Poll finds a third of Americans think they handled COVID-19 better than Canada, and are also delusional

Authored by thestar.com and submitted by viva_la_vinyl

Canadians overwhelmingly approve of this nation’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, says a new poll by Pew Research Centre. In fact, 88 per cent of us think this, an astounding number given that the media approach to the crisis has been mostly doom-laden. (When school begins, we’ll see if they were right.) We join most other countries in the developed world in being fairly pleased given the circumstances.

But 47 per cent of Americans think the same way, a surprisingly high number given that the Trump approach to containing the pandemic — dishonest, inept, chaotic and cruel — has objectively been a disaster. More Americans died of COVID-19 during the four-day Republican National Convention than died on 9/11. What are they so happy about?

One has to wonder who the Pew Research people talked to in their survey of national reactions. Perhaps they chose randomly, but only from among Americans actually in their backyard pool at the time. Or people wearing hats. If that includes red baseball caps, there’s your answer.

I checked their methodology, and as it turns out, they spoke mostly to Americans on cell phones, with only 20 per cent on landlines. In Canada, 49 per cent of respondents were on landlines. People on landlines are at home indoors. Aren’t they by definition in the safest place of all? No wonder they’re so contented.

The numbers surprise me because overall, pandemic news is bad news — overwhelmingly so for women’s employment and frontline workers.

That said, why are Canadians happy and Americans much less so? The U.S. constitution recommends “the pursuit of happiness.” That’s why they grin so manically, give even their huge grim novels sappy happy endings, talk about “challenges” rather than “problems,” paste inspirational quotes on their walls, and shop so wildly and badly.

They’re trying to hide the economic slide that began in 1980, when the destruction of the working and middle class began and the rich started becoming the hyper-rich. They aren’t happy. There is no American dream.

That’s why white Americans fire guns so lavishly now. They believe that shooting Black people will make them happy, which it briefly does, one assumes.

Tony Soprano’s mother, Livia, got it right when she told her grandson A.J., “The world is a jungle, and if you want my advice, Anthony, don’t expect happiness. You won’t get it.”

CBC’s reporting expanded on Pew, quoting a delicious Leger poll that asked Canadians and Americans which nation had better handled the outbreak. Apparently, 87 per cent of Canadians said their national response had been “much” or “somewhat” better than that in the U.S., while only 38 per cent of Americans agreed. Fine. But get this. Nearly as many Americans — 37 per cent — said the U.S. got its response better than did Canada. (And 25 per cent gave no answer, presumably because they had never heard of this “Canada” of which the Leger people spoke.)

No matter how miserable Americans get, they still think they surpass everyone else. This is American exceptionalism quantified. Whereas Canadians don’t expect happiness, not really, although they certainly welcome its visits.

Many decades ago, Margaret Atwood said our national theme was survival, while the American theme or cultural obsession was “money as a sign of divine grace or providence.” In 2003, she changed things a little. “Have we survived?” Has Canadian culture survived? Arguably, it hasn’t, not against the American onslaught.

She also said we were a nation of rugs. When one of us gains a little success, we pull the rug out from under them, and in the age of social media, this has never been more true. No one is better than anyone else, Canadians think, and this is an enviable characteristic in a pandemic.

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Americans, however, scramble for anything that will signal their superiority to everyone else, knowing perhaps subconsciously as they approach 200,000 deaths that they prepared for and coped with COVID-19 very badly.

But if they were bad at it, they think, they were still better at being bad than any other nation, including boring Canada. Yes, Americans died, but they like to believe they were happier before they expired than any foreigner.

Heather Mallick is a Toronto-based columnist covering current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: is a Toronto-based columnist covering current affairs for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @HeatherMallick

Mr-Skyhighatrist117 on August 31st, 2020 at 15:30 UTC »

As much as it definitely provides us with an ample supply of smug satisfaction, comparing ourselves to the US is getting progressively less satisfying and progressively more detrimental to our own interests, as being “better than the Americans” continues to become a lower and lower bar to meet. We should be striving to be better than countries that aren’t complete disasters.

ElectroBot on August 31st, 2020 at 13:49 UTC »

This isn’t a Beaverton article?

tri_and_fly on August 31st, 2020 at 13:32 UTC »

Let’s be honest, one third of Americans can’t even find Canada on a map.