There is no way to portray the American response to the Covid 19 crisis as successful. We didn't keep it out, we didn't have enough equipment, we didn't do enough testing and our leadership provided bad advice to the public about what to do.
The original instruction that wearing a mask was not effective was just wrong. Assuming it was an honest mistake it still has been hard to recover from. Calling the virus a hoax that was just made up be the opposition was close to criminal in that it led certain people to be reckless.
In some circles the idea that the whole thing is a conspiracy to hurt the current party in power lingers and impacts its spread. Even now the message from the top is inconsistent and opens the door to conspiracy theories about the entire situation.
As widespread as the virus is, it isn't overwhelming. I lived in one of the hardest hit areas of the country but outside of the news coverage and a few victims who were related to me, but not near me, I didn't really experience the virus.
Some of this is because those afflicted were self isolating or asymptomatic. In fact as we all went into self isolation and social distancing, it became the invisible disease, prevalent in news coverage but not otherwise.
It seems like the prevalence might have been even greater as there is some belief that many more of us in the New York area were infected than ever knew it.
We do seem to be avoiding current outbreaks despite general belief that opening up the economy might have led to some. One explanation for this would be a herd immunity, but most estimates say it isn't so.
Simply looking at a few facts, the much higher mortality rate here, it is very possible that the additional testing in the rest of the country is finding cases that were simply not reported here.
This could explain the differences in mortality rates.
Maybe it is simply that in the New York area we believe the virus is real and are taking precautions.
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