Julio Francisco waits for people to show up for COVID-19 tests on January 13, 2022 in Miami, Florida. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images COVID has now killed 977,000 Americans. Nearly 1,000 deaths are still being added to that toll each day. The pandemic’s economic costs are similarly high and rising. In late 2020, a Harvard University study projected that COVID would cost the U.S. $16 trillion, assuming that the virus would be “substantially contained by the fall of 2021.
This assessment was far too optimistic. As America closes in on 1 million COVID deaths, our government isn’t just neglecting to invest in preparations for the next pandemic; it’s failing to fund efforts to combat our current one. Negotiations over a stand-alone COVID-funding package remain ongoing. But the government has already stopped funding testing and treatment for the uninsured. Meanwhile, congressional interest in preparing for — and/or, preventing — the next pandemic is tepid. The Senate advanced a bipartisan pandemic-preparedness bill earlier this month. But that legislation does not include any “major new funding,” according to The Hill.
Meanwhile, Republican legislators in multiple red states are fighting to roll back mandates requiring public-school children to receive vaccines against polio, measles, mumps, and rubella. So in some parts of America, the pandemic has actually led policymakers to take public health less seriously. Alas, a virus killing thousands of Americans could not command the same sense of urgency as an armed conflict half a world away. This is partly a testament to the strength of America’s military-industrial complex and associated lobbies. But it also seems to reflect deeply ingrained tendencies within human psychology. Simply put, human beings seem to respond more readily to the threat of violent aggression from other humans than they do to more diffuse and “natural” sources of mortal peril.