How NOT to react to a global pandemic

By Wisley Lau

Photo by Anton Uniqueton, courtesy of Pexels

If there is one thing that will represent the year 2020, it will be the now iconic image of SARS-Cov-19 or Covid-19. This virus has dominated the current news cycle and will continue to be the main topic in the near future. From its humble beginnings as a mysterious new form of pneumonia when it was first spotted in Wuhan in late 2019, to being announced as a global pandemic on March 11, 2020, the virus has now become a part of everyday discourse in most corners of the world. In the meantime, we have seen how some countries and individuals have botched the coronavirus response and made it easier to spread, while some have acted quickly and reaped the rewards.

It is alleged that the coronavirus started in Wuhan, China in late 2019 as government officials pointed to the origin as the Huanan Seafood Market. As the virus started to spread, Dr. Li Wen Liang sounded the alarm in a WeChat group with other fellow doctors. However,  instead of listening to Dr. Li, the government accused him of spreading rumors and forced him to sign an agreement to not talk about the deadly disease. Later, Dr. Li became infected with the coronavirus and during interviews said that he did not want the government to apologize and wanted to help others to cure the coronavirus after he had recovered. But, sadly, he did not recover and died on February 7, 2020. This sparked outrage in China where people criticized the government for silencing Dr. Li and preventing the spread of the coronavirus, while the government tried to pave over the cracks by identifying Dr. Li in April as a ‘martyr'. Criticism still exists and in the meantime, three citizen journalists that have been documenting what is happening in Wuhan have gone missing and so far only one has been released. Scientists later found out by simulations that if the Chinese government had taken action at that time, the coronavirus would have spread 95% less than it did in China. This may have prevented an outbreak and later a pandemic, though to give China some minor credit, after the virus started to get serious they did put measures that significantly curbed the virus spread.

A clear example of the virus spreading can be seen in Iran. In persuading the public that the country had the virus under control, the deputy health minister started coughing in an announcement to the nation: he was infected with the coronavirus after he went to an interview and started coughing all over the studio when describing his symptoms. And, even worse, the Iranian people have so little trust in their government they thought the government fabricated it and as a result, 102,000 people were infected. This included top Iranian officials, some of whom died.

Meanwhile, in Brazil, president Jair Bolsonaro was reluctant in taking measures to stop coronavirus as he claimed it would slow down the economy. He fired the health minister who disagreed with him and has been spotted water skiing. The governors of Brazil have acted more responsibly and have fought back against Bolsonaro by imposing measures to stop the coronavirus. However, Bolsonaro and his supporters have continued to go on the street without masks and social distancing measures to voice support for the president. This attitude, combined with the poor response to the virus, has made Brazil the second worst-affected country.

In the hard-hit Italian countryside, the government paid little attention to the coronavirus, even setting up a concert for a Chinese delegation at the same time Chinese officials were warning of the coronavirus. Also, Italy’s actions against the coronavirus were just too late for stopping the virus’s lethal trend and since Italians did not follow social distancing guidelines the number of cases overwhelmed the healthcare system and doctors had to make difficult choices about who lived and who died. On the other hand, brave and selfless people like pastors who caught the coronavirus sacrificed their lives for other people to get ventilators and treatment. 

The worst country to react to the coronavirus has been the United States. Not only has the coronavirus made the country lose its status as the global leader in fighting coronavirus, but the response from the government has been completely appalling. According to multiple reports from the New York Times and the Washington Post, top officials have been warning President Trump about the coronavirus since January, but instead of taking action, the president has not taken it seriously. He keeps contradicting himself and the experts in medical advice, and in the meantime spread lies and misinformation. The most prominent example was that President Trump promoted the chemical hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus, even though science has revealed that not only is the chemical ineffective, it sometimes might make the coronavirus more dangerous to the patient. Trump has also kept touting the idea of reopening the country and the economy.

We can see common tactics in these countries, in that they downplayed the threat of the virus in order to keep themselves in power or did not think it was a big deal. For example, President Trump cited the fact that it was just the flu and did not pose a threat to many, and used the economy as a reason not to impose lockdown measures. Trump's economic promises are the key to his being reelected and imposing social distancing measures would mean mass unemployment and slowing down the economy. these countries imposed actions too late. Western countries like Italy only imposed a lockdown when lots of people had got sick, and they did not impose laws demanding people to wear masks which have been proven scientifically to decrease the spread of the coronavirus.

In other countries and places that have curbed the spread of coronavirus, the tactics were largely different. In those places, people were very vigilant in hygiene and preventing the spread of the virus. For example, in Hong Kong, lots of people started to wear masks early in January, at a time when the coronavirus was still an outbreak. Also, these places enacted social distancing measures early on when the virus was not that severe. New Zealand and Taiwan enacted social distancing measures much earlier than other countries when their coronavirus cases were just in single digits. These places started to reopen and so far have had few new outbreaks. Not only that, testing has been important to let people know their work environment is safe and they will not contract the coronavirus. South Korea for example ramped up its testing to ensure nobody would get infected with the virus and if they did, there would be measures to deal with it. And because of its extensive testing and other methods of tracking down the virus, South Korea managed to flatten the curve in a matter of weeks.

And at this time when we are starting to see countries reopen their economy, it is imperative that the countries which have not done well responding to the virus in the first wave learn from those countries that curbed the coronavirus early on. Improving testing, being careful with starting and ending lockdowns, better managing quarantine measures, and improving the habits of wearing masks and having good hygiene, are all crucial. Because as we can see from the examples above, the virus, as experts predict further waves hitting soon, could hit even worse if governments continue to lie, downplay the risks, and take no measures to curb the spread.