[burger]

I am struggling to understand this response as anything other than an unstated concession that we lack the collective ability to slow the virus, so we're just going to resort to a de facto herd immunity strategy, and those who can afford to SiP or take significant social distancing measures for 12-18 months can do so, while everyone else fends for themselves. 

Am I missing something? Today I feel more dismayed by our prospects today than have in a quite a while.

I agree completely.  The author of this article does, too, and he comes right out and says it: the US is a failed state. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ns/610261/ 

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.

[burger]

I am struggling to understand this response as anything other than an unstated concession that we lack the collective ability to slow the virus, so we're just going to resort to a de facto herd immunity strategy, and those who can afford to SiP or take significant social distancing measures for 12-18 months can do so, while everyone else fends for themselves. 

Am I missing something? Today I feel more dismayed by our prospects today than have in a quite a while.

I agree completely.  The author of this article does, too, and he comes right out and says it: the US is a failed state. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc...ns/610261/ 

When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills—a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public—had gone untreated for years. We had learned to live, uncomfortably, with the symptoms. It took the scale and intimacy of a pandemic to expose their severity—to shock Americans with the recognition that we are in the high-risk category.

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational, and collective. The United States reacted instead like Pakistan or Belarus—like a country with shoddy infrastructure and a dysfunctional government whose leaders were too corrupt or stupid to head off mass suffering.