Most States Have Laws That Make It Illegal To Provide Enough Healthcare
Chances are, during your “Social Distancing,” you’ve heard people chant the mantra “Flatten the Curve!” This isn’t merely referring to the effort to minimize the spread of the coronavirus. It has moreover become one of the main tools to prevent our entire healthcare system from potentially being over-run by COVID-19 cases. The problem is, our healthcare system doesn’t have enough resources and beds to properly care for a large surge of COVID-19 cases, and government regulation is largely to blame.
The biggest problem facing the U.S. from a healthcare policy standpoint is not the mortality rate of the virus alone, rather, the sheer scope of the virus threatens to overburden our healthcare system. This is where the term “flatten the curve” comes in. “Flattening the Curve” is a very specific reference to the means of tracking the spread of a virus, in our case, a pandemic. On a graph tracking the spread of a virus, the curve would spike if the virus spread rapidly within a given population. However, through means of intervention (such as social distancing), the spread of a virus can be contained; therefore, the curve would “flatten” due to the slowing of its spread. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state-wide lockdowns and social-distancing are the necessary measures to slow the spread of the virus, thus “flattening” COVID-19’s curve.