However, we must recognize when our greatest strength becomes our greatest weakness so that we dont let it limit what we can do and who we can be. This aspect of American exceptionalism is now killing us, on a per capita basis, faster than people in any other country. Currently, America is engaged in a lot of different feuds with other parts of the world, and this does not benefit the global collaboration we need in order to flatten the curve. Meanwhile, Republican-led states like Florida and Texas resisted shutting down until two weeks later and reopened relatively quickly. And it's informing the country's unruly response to this pandemic. Llewellyn King is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle on PBS. ", American individualism is the driving force behind another national value --. Protesters in Boston rally on May 4 against stay-at-home orders and a law requiring everyone to wear a mask in public. And those of us who can't stay home are largely following the safest protocols for how to act in the workplace. More than half the nations restaurants may never reopen employing 10% of the nations workforce and accounting for 4% of GDP and the biggest helping hand to them would be to throw the Defense Production Act at manufacturing millions of indoor air scrubbers. The assault on our way of life and the economy will continue; the price our children are paying now will escalate. A masked protester near the Virginia State Capitol during a "Reopen Virginia Rally" in Richmond, Va., April 22, 2020. It would increase livability for all, ending our isolation from each other. Another reason is that once vaccines, which the US is doing well in developing, are fully developed, there are many Americans who are a part of the anti-vax community, who are against any vaccines. These cultures put an emphasis on the goals and needs of the group over the individual. This study was done 7 years ago, so it hasnt been applied to COVID-19 yet, but if true, it could potentially explain why COVID-19 spread so rapidly in collectivist China before safety measures were taken to slow its spread. My informal survey of doctors finds they expect one-third of us will be keen to be vaccinated, one-third will hold back to see how it goes, and one-third may resist vaccination because theyre either opposed in principle or consider it to be a government intrusion on their liberty. Group goals can be important, but ultimately, the objectives and preferences of the individual are given greater weight than any group or organization they may be a part of. This aspect of American exceptionalism is now killing us, on a per capita basis, faster than people in any other country. So far, there has been a catastrophic failure of leadership at the White House and in many statehouses. It's all about us, the individuals. 2022. Lastly, global collaboration plays a big role in trying to control the pandemic, but it is hard for America to collaborate with other parts of the world. Powered by Click OK to continue. March 12, 2020 As COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, spreads in the United States, it is becoming clear that America's individualistic framework is deeply unsuited to coping with. So it's hard to imagine the US taking the same approach to the. , in order for a pandemic to stop from spreading, the majority of the population needs to get vaccinated so that the virus is limited in who it can infect and spread to. The government there countered COVID with nationwide stay-at-home orders, border controls, hygiene campaigns, accessible testing and contact tracing. How the Belief in American Exceptionalism Has Shaped the Pandemic Response. Since COVID-19 was announced to be active in the U.S. it is evident that our society has handled it quite differently than other societies. Americans have "great traditions" of coming together when crises threaten us, Rosner says. According to, This virus came from China and spread around the world and is affecting countless human beings. However, it might also complicate the fight against COVID-19, which urgently requires collective actions like social distancing or mask-wearing . (Parker Michels-Boyce/ For the Virginia Mercury) Americans can be a selfish lot. "There is potential that we will see something that looks more like Americans pulling together, a more common view of what kind of sacrifices are necessary," she says. We pretend that the violence of this sentiment and our attachment to individualism are products of a time or a place, but COVID, like every calamity before it, demonstrates the fragility of that lie. The late months of 2020 gave us vaccines, the industrial capacity to manufacture enough to bring us to herd immunity, and the incoming leadership of a federal executive with the will and the knowledge to activate both. We are trained in every way to only care as far as we know, and so the pandemic persists because we are aggressively ignorant. This is shown in. The US lagged behind it. American Individualism & COVID-19 (Lesson Plan) Additional Origins Item: Mobilizing for Common Purpose in the Covid Era. Non-pharmaceutical measures can help to flatten the curve, but only if people follow the orders to carry them out. Questions over reopening are fraught, too. We have governors forced to act as guerrilla chiefs rather than generals of a national army under unified leadership with common purpose. A few examples of such measures are staying at home, washing your hands often, social distancing and wearing masks. And again during World War II, Americans largely accepted sweeping changes for the communal good. A reality check: No proven vaccine yet exists. Just as a spider's web crumples when a few strands are broken, so the coronavirus has highlighted the risks arising from our economic . A friend in New Zealand emailed that her fellow citizens feel sorry for Americans, a comment that shamed me. We are in a war without leadership. Not every American subscribes to the historic definition of individualism that prizes oneself over the communal good. In this unsettling time, even the wearing of a face mask has, It's possible for even a deeply divided America to overcome party divides. The Virginia Department of Health issued a news release last week noting COVID-19 cases were surging in Norton city and Lee, Scott and Wise counties. Too many Americans belong to the cult of selfish individualism. No doubt there are better therapies in the pipeline to deal with COVID-19 once the patient has reached the hospital. It worked in New York. "People saw it as part of being an American, and people found meaning in those individual sacrifices. It is who we have refused to be, replicated over hundreds of years and millions of interactions, telling some that they are born to self-indulge and others that they must self-inure. These are vast, systemic problems that demand . It seems like most people are responsible and adheres to the new rules for the sake of public health, but there is a group of Americans that were seemingly offended by the rules, stating that their individual freedoms were being tarnished and some even stated that they dont care if they get sick or if they get anybody else sick. The recent retirement of Serena Williams brings to an end one of the most storied careers in the history of sports. It is our sort of individualism that has supplied the motivation of America's political, economic, and spiritual institutions in all these years. To compound the COVID-19 crisis, we have a cultural crisis. Beware the Suddenly "Moderate" Republican, We Can't Tell People in Red States to Just Move, SCOTUS's Extremism Is Not Based in Precedent, How This One SCOTUS Ruling Screws Over Victims of Discrimination, The GOP Knows Biden's SCOTUS Pick Is Perfect, Conservative Judges Are Obstructing Progress, Maple Syrup Monopolies Are a Sticky Business, Pet Rent Is the Newest Tool of Housing Discrimination, Young Americans Are Paying the High Cost for Inflation, The Complicated Genre of Anti-MLM YouTube, Fandom Hasnt Changed, Its Power and Influence Has, We Sure Do Love Our White Lady Grifter Stories, Ted Lasso Is So Good Because We Are So Broken, More Is More Is More: Maximalism, Explained, The Boom and Bust of American Religious Life. 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When I read about how people who value individualism will tend to follow his or her own goals regardless of the opinions of family or friends, I immediately thought about how that could relate to how different groups of Americans view wearing masks, social distancing, opening the country and the existence of the virus itself. CLICK HERE TO TURN ON NOTIFICATIONS. CNN's Athena Jones, Jennifer Agiesta and Daniel Burke contributed to this report. While some have taken to flying the Gadsden flag and living the "don't tread on me" ideal to the extreme, most individualistic societies value uniqueness, independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy. In individualist cultures, more importance is placed on the individual, as the name implies. We have politicians and pundits who struggle to conceive of desperately needing more than $2,000 to survive a nearly apocalyptic year, while others still insist that COVID is a hoax as health-care workers endure physical and mental breakdowns from the effects of mass death. Right now, we should hear from the political leadership about what they plan to do to slow the spread of COVID-19 and how, when this is over, they plan to rebuild: What will they do to help the 20 million to 30 million people in hospitality and retail whose jobs have gone, evaporated? American individualism is unfortunately making many of us unwilling to follow the advice of experts, such as wearing masks and getting vaccinated, as well as reducing our ability to work with the global community against this pandemic. 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