I think I've noticed that conservative commentators are happy to shelve their odes to American exceptionalism when the topic at hand is the coronavirus pandemic. Here, for example, is Paul Mirengoff, at the Power Line blog, in a post from Nov. 17:
In the US, deaths per capita from the virus now stand at 763 (per one million people). That number is considerably lower than Spain's (891). It's comparable to the UK's (787) and Italy's (760). France has fared somewhat better so far (690). However, with almost as many people dying from the virus per day lately as in the US (with its vastly greater population) there's a good chance that France will soon reach or surpass the level of US deaths per capita.
Among nations that it's reasonable to compare the US to, only Germany (157 deaths per one million) can boast about its performance.
Chants of "USA! USA!" are dialed down to, "Well, we're not doing much worse than some of these other countries." Which other countries? The ones "that it's reasonable to compare the US to." I may be violating Mirengoff's invisible criteria for determining which national comparisons are "reasonable," but, right now, deaths per million population in Canada stand at 583, Japan is at 64, Norway at 116, Israel 633, Australia 35, Germany 857—and the US, 1,602. More people have died of COVID in South Dakota (1,896) than in South Korea (1,619). (The population of South Korea is more than 50 times that of South Dakota.) Mirengoff's prediction regarding France, which now has 1,344 deaths per million, has not come to pass—we've padded our lead considerably. The US, with less than five per cent of the world's population, has a quarter of all the COVID cases and a fifth of the deaths. I'm relying on Worldometer, the same source to which Mirengoff links.
The view that our performance has been satisfactory, not up to the level of the Germans but on the whole quite typical, isn't what you'd expect from a champion of American exceptionalism. It's also delusional. The data prove it's false. We've done horribly—worse than almost everywhere else and clearly better than nowhere. Yet in a post from a few days ago Mirengoff, referring approvingly to a fellow traveler who makes the same bogus argument, boasts of having advanced this view repeatedly and, to prove it, links to the post I've quoted from above. "I was wrong before he was!"
I wish COVID was an exception to the general rule of US excellence, but we perform badly in all the staying-alive categories. In life expectancy, we are 49th among nations, just behind Lebanon and just ahead of Cuba. At least we're in the top 50. For infant mortality, we're not—we rank 55th in the world, which means that in 54 countries a newborn has a better chance of surviving to celebrate a first birthday. We say we're the greatest nation, a shining city upon a hill. If only we could keep our people alive!
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