A hallway in the emergency department at Mount Sinai South Nassau hospital in New York on April 13, 2020, as the coronavirus outbreak was taking hold. Now, it is Wisconsin hospitals that are filling up. | Jeffrey Basinger/Newsday via Getty Images

When we treat the coronavirus like a state problem, America loses.

The country’s Covid-19 problem wasn’t a New York problem in March, nor was it a Texas problem in July, nor is it a Wisconsin problem right now. It was and is an American problem.

Throughout the pandemic, President Donald Trump has sought to cast the virus as a state-by-state issue. (Frankly, a lot of people have.) It’s New York and California that are the real mess, he says. They’re the ones ravaged by the coronavirus, they’re the ones whose leaders are to blame for their health and economic problems. The