"For political scientists like Deborah Schildkraut of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, the US response to the pandemic can be seen through the lens of American identity. For more than two decades, Schildkraut has been studying what it means to be American, a topic she explored in an article in the Annual Review of Political Science. In it, she wrote that scholars increasingly regard American identity as a social identity, 'which refers to the part of a person’s sense of self that derives from his or her membership in a particular group and the value or meaning that he or she attaches to such membership'.

Article: American Individualism and Our Collective Crisis