Can Open & Democratic Societies Effectively Confront Epidemics?

Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth. Franklin Roosevelt

It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit. Harry S. Truman

Don't follow the crowd, let the crowd follow you. Margaret Thatcher

I'm a believer in the polls, by the way. Donald Trump

I’ve challenged the existence of compassionate capitalism when every recent catastrophe and governmental response has further polarized American income inequality, creating more wealth at the top and decimating those in the middle and particularly at the bottom of the economic ladder. See my March 31^st Is Compassionate Capitalism Dead? blog. With the greatest level of income inequality in the developed world, the COVID-19 pandemic has only made that schism worse:

“Though the coronavirus itself may not discriminate in terms of who can be infected, the COVID-19 pandemic is far from a great equalizer. In the same month that 22 million Americans lost their jobs, the American billionaire class’s total wealth increased about 10%—or $282 billion more than it was at the beginning of March. They now have a combined net worth of $3.229 trillion.

“The initial stock market crash may have dented some net worths at first—for instance, that of Jeff Bezos, which dropped down to a mere $105 billion on March 12. But his riches have rebounded: As of April 15, his net worth has increased by $25 billion. Eric Yuan, founder and CEO of Zoom, was one of the few to see an increase in net worth even as the markets crashed, and he’s now up $2.58 billion.

“These ‘pandemic profiteers,’ as a new report from the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, calls them, is just one piece of the wealth inequality puzzle in America. In the background is the fact that since 1980, the taxes paid by billionaires, measured as a percentage of their wealth, dropped 79%.” FastCompany.com, April 23^rd. Since there is no economic growth at all during this pandemic, where did that 10% wealth increase to the rich come from? Answer: the rest of us! Ah!

Clear and decisive leadership has shut down the impact of COVID-19 in some autocratic regimes, well-informed with laser focus on containing the virus, who have the means of imposing near total control over their populations. As of this writing, for example, the communist nation of Vietnam, with a population of 95 million and that sits on the Chinese border, has not had one single fatality from COVID-19. Not one. Vietnam was and is also very suspicious of any claims made by its neighbor to the north, taking every precaution on its own. 

“The communist-ruled country [of Vietnam] has sealed its borders, quarantined masses of people, used soldiers and police to track down potential infections and fined social media users for spreading misinformation… But despite their effectiveness, Vietnam’s measures are not easily replicable. Its intolerance of dissent and ability to mobilize an entire security and political apparatus — steps more common in China — meant its campaign met little of the pushback seen in Western liberal democracies…

“Since the government imposed a partial nationwide lockdown April 1, Vietnam saw only a modest increase in coronavirus cases to 270, with all but 45 recovered and no fatalities… The numbers are stunningly low considering that Vietnam — which shares a border with China — was among the first countries where the virus spread and lacks the resources of governments more celebrated for their containment strategies, such as South Korea’s widespread testing and Taiwan’s aggressive digital surveillance.

“Its results stand out even more as other Southeast Asian countries struggle. Wealthy Singapore, once regarded as a model, has seen infections skyrocket among migrant workers living in overcrowded dormitories. Indonesia, the largest country in the region, initially ignored the threat and now has the most COVID-19 deaths in Asia after China.” Los Angeles Times, April 26^th. Vietnam is just beginning to reopen and relax its strict policies.

Clearly, China’s brutal if delayed response to the pandemic rapidly reduced the impact of the virus. The number of those infected (including related fatalities) in the United States, even with significant allowance for under-reporting in the PRC, truly outpaces the same statistic in China. The United States has the greatest number of CV-19 deaths in the world, and we are hardly the most populous nation on earth.

But the mere existence of an autocracy that controls it people with brutal efficiency does not insure that such forms of government are able to deal effectively with the problem. See my March 16^th A Different Virus, Conspiracy Theories & Autocracy blog for such failed leadership. Where a fearless leader’s looking good trumps an effective response to a viral containment policy. The old “garbage in - garbage out” saying applies to the quality of the autocrat in charge. 

It’s not as if democracies are incapable of relatively prompt and effective efforts to slow the impact of highly contagious pandemics. However, it is interesting to note that the democracies that have been most effective in containing this virus are small, exceptionally homogenous counties (as in Scandinavia) and those with a cultural history of national discipline and self-sacrifice like South Korea, Taiwan and Germany.  

Democracies with histories of rebellious independence – France, Italy, the UK and the United States – have failed the worst, but even without that cohort’s historical predispositions and factions being considered, those with radical nationalist/populist leaders have fared the worst. The United States is a classic example, with a science-skeptic President, shoving operational responsibility to the states, failing to coordinate a uniform system to provide needed supplies and equipment that only a central authority can do, underplaying the severity of the outbreak, making misstatements with regularity, prioritizing money over health and suggesting medical solutions that actually can kill those who follow his dictates. Our horrible numbers say it all.

The only leader of a major populated democracy who is on par with the President of United States is Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, who heads a nation with over 200 million people. A climate change denier and science skeptic, Bolsonaro “has accused his political foes and the press of purposefully ‘tricking’ citizens about the dangers of coronavirus, as Latin America braced for a spike in the number of deaths.” The Guardian UK, March 23^rd. 

Bolsonaro, mimicking Trump’s firing of health officials who disagreed with his dictates (most recently HHS vaccine expert, Dr. Richard Bright), fired his Health Minister who refused to minimize statements to the public on the dangers of the virus. Result? “Brazil is quickly becoming one of the world’s worst coronavirus hot spots… Amid unprecedented political turmoil, overcrowded hospitals, insufficient testing — and a president who refuses to acknowledge the seriousness of the pandemic — Latin America’s largest economy is being senselessly ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic.” Daily News, April 25^th.  

The biggest difference between the impact of Bolsonaro and Trump is that, except for a dwindling number of populist diehards, Bolsonaro has steadily lost credibility with mayors and governors even within his own party, who increasingly ignore him entirely. 

In the end, effective containment of a pandemic, that obviously is oblivious to the wants and desires of its potential infectees, is a combination of firm, clear, knowledgeable, effective and early initiative in the nation’s central leadership, absolute adherence to the truth, preparedness and the willingness to take firm, consistent and often unpopular actions. The United States has “none of the above.”

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the “everyone for him or herself” fractionalization of America and the level of support for a totally inadequate and truly dangerous President do not suggest that the strong and effective country we once were will continue for much longer.