As an American that has just returned to the States after having experienced the first Coronavirus wave in Vietnam, I'm honestly baffled by what I'm seeing around me.

We flew through the Phoenix Airport on Saturday, one of America's hottest COVID cities. Even there, in what is the city's most strictly-enforced locations for masks, I saw plenty of passengers wandering the terminals without masks on. It was unintelligible.

After having lived abroad for five years, my best conclusion (after five days, mind you) is that Americans simply do not have time to be bothered by COVID. We live in a nation where time is money and everyone's schedules are filled past non-stop. Void of social stopping cues or commercial braking systems, we've decided as a nation to barrel on full-throttle and hope we can leave COVID in the dust.

As so well put here, this will not happen. It is COVID that is leaving us in the dust. And unfortunately for more and more Americans, it's under ten feet of dust.