The date the earliest known person to have fallen ill with symptoms
of corona virus in Wuhan is said to be 1st December 2019; however,
some believe that the first case happened about two weeks earlier, on 17
November 2019. China officially alerted the World Health Organisation of the
outbreak on 31 December 2019. The first death occurred on 11 January.
WHO declared the outbreak as a pandemic on 30 January, after
some 8,000 cases with a death toll of 170 were reported. And within a few days
new cases were detected in many countries.
To date, confirmed cases stand at 3.8 million and the number of
deaths about 270,000. The numbers are still climbing by the day. The worst hit
is the US, where the respective figures are 1.3 million and 77,000. The UK is
another sad story. Its death has surpassed 30,000; yet the light at the end of
the tunnel is still so dim. Italy, Spain, and France appear to be recovering,
but the toll has been very heavy. Iran, once thought to be a basket case, has
also fared not too badly compared to these first world economies. The outlook
is still uncertain, given the conditions and politicians’ mentality in many
parts of the US and countries like Brazil.
China, where the Covid-19 is said to have first occurred, the
figures are 84,000 and 4,643 respectively. No death has been recorded for many
days. South Korea and Taiwan have done well to contain the spread. Ditto many
countries in Southeast Asia and Australia and New Zealand. Japan appears to be
a disappointment, so is Singapore, which at one time was hailed as the gold
standard in the management of this pandemic. There is still a big question mark
in the case of Indonesia even though President Joko Widodo is a very enlightened
leader.
Safe for a need to wear face mask when venturing out, life is
more or less back to normal in China, South Korea, and Taiwan. East and Southeast
Asia and Europe are also easing up on their lockdowns. Politicians in the US are still unable to get their
acts together; on the issue when to open up again, each state is left to its
own devices, although Donald Trump had earlier pretended that he was the one to
call the shots.
How each country has been managing the containment of Covid-19 speaks
volumes of the resilience, or the lack of it, of that society.
China had Wuhan completely locked down on 23 January, when the
whole nation was about to celebrate Lunar New Year (25 January) and within less
than a month after the outbreak was officially reported to WHO. When the top Beijing
official was interviewed on the need, I could see her professionalism. Personal
freedom simply has to give way to the greater good of society, something that many
in the West, especially its media, just cannot understand. The people of Wuhan
have emerged with greater thoughtfulness for neighbours and the community. If
not for the timely decision, China would have suffered hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, in terms of death numbers.
Italy, Spain, France, and the UK are amongst the most
sophisticated societies in the world. They have many world class medical researchers
and clinicians. Yet, they fall flat on this count. Why? They have a large
percentage of elderly in their population and these people are most vulnerable
to such virus attacks. Their hospitals, though world class, are quite ill-equipped.
They did not even have enough personal protection equipment to handle sudden
outbreaks. More importantly, they had lost too much precious time to flatten
the curve! Some of their leaders had also been quite apathetic when the outbreak
was first announced. Boris Johnson is a case in point. Simply put, the
Europeans have been too complacent for too long.
Donald Trump should go down in history as the ineptest leader of
all time. I do not think he has any feeling for those who have died tragically
of this virus. American are dying by the thousands each day, yet, his
appearance for media briefing every day is all for his re-election bid. Publicity,
publicity, publicity. And China is his bogeyman, for he knows the Pareto Theory
well. 80% of Americans do not bother to think. Even amongst the elites and
scholars, everything about China is bad. This is not helped by what is coming
out from China. By nature, Chinese tend to be defensive when confronted, even
though they do not need to be. And many of its diplomats and thinkers are not
able to articulate things well in English. Of course, they needed time to
ascertain that Covid-19 was in fact a new deadly outbreak. Of course, there are
speculations (and studies done by respected researchers) that Wuhan may not be
the source of the virus. Of course, they have not understated the infection and
death numbers, save for some initial mis-tallies. (Why should they?) They
should just sit back and allow Science to speak and not succumb to Trump’s bait.
By denying, you add fuel to Trump’s and his sycophants’ furnaces. You can REJECT
CATEGORICALLY when the evidence is there for all to see.
Kishore Mahbubani in his latest book HAS CHINA WON? has
painted both the US and China very well. The US thinks it can behave in any
manner it wants; on the other hand, China seems to be losing its cool.
Only two Western countries are managing the crisis well – New Zealand
and Australia. I would attribute this to their understanding of Asia. The two
societies are also generally more intellectual than their American counterparts.
Of course there are also many China haters and xenophobes there.
Singapore was the poster boy in the initial days. But strangely,
they have totally overlooked the conditions in their foreign workers’ dormitories
and thus have allowed the situation to explode. With some 20,000 cases already
in the book and with the number still climbing, its hands are certainly full even
though it says it is very well equipped to cope. These migrant workers are key
to many of its industries. With them having to be quarantined and Singapore’s desire
to get everything right before they restart each engine, the country may also
have lost precious time in returning the economy to normalcy early.
Many argue that normalcy will return if a vaccine if found, I am
a little pessimistic about this hope. By the time a vaccine is available, I
believe many many more thousands would have died. The US and many countries in South
America are particularly at risk, not to mention the refugee camps all over the
world. I am afraid flattening the curve as a measure is already past its shelf-life
use. The economy has to get restarted, lest the depression will be so deep that
the less resilient economies or societies will be incapable of rising from the
ashes for a long long time. The only solution left is for authorities to keep
enforcing the Social Distancing rule. And sadly, this need is seen by many in
the West as an affront to their right to exercise personal freedom!
I wish what has been predicted by an Israeli mathematician (Prof
Isaac Ben-Israel) will come true – that Covid-19, like many pandemics before it
will finally out by itself.
I am afraid few societies are as resilient as those in East and
Southeast Asia to emerge stronger after the crisis. China is one,
unfortunately, nobody wants to look at WHY it works!
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