One of the leading American virologists, Konstantin Chumakov, cited high population mobility and too weak quarantine measures as the reasons for the widespread spread of coronavirus in the United States. In an interview with RBC, the specialist noted that the level of morbidity in recent years is obviously on the decline.
According to Chumakov, the epidemic in the United States began in several places at once. Americans are actively traveling around the world, including to China and Europe, so they brought the virus immediately to the West and East coasts.
The expert recalled that China and most European countries introduced “draconian measures” to reduce the number of cases. Violators of the regime of self-isolation and social distance were pursued by the police, while in the United States such restrictions were not applied.
Another reason Chumakov called the higher prosperity of citizens. The richer the country, the more elderly people there are. They, and everyone else, often go to places of entertainment, such as restaurants, where they can get infected. Because of this, the epidemic is more mild in middle-and low-income countries.
At the same time, Chumakov denied reports of a second wave of coronavirus in the United States. In his opinion, we are talking about the same wave, but it affected different regions at different times. While new York, new Hampshire, and Massachusetts were affected in April and may, California, Florida, and Texas reached their peak much later.
“So when you look at the curve in the United States, you see two waves. This does not mean that these two waves are real, just that different States started getting sick at different times, ” he said.
In the same interview, Chumakov said that he does not believe in the possibility of mandatory vaccination in countries and in General in the modern world, with the exception of North Korea.
The US remains the absolute leader in the number of COVID-19 diseases in the world. As of August 22, 5.623 million cases and 175.4 thousand deaths were diagnosed in the country. In the past two weeks, the infection curve has been declining across the country, but in South and North Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Wyoming and Hawaii, the incidence is increasing.
Worldwide, the number of victims of the disease has exceeded 800 thousand people. In total, it has been diagnosed in more than 23 million people. In Russia on August 22, 944.6 thousand people were infected, this is the fourth place in the world, the situation is worse, in addition to the United States, only in Brazil and India.