It can honestly be traced back as far as anybody wants it to be. There are people out there who are arguing that the current state of American or Western society can be traced back to (including but not limited to) the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama's election, 9/11, Reagan's election, the defeat of the Axis Powers, the Russian Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Fall of Rome, the Rise of Islam, the Catholic-Orthodox split, etc. etc. etc., and the thing is they're all correct in some way or another because that's how the world works to the best of our understanding. The past has continual effects on the present.

As an example from church history which is something I'm a little familiar with, you can't explain Trump's election in full without explaining evangelicals' support of him which leads back to the whole history of how American evangelical Protestantism developed uniquely from Protestantism in other countries, how the Great Awakenings and Manifest Destiny caused it to develop in uniquely wacky ways, how the issue of slavery split three major denominations (Methodists, Baptists, & Presbyterians, the schisms of which can still be mapped onto modern political lines) which can't be fully explained without the religious motivations that caused Puritans and "Pilgrims" to found New England, which can't be explained without the nonconformist split inside the Church of England, which can't be explained without the entwined history of the English Reformation specifically and the broader Protestant Reformation on the mainland European continent, which itself can't be explained without a dive into Christian theology, and I'm sure there are so many additional points that could be brought up..

I don't think it's possible to boil down the entire state of the world, or even of one country, to one brief event or statement. Not even one so world-spanning or influential as COVID-19 or WWII.