May 21, 2020
A Sorry Tale Of Political Response Towards The Pandemic
But then again, did we really expect them to save the world?
While the quarantine seems to have taken over all our lives, there’s some solace to be had in the fact that the coronavirus has succeeded in overturning not only our lives, also some of the biggest governments in the world. Here’s looking at three that have definitely lost sleep these past couple months, and how effectively — or ineffectively — they’ve dealt with it.
- The United States
The coronavirus crisis hit Washington in January and quickly brought the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world to its knees.
“The United States was once known for its can-do culture. We built the Panama Canal and we put a man on the moon,” said historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University. “And now we can’t get a swab or a face mask or a gown and we have no real chain of command. And we have two Americas, a Republican one and a Democratic one, and they won’t collaborate.”
The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan 3rd. Unfortunately, it took more than two months from then for the government to get a magnified look at the pandemic and address the concerns.
The federal government created the White House Coronavirus Task Force on January 27th and declared a public health emergency four days later. The CDC developed its test in early February, which was then distributed to labs. But — as became clear a week later — one of the reagents in its kits proved to be faulty, which meant that most labs were unable to proceed using CDC-provided test kits. Furthermore, the CDC went on to extend its testing criteria on February 28th and the FDA allowed the use of non-approval tests which were a signal that the federal government was correcting its testing flaws. Finally, the federal government was completely engaged in fighting the pandemic when the national emergency was declared by Trump on March 13th. The following days have been a dark purgatory in the lives of Americans as the cases continue to climb daily.
2. China
China, a country that has birthed several epidemics, was where the first cluster of coronavirus cases was reported in the city of Wuhan.
By 31st December 27 cases were reported in Wuhan. The very next day, the sea market was shut down in the district. The Chinese New Year celebrations were canceled in many cities. The local government of Henan was quite active and early in its action by spreading awareness about this virus among the people and banning the trains to and from Wuhan. The 2020 women’s football qualifier which was scheduled to be held in Wuhan was shifted to Sydney, Australia. This was the first step for the further postponing of many other sporting events. By the end of January, the spring semester in many educational institutions was postponed in the wake of the virus.
On 20th January, the NHC set up a working group to deal with this virus and sent supervision teams to seven provinces. The mask production rose from 10 million to 116 million. This was followed by the strengthening of financial aid by the Peoples Bank of China.
By the end of the month, the Chinese government started taking effective measures one after the other. These include: encouraging the health workers and canceling all the celebrations and meetings of the local governments. In the following days, many government officials were held accountable for their dereliction of duty.
Around mid-February, the country witnessed a peak in the number of cases, which has been reducing since then. This is quite impressive since the country is reporting single-digit cases now. Although we’re not quite sure if this is the exact data, the overall trend one does point to a victory for the most populated country on earth.
3. Italy
Republica Italiana — to its people, ‘Bel Paese’ or ‘beautiful country’ — fell prey to the claws of the disastrous coronavirus on January 31st when two cases were reported in Rome. It went on to become the epicenter of the pandemic.
Italian officials defend the government’s measures and protest a timely and effective response to the pandemic; when compared to their European counterparts, the actual record shows a lot of missed opportunities and critical missteps.
On 31st January the country declared a national emergency. On 22 February, the government announced the imposition of quarantine on more than 50,000 people from 11 municipalities in Northern Italy, and all sporting events were suspended. On the 1st of March, the council of ministers divided Italy into three zones — red, yellow, and the remaining national territory. This was followed by the shutting down of all schools and universities for two weeks on the 4th of march when the country reached a depressing 100 deaths due to the virus. On 11th March, the government allocated 25 billion euros for the national emergency. As the number of cases rose skyrocket, fines for the violation of lockdown increased, the lockdown was extended more and many non-essential productions were halted.
Around the end of March, the number of cases started decreasing and followed the same trend throughout April. Phase 2, as it was announced by the government, began on May 4 and eased restrictions by allowing the reopening of construction sites and manufacturing industries. While a touch bewildering to citizens, it has proved effective as the cases continued to decrease. Next, the government plans to ease the travel restrictions in June.
There you have it: three powers crumpled within months. Their responses have been instructive: we’ve seen that even the most powerful are at a loss to find an effective initial response. On the plus side, considering the lack of precedence, the governments have tried to pick themselves off from this shock. Whether these efforts have been enough remains to be seen.
But many other countries are struggling to return to normalcy as we wake up to the fact that the pandemic is not the only problem, maybe for the first time in weeks. Over 100 countries have pushed for an investigation into the Chinese response to the pandemic. Nigerian lawyers have even taken China to court, demanding $200 billion in damages. A scandal has unfolded in Sweden as Turkey airlifted to safety a man who was sent back from the hospital to stopprogressively worsening health. In Singapore, a man has received his death sentence (for a 2011 drug deal, in case you’re wondering) over Zoom. Australia struggles to support victims of the bushfires, who now find themselves homeless and facing another crisis.
Around the world, extreme weather conditions — such as cyclones in Odisha — have put social distancing in the backseat. War still ravages Afghanistan, which has just this past week seen infants gunned in maternity wards, and in the form of intercommunal violence in Sudan. Meanwhile, Greece is looking to resume tourism in the next month. Brazil’s public-coughing President Bolsonaro, strongly anti-lockdown from the start, has led his country to higher mortality rates than Italy and Spain. In the US, Nancy Pelosi has drawn flak for her ‘fat-shaming’ Trump over his inclination towards hydroxychloroquine. The President has, at the same time, declared the US’s occupying top mortality spot as an ‘honor’, certainly not forgetting the 36,000 deaths that could’ve been prevented by enforcing lockdown a week earlier. And finally, as India and China prepare for a return to their economic strengths, the momentum gained pre-pandemic in environment protection will, we’re afraid, be lost.
Still, the pandemic is perhaps not too real yet: cruise bookings for August have jumped 600%.
