ROME (AP) – The failure of the United States to contain the spread of the coronavirus has been met with astonishment and alarm in Europe, as the most powerful country in the world is approaching a world record of 5 million confirmed infections.
Perhaps nowhere outside the US is America’s bungled virus response seen with more consternation than in Italy, which was ground zero of the European epidemic. Italians were unprepared when the outbreak erupted in February and the country still has one of the worst official death toll in the world at 35,000.
But after a strict 10-week national unlocking, pending detection of new clusters and general acceptance of mask mandates and social distance, Italy has become a model of virus containment.
“Didn’t they worry about their health?” a masked Patrizia Antonini asked about people in the United States as she walked with friends along the shores of Lake Bracciano, north of Rome. “They need to take our precautionary measures … They need a real lockdown.”
Much of the injustice in Europe stems from the fact that America had the advantage of time, European experience and medical knowledge to treat the virus that the continent itself did not have when the first COVID-19 patients started using it. filling intensive care units. However, more than four months after a sustained outbreak, the US is on the verge of reaching a staggering milestone of 5 million confirmed infections, easily the highest in the world. Health officials believe the actual number is closer to 50 million, given limitations to testing and the fact that up to 40% of all cases are asymptomatic.
“We Italians have always seen America as a model,” said Massimo Franco, columnist with Daily Corriere della Sera. “But with this virus, we have discovered a country that is very fragile, with poor infrastructure and a public health system that does not exist.”
Italian Public Health Minister Roberto Speranza did not paint her from criticizing the US, and officially condemned Washington as a ‘wrong’ decision to withhold funding from the World Health Organization and to surprise him personally about President Donald Trump’s virus reaction.
After Trump finally donned a protective mask last month, Speranza told La7 television: ‘I’m not surprised by Trump’s behavior now; I was once surprised by his behavior. ”
With the list of 160,000 dead, politicized opposition to masks and increasing caseload of America, European nations have attracted American tourists and visitors from other countries with barrier cases from free travel to the block.
France and Germany are now introducing tests on arrival for travelers from countries “at risk”, including the US.
“I am well aware that this affects individual freedoms, but I believe this is a fair intervention,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said in the announcement of the tests last week.
Mistakes were made in Europe as well, from delayed lockdowns to inadequate protections for the elderly for nursing homes and critical shortages of tests and protective equipment for medical staff.
The virus is still raging in some Balkan countries and thousands of maskless Protestants demanded an end to virus restrictions in Berlin earlier this month. Hard-hit Spain, France and Germany have seen infections rebounds with new cases exceeding 1,000 per day, and cases from Italy up Friday more than 500. The UK still sees an estimated 3,700 new infections every day, and some scientists say the country’s favorite pubs may have to close again when schools reopen in September without causing a new wave.
In the US, new cases are running at around 54,000 a day – an immensely higher number, even if they take into account the larger population. And while that is down from a high of well over 70,000 last month, cases are rising in nearly 20 states, and deaths are climbing in most.
In contrast, at least Europe seems to have the virus under control.
“If medical professionals could work in the States, you would be late in March to tackle this,” said Scott Lucas, Professor of International Studies at the University of Birmingham, England. “But of course, the medical and professional health care professionals were not allowed to go on without control,” he said, referring to Trump’s frequent undercutting of his own experts.
When the virus first appeared in the United States, Trump and his supporters quickly dismissed it as a “hoax” as a virus that would soon disappear once warmer weather arrived. At one point, Trump suggested that ultraviolet light when injecting disinfectants would remove the virus. (He later said he was facetious).
The frequent complaints from Trump about Dr. Anthony Fauci has regularly made headlines in Europe, where the American infectious disease expert is a respected eminence gray. Italy’s leading COVID-19 hospital offered Fauci a job when Trump fired him.
Trump has defended the U.S. response, accusing China, where the virus was first discovered, of America’s problems, saying U.S. numbers are so high because there is so much testing. Trump supporters and Americans who have refused to wear masks against all medical advice are back on this line.
“There’s no reason to be afraid of every disease there is,” said Julia Ferjo, a mother of three in Alpine, Texas, who says she is ‘violent’ against wearing a mask. . Ferjo, 35, teaches fitness classes in a large gym with open doors, where she does not allow participants to wear masks.
“If you breathe so hard, I would pass,” she said. “I do not want people to just fall like flies.”
And health officials watched with alarm as thousands of cyclists gathered Friday in the small South Dakota town of Sturgis for a 10-day motorcycle rally. The state has no mask mandates and many cyclists express opposition to measures intended to prevent the spread of the virus.
Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, who leads a team seeking treatments for COVID-19, decides such behavior, as well as land-treating the virus.
“There is no national strategy, no national leadership and there is no coercion for the public to act in unison and implement the measures together,” he said. “That’s what it costs and we have left that completely as a nation.”
When he comes to Zoom talks with colleagues from all over the world, “Everyone can not believe what they see in the US and they can not believe the words out of the lead,” he said.
Even the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, took the unusual step of criticizing the US when she urged Washington to reconsider its decision to break ties with the WHO. She also expressed deadly criticism of US efforts to buy supplies of any vaccine that can prove effective, and promises that the EU will work to provide access to everyone “regardless of where they live.”
Many Europeans proudly point to their national health care systems that not only test but treat COVID-19 for free, unlike the US system where the virus crisis has only exacerbated income and racial inequality in access to health care.
“The coronavirus has brutally eradicated the vulnerability of a country that has slipped for years,” wrote Italian author Massimo Gaggi in his new book “Crack America” (Broken America) about American problems that COVID had been long in the forefront of.
Gaggi said he started the book last year and then thought the title would be taken as a provocative alarm clock. Then the virus struck.
“By March, the title was no longer a provocation,” he said. “It was, of course.”
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Fane reported from Boise, Idaho. AP reporters from across Europe contributed.
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