The optimistic word coming from China is that the Covid-19 coronavirus can be beaten, provided severe restrictions on personal liberty, assembly and mobility can be imposed and enforced. But it does not take a totalitarian state to arrest the spread of the disease. We are learning the lesson that there is no substitute for solidarity. States can only do so much. Culture also matters, as does personal responsibility.
In the spectrum of collectivism versus individualism, China stands at one end. At the other end is the United States. Self-reliance and the absence of anything resembling a welfare state are sometimes hailed as a defining characteristic of the American way of life. That absence may make a country where 70 million people do not have health insurance, and where there is no statutory sick pay in the majority of states, particularly vulnerable to a coronavirus epidemic. People who have to pay for a routine visit to the doctor, to be prescribed drugs they cannot afford, will be less likely to seek medical help and more likely to work on when they have symptoms of the disease.
12 March 2020, The Tablet
The coronavirus pandemic: We need to look after each other
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