
In a Huff Post article Max Brooks the author of World War Z, pointed out the general public’s disregard of science and argued that the biggest threat to the United States is “the gap between the American people and those who protect them.”
“One of the reasons [COVID-19] has been such a devastating plague in the United States is it’s a generational problem,” Brooks said. “If this had hit us 40 years ago, there would have been enough Americans still alive and in positions of authority who still remember the dark days of polio and whooping cough — the pre-vaccine days when viruses and bacteria used to kill and cripple a large portion of our population.”
Most members of today’s U.S. population “grew up post-World War II and don’t have the muscle memory and gut terror of germs,” leading to the current situation in which the coronavirus has blindsided America, Brooks said. He argued that all the scientific knowledge in the world isn’t “worth a warm bucket of hamster vomit” if it isn’t succinctly communicated to the average American.