker 1: the public health experts offer a different kind of possibility
Speaker 1: and describe that as kind of a false choice that
Speaker 1: until we get really deadly serious about you know, social distancing,
Speaker 1: mass handwashing, altering our lifestyle in such a way to
Speaker 1: get this the spread, the community spread down to a
Speaker 1: reasonable level, the economy is never going to come back
Speaker 1: because you're going to be in this fits and starts
Speaker 1: kind of scenario. So one thing we might to look for,
Speaker 1: I think, is whether you start to see mandatory rules
Speaker 1: at the local level that you know you need to
Speaker 1: wear a mask. If you don't wear a mask, you
Speaker 1: will be fine. If you are a business and you
Speaker 1: have not rethought your business process is to make it
Speaker 1: as safe as possible, your license is going to get pulled.
Speaker 1: I mean, more of a hardcore government lead policing of
Speaker 1: of of the preventative behaviors that we need to see
Speaker 1: to get through this crisis, because what we've had so
Speaker 1: far has been kind of a giant honor system where
Speaker 1: we've been kind of assuming that Americans will kind of
Speaker 1: figure this out, they'll read up on it, they'll do
Speaker 1: whatever they have to do at the household level to
Speaker 1: keep everyone as safe as possible. And you know, I
Speaker 1: think a lot of Americans have done that, but unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it doesn't take a a lot of people to trigger
Speaker 1: the super spreader incidents that set this virus on fire.
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, that's kind of where we're at right now.
Speaker 1: That was Brian Bremner. His essay, the virus and America's
Speaker 1: Divisions can be read on Bloomberg dot com. And that's
Speaker 1: it for our show. For coverage of the outbreak from
Speaker 1: one bureaus around the world, visit Bloomberg dot com Flash
Speaker 1: Coronavirus and if you like the show, please leave us
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Speaker 1: global reporting. The Prognosis Daily edition is produced by Topher
Speaker 1: foreheads Jordan Gospore, Magnus Hendrickson and me Laura Carlson. Today's
Speaker 1: main story was reported by Brian Bremner. Original music by
Speaker 1: Leo Sidrin. Our editors are Rick Shine and Francesca Levi.
Speaker 1: Francesco Levie is Bloomberg's head of podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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