In the evening of January 20, 2020, China’s respiratory expert Zhong Nanshan confirmed and announced to the public that the virus had passed from person-to-person. I was in Beijing that Monday evening.

By 9pm that day, when I looked out onto the street, many citizens already had surgical masks on. By the next day, as I was travelling through China on a high-speed train, somewhere between 20% to 50% of people I saw started wearing masks.

Within three days, on January 23, Wuhan was locked down. In the following few days, Chinese cities started requiring citizens to wear surgical masks and implementing other types of social distancing measures. For example, on January 26, 2020, Suzhou announced that all passengers using the city’s subway system must wear surgical masks.

In the U.S., the first coronavirus was confirmed on January 20, 2020 — coincidentally on the same day as China’s outbreak news. Since then, the total case count in the U.S. has risen from 1 to now over 800 (as of March 10, 2020) and about three quarters of U.S. states now have confirmed cases.

However, life is hardly changed in the U.S. If you stroll through New York City, almost no one is wearing a mask — despite the fact the state of New York has more than 170 confirmed cases now and most cases concentrate in or near New York City. In Florida, reportedly, PortMiami is as busy as usual with thousands of travelers still getting on cruise ships for their vacations, even though cruise ships could be extremely dangerous during a pandemic.

Compared to China’s top-down precise-management, clearly, in the U.S., it is much more “laissez-faire.”

These observations led me to wonder what had caused this huge difference in people’s behaviors between U.S. and China, when the two peoples are facing the same deadly threat?

I think the answers probably lie in both history and culture. On the history side, China was struck hard by SARS in 2003 and most people, including me, still have a vivid memory of SARS and its horror. Ever since, in China and across many East Asian countries, wearing surgical masks in the public became an accepted social norm. People in East Asia also understand that draconian measures during a virus outbreak works and they also believe it is warranted. In the U.S., in most people’s minds, there is no SARS or SARS-like events in recent memory. During SARS, the U.S. had fewer than 30 confirmed cases and zero deaths. Having no recent memory of a painful virus outbreak — that is probably why America is not that concerned about the virus today.

The 1918 Pandemic (aka the Spanish flu) was truly horrific. However, the deadly 1918 Pandemic is only vaguely remembered by the general American public today. First, it happened 100 years ago. Few people who experienced its horror is still alive today to tell others the story. Second, the 1918 Pandemic was severely under-reported. The “mother of all pandemics” killed about 675,000 Americans. Globally, it killed far more people than World War I killed. Of the U.S. soldiers who died in Europe, half collapsed because of the flu rather than the enemy they were fighting. Unfortunately, in 1918, the U.S. and many Western countries imposed strict wartime censorship. European and American press were unable to report the virus outbreaks. (history’s quip: Spain was a neutral country and its press freely spoke about what was happening; it was because of Spanish media coverage that the outbreak got its nickname — Spanish Flu.) For these reasons, the super-horrific 1918 Pandemic is largely missing in America’s memory today.

On the culture side, the question is much more abstract. To still answer it, I will focus on a few observations that I have made in recent weeks. First, there appears to be a broad cultural consensus among Americans that wearing a surgical mask is weird. If you wear a surgical mask and walk down a street in the U.S., most pedestrians will stare at you, thinking “what is the problem with you” or “are you really that ill?” So, people in America seem to have chosen not to wear facial masks, because it is not socially acceptable.

Second, in the U.S., there appears to be a cultural norm that any sign of being physically ill is a sign of weakness. But this is not the case in Asia. In Asia, it is common to see an office employee wearing a facial mask because he or she might be coughing. In the U.S., however, if a person is coughing or sneezing, he or she will likely still report to work but wearing no facial mask — because he or she does not want to feel socially awkward. Try to recall the last time you saw an American worker wearing a surgical mask at work. Could you recall any examples? So, people in the U.S. seem to have chosen to go to work even if they are coughing, because they have always done so, and this kind of behavior is accepted by society.

Weeks ago, I was concerned for people living in China. At this point in time during the virus outbreak, I am more concerned for people living in the U.S. — about 8% Americans do not have healthcare insurance; over 60% Americans do not have savings to pay for a $500 emergency; ICU rooms can potentially cost a patient $4,000 to $20,000 per 24 hours.

I hope everyone on this planet to be healthy. I also understand that “you can not see your own eyes.” While I am forming my opinions, I am inevitably subject to my own biases — primarily my experience in Asia.

To conclude this piece, I certainly would choose to join the “hope camp” in hoping the virus can quickly go away. But, what a cultural difference!

(End)

Source:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/#7a12e3a14e0d
https://www.livescience.com/39510-icu-treatment-overused.html
https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/02/12/coronavirus-fear-of-asians-rooted-in-long-american-history-of-prejudicial-policies/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-usa/trump-says-coronavirus-will-go-away-as-pressure-grows-for-economic-relief-idUSKBN20X1ZB
https://virus.stanford.edu/uda/