www.nytimes.com/2022/05/15/world/australia/covid-deaths.html

I hate to rag on about this again, but here it is in an article about the disparity in Covid outcomes between Australia (and New Zealand) and the US, and it locates the root cause in the culture of trust in the former countries and its lack in the latter. People ask me from time to time what the difference between NZ and the US is, and this is what I tell them. I illustrate it with the story of the stolen canoe carrier from the first weeks of my being here, and how I came to understand the problem. And so, it’s not just a cultural annoyance, it’s responsible for millions of deaths. And maybe the eventual disintegration of the society.