ANALYSIS: One Virus, Two Americas-- How Federalism Both Saved and Doomed the United States

One Virus, Two Americas How federalism both saved and doomed the United States. Ashish Jha Foreign Affairs

The coronavirus pandemic has affected nearly every nation in the world, with results as variable as each government’s response. While some countries rapidly harnessed the powers of science and good governance to contain the virus, others shunned the advice of health experts and failed to slow the spread of the disease. Eight months into the pandemic, the United States finds itself in the latter category, leading the world in COVID-19 deaths, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of population.

But if the U.S. response deserves to be called a failure at the national level, the picture is more complicated in the 50 states: certain U.S. states have brought their rates of infection under control, leveraging their own resources to compensate for federal ineffectiveness.

In the United States of America, two nations are responding to one virus. The national government has largely abdicated responsibility for the pandemic response. But in a country with a federalized public health system, states that embrace science and the advice of health experts have largely succeeded in containing the virus, while infection rates have spiraled out of control in those that do not. The divergence of these two Americas reveals the strengths as well as the weaknesses of the U.S. federal system in the midst of the deadliest disease outbreak in a century. ...

 ... in the absence of responsible national leadership, one group of states has taken a decidedly antiscience approach, ignoring evidence and epidemiology. Another loose coalition of states has moved in the opposite direction, letting science drive policy. The difference in outcomes could not be starker. States that have chosen to ignore scientific consensus have endured large outbreaks, becoming global epicenters of the pandemic and rivaling the worst-performing nations, such as Brazil. The science-driven states, by contrast, have brought their outbreaks largely under control, with lingering patterns of infection that resemble those of Germany and other European nations that have successfully contained the virus....