Tony's Diary Package — page 215

turnaround -- stands in stark contrast to the muddle facing many parts of America, where the death toll has now topped 120,000. "I would rather spend this summer in Rome with my family than in Phoenix." Ashish Jha, head of Harvard's Global Health Institute Jha and other public health experts say that America's piecemeal, politicized approach to fighting coronavirus has left the United States ever-further behind the Western European nations that were similarly threatened by the virus but moved more judiciously to fend it off. They also say that Western Europe is a better comparison point for the United States than nations like South Korea and Singapore, which had been scarred by previous viral outbreaks and were more prepared to handle the arrival of Covid-19. After the damaging initial spike in cases, European Union members' total daily case count is now about oneeighth of the U.S. daily cases -- despite having roughly the same population. "Both we and Western Europe were really slow to act," said Jeremy Konyndyk of the Center for Global Development, who helped oversee international aid efforts during the Obama administration. "But the worst performers in Europe with the bad luck to get hit first, like Italy and Spain ... they are now down 85, 95 percent in terms of case counts from the peak." "In the US, we've struggled to get it down one-third -- and in the last few days, it looks like it could rebound again," Konyndyk added. Partisan fights bog down U.S. response Public health experts cited multiple factors for why the fortunes of the United States have differed from Western Europe -- starting with the intense politicization that worked against a disciplined response, and the federal government's decision to let individual states take the lead in reopening. The decisions of some states to end their lockdowns as early as possible -- at levels of infection considerably higher than those that triggered reopening in Western Europe -- appear to have consigned the United States to a far longer battle with the virus. President Donald Trump and some Republican governors have bristled at public health experts' advice, questioning predictions on viral spread and pushing back on recommended lockdowns. GOP-led states like Georgia and Texas reopened their economies despite requests from public health experts to wait for more testing and fewer cases. Meanwhile, Trump's allies and pundits on Fox News pushed malaria drugs as possible Covid-19 cures, despite scant evidence, leading to largely fruitless efforts that consumed the time of senior federal officials -- including scientists whose time would have been better spent pursuing other therapies.