COVID-19 Exposes Political-Economic Systems: S Korea 1, Trump 0
Mar 23 — The COVID-19 crisis, like war, has been an excellent test of which political-economic systems seem to be working so far. A winner: South Korea. A loser: unfortunately the U.S. That’s the opinion on South Korea of an article in today’s New York Times titled “How South Korea Flattened the Curve,” which says:
“South Korea is one of only two countries with large outbreaks, alongside China, to flatten the curve of new infections. And it has done so without China’s draconian restrictions on speech and movement, or economically damaging lockdowns like those in Europe and the United States.”
I’m not trying to “politicize” the COVID-19 crisis. The overwhelmingly top priority of course is to deal with it. But as this is done we should also learn lessons as to which systems seem to be working. Upfront, I am not an epidemiologist, political scientist or economist.
South Korea: South Korea has been very successful in combating the virus using testing and tracing. It seems to have found a very good government model on how to combine 21st century data-driven technology, expertise and competence with 19th century mass democracy, also see this March 20 article in The Nation. Taiwan also seems to fall into this category.
U.S.: Unfortunately the U.S. seems to be not doing as well dealing with COVID-19 as South Korea. Because it lacked the latter’s testing and tracing capabilities, it has had to resort to a 19th century approach of locking down in place large sections of its economy, e.g. California and New York. Its political system has also been dysfunctional, which unfortunately no surprise there, that has been business as usual for many years.
China: China also seems to have been very successful in combating the virus since it initiated extremely draconian measures on January 23, which South Korea has not had to resort to. Prior to that China’s system seems to have been slow in transmitting vital information up its CCP chain of command in its initial weeks of the virus. I don’t know if that’s inherent in its system or a fixable flaw, America’s China hawks contend the former as they do try to politicize the virus and the crisis.
Both China and South Korea seem to be well on their way to returning to relatively normal social and economic life, unlike the U.S., where the political debate in D.C. has focused on how to mitigate the worst side effects on the economy of the 19th century strategy of sheltering in place and social distancing it’s currently using to combat the virus. (See here for global data on COVID-19.)
Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of the competent officials still left in government, says that ultimately Trump listens to him, see this March 22 Atlantic interview [3/23 NYT update more troubling-jf] The problem, unstated by Fauci, a hero in this crisis, is that it takes time for that to happen, and in this particular case, time matters, a YUUGE amount, to use Trump’s pronunciation.
Biden has used as his spokesperson on the COVID-19 crisis Ron Klain, who was the Obama/Biden point person on the Ebola epidemic in 2014–15. Biden has claimed he will listen to the experts, presumably without all the narcissistic baggage and deadly delays that Trump brings in doing so.
Obama’s chief economist, Jason Furman, has been a leader since early March of economic stimulus calls, which is better than Trump, who mainly has seemed to be concerned about the impact of COVID-19 on the steep decline in the U.S. stock market and hence his re-election possibility, both unfortunately as expected.
One functioning government agency, the Fed, has of course done what the Fed does, throw huge amounts of financial liquidity at a real-economy healthcare problem of lack of testing, ICU beds, ventilators, masks, personnel, etc., cheered on by Wall Street speculators, hedge and private equity funds, etc., also unfortunately as expected.
Sanders did not seem to take full advantage of his opportunity to strongly differentiate himself on the COVID-19 issue from both Biden and Trump during the last debate, see my March 14 article, and seems to have been focused on the stimulus legislation currently bogged down in Congress, upping the ante to $2,000 per American, again as expected.
The most active Democratic response so far seems to be coming from the Democratic governors of California and New York. But again, they are unfortunately limited to the 19th century strategy of strangling their economies to try to starve the disease. And why do their major cities seem to be so much at risk that they felt the necessity for such measures (perhaps due to population density)?
One high-profile person who most definitely wasn’t caught off guard by COVID-19 was Bill Gates, who gave a now-famous TED talk on just such a pandemic threat April 3, 2015, five years ago, watch it, it’s only 8:36 long, and wonder what if U.S. political leaders had listened? Why didn’t they?
He and others are giving the concept of expertise, oft discredited and mocked in America, a much needed boost. Gates of course is not unique. Many epidemiologists, scientists, doctors, etc have also been warning about this threat for many years, Larry Brilliant, who worked at Google, being a well-known example.
Gates is the best of example of what might be called American “billionaire capitalism.” But Gates works through his philanthropy, while what’s needed, as he well knows, is a massive and competent government response, which very unfortunately hasn’t been the case.
Frankly if I had a choice between Gates, Trump, Biden or Sanders to deal with the COVID-19 crisis right now, it’s a no-brainer, I’ll go with the guy with the 1590 SAT score and a long track record of concern and actual accomplishments about healthcare and other key issues.
[3/24 update: Gates was quoted today in Ezra Klein’s Vox.com:
“There really is no middle ground, and it’s very tough to say to people, ‘Hey, keep going to restaurants, go buy new houses, ignore that pile of bodies over in the corner. We want you to keep spending because there’s maybe a politician who thinks GDP growth is all that counts,’” Gates said in an interview with TED Tuesday. “It’s very irresponsible for somebody to suggest that we can have the best of both worlds.”
“The economic effect of this is really dramatic. Nothing like this has ever happened to the economy in our lifetimes,” Gates said. “But bringing the economy back … that’s more of a reversible thing than bringing people back to life. So we’re going to take the pain in the economic dimension — huge pain — in order to minimize the pain in the diseases-and-death dimension.”]
Unfortunately the rest of the West Coast tech elite once again seems to be missing in action on a critical national issue, as it was during the 2008 Great Financial Crisis (GFC). Perhaps they’re hoping that their beloved Bitcoin will somehow prove to be the answer for COVID-19, like the Fed’s liquidity firehose, of course not.
Why didn’t politicians like the two governors mentioned above, i.e. at least with a pulse, seek the Democratic nomination? After more than three years from the Clinton debacle, Biden is the best the Democratic establishment could come up with? And people wonder why China thinks it’s winning?
Trump’s previous blundering bluster may have been heinous to many but not potentially fatal to hundreds of thousands compared with now, at a time when the U.S. is competing with China for global leadership.
But the Democrats and liberal media don’t come off much better. They wasted over three years of our nation’s very limited political attention span trying to re-litigate Clinton’s abysmal loss in 2016. Now the Democratic establishment has put up a 77-old candidate from the same mold that produced Clinton to replace Trump. That’s our choice as we try to deal with the COVID-19 crisis?
The American left in general has been so focused on climate change as the “existential threat” to humanity and its Green New Deal response that it appears to have been caught off-guard by COVID-19, mainly falling back on claiming it shows the need for Medicare for All, which it actually does.
In its critique of capitalism, the left will ignore the fact that places like South Korea and Germany, which has also dealt well with the crisis, are very capitalist, and will somehow try to link COVID-19 with climate change, perhaps on the issue of job creation during the now-forecasted recession.
Although it doesn’t consider itself “left,” per se, for a good MMT perspective, see this March 20 Nation article by Rohan Grey, “We Can Afford to Beat This Crisis,” and this March 21 NYT one by Stephanie Kelton, “Just Use ‘the Computer’ to Give People More Money.”
There are many articles showing epidemiological models on the web, e.g. on the controversial recent one from Imperial College. One such article on March 10 on Medium has gone viral itself, garnering 40 million views, as people desperately search for ideas on how to deal with COVID-19, in the absence of a coherent government response, here’s a link to its March 19 follow-up, from which I took the chart at the top of this article.
Such articles by non-experts who put in a huge effort are very informative, including the comments. But the epidemiological models in these articles are highly sensitive to key parameters, especially for the transmission and case fatality rates, for which good data to estimate them is still a work in progress every single day (e.g., some think the 4% fatality rate used in the Medium article is way too high).
As I said, I’m not an epidemiologist, and I’m not going to pretend to be one, so I’m not going to discuss those technical issues here. I would much prefer to leave that to bona fide experts like Dr. Fauci. And I would much prefer to have political leaders who listen to such experts, preferably way before such crises hit, isn’t that what political parties are supposed to produce?
Why doesn’t that happen here in America? Why do we have these crises, like the 2008 GFC? Why doesn’t the American system produce the outcome in the COVID-19 crisis that South Korea has managed to do so far?
I posted an article on Medium on November 9 titled “One World, Two Systems: U.S., China Face Difficult Tests Next 12 Months,” on the issues of political-economic-social system legitimacy and performance of the two superpowers. Needless to say, I did not foresee COVID-19.
What I did say is that China could build modern airports, unlike the U.S., but it couldn’t democratically change leaders, also unlike the U.S. China can also build hospitals, two in less than two weeks in Hubei, while the U.S. can’t seem to come up with anyone younger than 73 as our next President who isn’t either a pathological liar or well past his prime, which wasn’t all that great to begin with.
Now it turns out that right next door to China, spunky, plucky, hwaiting! (fighting!) South Korea, with 51 million people, the land of K-pop, K-drama and great Samsung phones, has been showing the world how to combine democracy with 21st century data-driven technology, expertise and competence.
I’m sure South Korea has its flaws and issues, every country and every system does. But perhaps its performance so far on COVID-19 is one positive that the world can look to and learn from in this otherwise seemingly bottomless cycle of bleak news about COVID-19.
Make America and World Awesome, MAWA
John Furlan
