US unprepared for next pandemic: Atlanta Journal-Constitution

NEW YORK -- The United States was very much unprepared for the COVID pandemic, with over 1.1 million Americans dead due to the coronavirus and even now, over 9,000 people hospitalized daily with COVID-19, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Thursday.

"Our national media, progressive or conservative, virtually never mentions that the US has one of the worst COVID death rates versus other countries," said the report.

The US mortality rate stands at 341 deaths per 100,000 people. All major democracies have a lower death rate, as do most less developed nations, according to the report.

"Both political parties blame the other for our national failure. But neither one has pushed to establish a 9/11-type commission to analyze what went wrong, fearing the inevitable political backlash," it said.

This is why the country failed in countering the disease: the United States had no technical or political plan on how to proceed; it was both too decentralized and too polarized to act effectively as a nation; instead of forming bipartisan, multi-state, objective taskforces, it devolved into political tribes, it added.