How many Americans have responded to Coronavirus (credit: Dave Granlund)

Recently, a new virus was discovered in Wuhan and has since then started infecting people in China, Taiwan, and later spread to other countries in the West.

At first, it seemed as if China and Taiwan’s economies and governments would be the first to fall to the virus, but after a few months, it turned out that Taiwan has been coping rather well with the Coronavirus, while the United States government has struggled to keep the situation from becoming a nation-wide emergency.

But why did the apparently strong and well-built government of the United States fail to handle an issue that the Taiwanese government resolved quickly, if not easily?

Reason 1: Trump

A big reason why the coronavirus is such a big problem in the US is because of former businessman Donald Trump.

One of the mistakes Trump made was dismantling government programs related to fighting the spread of global diseases, like shutting down the entire global health security unit of the National Security Council and reducing national health spending by $15 billion.

In addition to cutting medical funds, Trump also denied the severity of the new virus for a long time, which meant that during the most important time for keeping the outbreak at bay, most citizens did not know that the virus had already infiltrated the states.

Through all of February and half of March, Trump declared at every chance he had that the virus was “under control” or “is going to disappear very soon” until suddenly in a briefing on March 17 he suddenly announced that:

“I’ve always known this is a — this is a real — this is a pandemic. I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do is look at other countries. … No, I’ve always viewed it as very serious”.

Reason 2: Americans

However, Donald Trump can’t be blamed for everything that has happened. Americans, the victims of the outbreak, are actually responsible for the huge explosion of coronavirus in their country. According to the results of a recent poll, we see that more than 50% of Americans believe that the coronavirus outbreak is not a big threat.

Some people even invented and believed conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus; people are blaming 5G, China, Russia, political parties, and even Jews. Conspiracy theories like these can cause people to panic and do stupid stuff like drink Lysol, soak themselves in oregano oil, or even gargle bleach.

A big problem with conspiracy theories is that they give people ideas that maybe God is punishing people for bad deeds and so they start trying to pray the virus away, which just exposes them to more people and risks catching the virus.

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The new coronavirus has hit every country in the world and caused economic, food, and political crises. America got the worst blow of all. Trump started it by denying its existence, but the citizens of America made it much worse by ignoring it or by coming up with stupid conspiracy theories that caused a lot of panic and blame.

Instead, by staying calm, wearing proper protection, and avoiding weird stories that don’t make sense, everyone, even Americans, can help stop the coronavirus.