With the number of patients in the U.S diagnosed with COVID-19 now breaching six figures and beyond, it is quite apparent that the country as a whole stood ill-equipped to address such a vast domestic threat. Those who disagree with this perspective of course can only confirm their convictions upon reflection, when this has been said and done, and when countless lives have already been lost — as is the case now. It stands of great significance to speculate on factors that may have been attributable to the current situation regarding COVID-19 in the US, and in particular, to go beyond some of the typical talking points one may immediately be able to deduce a priori. The true issue is trivial: it is simply the fact of the US being far too decentralized to properly address such a problem at hand with any significant urgency. Yet this answer serves as only a generalization, and from which we must approach this fundamental flaw hoping to identify secondary issues that lay beyond the inherent.

Of course, the first issue that comes to mind in the consideration of a decentralized state being so inept equipped to approach COVID-19 is the lack of centralized health care. And this is not in the direct, “we call for Medicare For All” sense of the way, of which would we argue the lack of universal health was the issue in of in itself. No, the fundamental issue lies deeper, in the very structure of the system itself. Let us look at our current hospitals, shall we? This is where the issue will rest, and how it permeates the failures of the US’s approach to this pandemic. Medicare for All does not nationalize our hospitals and doctors. Hence, Hospitals are forced to pay rents, remain tied to pursuing the marginal “break-even” point, and in this pandemic, are forced to bid against each-other within the market, and against each-other for support from the state. In the U.S, the majority of hospitals are non-profit, but they are certainly not government owned. This is the key-distinction.

I do not argue here that, long term, the nationalization of hospitals and doctors serves as the best approach to catering to the deserts of a nation’s health and longevity, rather I argue that it serves as the best approach to a pandemic. Spain, with the hand of death on its shoulder, has nationalized all of its private hospitals. But where may one state even receive the ability to justify, within the framework of a nations legal system, such a vast act of centralized power?

I argue that it is, in a way, geography. Nothing more. But it is deeper than this, as in, the implications geography has held within the context of history. The US, quite simply, has never faced such a domestic threat, whereas the European nations (and most others in the world regardless), certainly have. This is referring to nothing more than war. Trump has called himself a wartime president, and this shows that, if COVID-19 was an invading army, the US would have already been annexed. Imagine well over 100,000 lives lost or wounded in such a short amount of time. There is no excuse for the Federal level to not have exercised more central authority in response to this virus. I guarantee if China were to have invaded (which is how Trump sees this to begin with, so maybe I give his admiration too much credit), the Trump admiration would have exercised any powers of which they had access to in order to combat them. The failures of the administration rests upon their inability to conceive of danger beyond coming by way of blood, steel, and capital.

In a beautiful twist, the administrations convictions of not wanting to display central powers in the pursuit of conservative political clout will truly backfire in the face of what Dr. Fauci (Trump’s “expert”) now estimates to be within the realm of possibility: 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. Of course, what I posit here can only be confirmed upon reflection, perhaps in years’ time. The failure here lies within the fundamentally decentralized framework of the US being misconstructed as anything more than performative. The US has never failed to exercise central power in the face of a threat. Conservatives, by the thousands, had no problem with the Patriot Act. West coast, bourgeois, citizens of the US had no problem with FDR’s internment of Americans. Yet here, the administration, in the face of an issue with no face, insists on playing it upon the Other, upon China, and will play hardball against them while their own people die. There is no excuse for the inaction of the state here. History has resulted in the US’s inept response, but it did not cause it. Things could have been different, yet things are as they are due to the refusal of the Trump administration to realize what this truly is: an unprecedented event that actually had plenty of history to draw on for help. The administrations failure was their inability to view it as it really was, as something more than mere identity politics that can’t be solved with mere performative, face value actions. History has spoiled the United States. It is now being punished, but only by itself.

“When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.” — Jean-Paul Sartre