"[Americans] who flock to beaches, bars, and political rallies, putting their fellow citizens at risk, are not exercising freedom; they are displaying the weakness of a people who lack both the stoicism to endure the pandemic and the fortitude to defeat it."
Those are the hard-hitting words of anthropologist Wade Davis from an essay he wrote earlier this month titled The Unraveling of America, which discusses how the coronavirus pandemic has signalled "the end of the American era".
The essay - published by Rolling Stone - has gone viral with its reflections on both the pandemic and its impact on the US. But as Dr Davis explained on TVNZ1's Breakfast this morning, it wasn't written to mock Americans.
"It's not an anti-American piece," he said.
"It's more like when you do a family intervention, you have to hold the mirror up and let them see what they've become.
"None of this is gloating, none of this is wishing the decline of America but when they look at themselves in the mirror they don't see what they've become."
The Canadian academic said his essay was inspired after he realised during a kayak trip that Covid-19, in his eyes, was a story about culture and how it's being dealt with around the world.
"The thing about this Covid epidemic is Americans, at a time when 2000 are dying a day, an American dying every minute of every hour of every day, the nation woke up and realised it was living in a failed state," he said.
"It's ruled by a dysfunctional government, led by an individual who was recommending the use of bathroom cleaning chemicals to treat a disease that he could not intellectually begin to understand.
"There was a wonderful quote from the Irish Times that said, 'Through history, there have been many emotions expressed about America but never pity.'"
But Dr Davis added there was also a sense of inevitability to the decline of the US.
"Empires come and go, every kingdom is born to die," he said.
"The 15th century belonged to the Portuguese, the 16th century belonged to the Spanish, the 17th and 18th - the British Empire reached its greatest extent in 1935. People were swirling gin and tonics all over the world, but now we know it was bankrupt and bled white by the Great War."
Dr Davis finished his essay stating the US is now passing the torch to Asia with the Chinese set to become ascendant, but that shouldn't worry Americans. Instead, he thinks they should look inwards and fix what has gone wrong in their own backyard where a sense of community has been lost.
"Wealth in a civilised nation isn't measured by the currency accumulated by the wealthy few but the strength of social relations enjoyed by the majority that make a common purpose.
"We're not a perfect place, Canada, but we believe in our institutions - our healthcare system in particular that is focused not on the individual but the collective and certainly not the private investor who uses every hospital bed as a rental property."
Watch the full inteview, during which he also heaped praise on New Zealand's Covid-19 response, in the video above.
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