Selfishness and American Resilience

Do we really need to be more altruistic to have better outcomes?

Earlier this week, I happened to recall a conversation from last April. A friend and I had stumbled upon the theory that poor countries were going to end up more resilient to COVID-19 than rich ones. In places where hospitals are rare and medical facilities rudimentary, we argued, people avail themselves of these niceties a lot less. So while health ser…