‘Failure of an American ideology’: why Covid has an outsized impact on the US

Hannah Ernst, the artist who created the Faces of Covid memorial, hangs names of those lost in the pandemic in Washington DC in May 2021. Photograph: Allison Bailey/Rex/Shutterstock

David Rosner continually talks to colleagues who are distraught about the American response to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“When you are in a school of public health and a public health environment, people really feel when they are failing,” said Rosner, who studies public health and social history at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health.