Please provide a short summary of the essay titled, The American Exception, from the collection, Intimations.

In the essay titled, The American Exception, Smith discusses the way in which many Americans felt shocked at the coronavirus pandemic’s death toll. She states that death in America is not new, but rather that death there was previously contained among populations of people viewed as being undeserving of compassion – people of color, poor people, and so on. She criticizes American society for caring only when death comes to the white and privileged, and also criticizes American politicians for failing to bring health care into the public sphere and instead keeping it privatized.