LET'S NOT BICKER AND ARGUE ABOUT WHO KILLED WHO

This New York Times story has important news about COVID in America:

Two years into the pandemic, the coronavirus is killing Americans at far higher rates than people in other wealthy nations, a sobering distinction to bear as the country charts a course through the next stages of the pandemic.

This wasn't always true.

Several countries had higher per capita Covid-19 deaths earlier in the pandemic, but the U.S. death toll now exceeds that of peer nations.

Our failures are especially obvious now.

And so

the share of Americans who have been killed by the coronavirus is at least 63 percent higher than in any of these other large, wealthy nations....

Americans are now dying from Covid at nearly double the daily rate of Britons and four times the rate of Germans.

The authors of this story, Benjamin Mueller and Eleanor Lutz, explain the problem, or at least part of it: Not enough of us are vaccinated and boosted. But they portray this as a failure of distribution, not as a failure of uptake.

Some of the reasons for America’s difficulties are well known. Despite having one of the world’s most powerful arsenals of vaccines, the country has failed to vaccinate as many people as other large, wealthy nations. Crucially, vaccination rates in older people also lag behind certain European nations.

The United States has fallen even further behind in administering booster shots, leaving large numbers of vulnerable people with fading protection as Omicron sweeps across the country.

Administering isn't the problem. The U.S. has plenty of vaccine givers. It's the receivers who are the problem -- or, to be precise, the non-receivers.

So what's the problem? This is as close as we get to an explanation from Mueller and Lutz:

More Americans have also come to express distrust — of the government, and of each other — in recent decades, making them less inclined to follow public health precautions like getting vaccinated or reducing their contacts during surges, said Thomas Bollyky, director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations.

"More Americans"? Is there anything in particular about these Americans that distinguishes them from Americans who've been vaccinated? Like, y'know, their political party?

A study published in the scientific journal The Lancet on Tuesday by Mr. Bollyky and Dr. Dieleman of the University of Washington found that a given country’s level of distrust had strong associations with its coronavirus infection rate.

“What our study suggests is that when you have a novel contagious virus,” Mr. Bollyky said, “the best way for the government to protect its citizens is to convince its citizens to protect themselves.”

Oh, is that all? Just convince them? What if their entire political identity is bound up in refusing to be convinced? What if the U.S. has a major political party that's determined to persuade people not to be vaccinated, something that's not true of any major party in any other wealthy country? And have I mentioned Fox News? (Murdoch media properties are anti-vaxx only in America.)

Beyond this, Mueller and Lutz mention America's high rate of obesity. They don't mention the large segment of our population that's uninsured, or the fact that many Americans can't take a paid sick day.

I'm not asking them to editorialize. The higher rate of vaccine refusal among Republicans has been measured. It's a fact. Our lack of national health insurance is a fact. It's a fact that we don't mandate sick pay. So why avoid these topics?