Coronavirus In A World Of Conflict

By R.W. Hurst

It's been almost two years since I first learned the word "coronavirus". I'd heard stories about the 1918 Flu Pandemic and how it killed between 17 and 50 million people and maybe a lot more. There was an outbreak of SARS back in 2003-2004 which infected more than 8,000 people from 29 different countries and territories, and resulted in at least 774 deaths worldwide. In in 2009, nervous Canadians lined up for H1N1 vaccinations at shopping malls and doctors offices, waiting for vaccinations that were in short supply. Some of my friends got vaccinations but some of my friends scoffed at the idea and called me an idiot for over reacting. When the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerged on the world stage in 2020, most virologists and epidemiologists were not surprised. They had been predicting for years that the world's governments and public health infrastructure was ill prepared to deal with a world-wide flu pandemic.

I was hopeful that a world-wide pandemic would motivate the world's governments to respond with a collective effort. After all, the virus didn't recognize race or nationality, age, gender, language, social status, wealth or poverty, borders or anything else that divides the world. It was truly transcendent. And I hoped that if the world could collectively tackle a coronavirus, it could use that same collective experience to learn how to tackle larger threats down the road, like climate change. Perhaps I expected too much.

The Response To Coronavirus

COVID-19 has governments at all levels operating in a context of radical uncertainty and faced with difficult trade-offs given the health, economic and social challenges it raises.

Coronavirus entered a splintered world and became a very different experience, depending on your individual politics, perspective, nationality, race, income, etc. Wealthy countries responded in ways that poor countries could not. Authoritarian countries responded differently than liberal, open societies. Young people ignored the same advice that old people heeded. Siloed people on the left of the political spectrum looked to government and science and public health for solutions. People on the right of the political spectrum looked at mask and vaccination mandates and passports as intrusive government efforts to strip people of their rights and freedoms.

Governments reacted by closing borders and erecting vaccination and testing requirements on travelers. Governments have been forced to juggle competing priorities.

Each successive wave has stressed our economic, political, public health, education and social infrastructure. Well-meaning socialized governments, faced with the prospect of economic collapse and social pain and suffering, have opened their coffers and invested as much as necessary to minimize the disruption to people's lives.

Meanwhile, right of center governments have taken a more hands-off approach and tolerated a higher hospitalization and death rate as a consequence of living in a free world. Authoritarian governments

The pandemic and the response to the pandemic has caused a disruption the modern world has never seen, except maybe the two great wars from 1914 to 1945. The magnitude of the disruption has been even greater than perhaps the 1918 flu pandemic. We never got a chance to choose leaders with the knowledge and experience that we needed to deal with the crisis. Events have revealed the true abilities of our leaders.

What we had in our arsenal that the world lacked at any time in the past, is the technology that we have today and I keep thinking that we are so lucky to be living in the time we are living. It makes me hopeful that humans can find ways to adapt in the future by utilizing future technologies to beat future crises that nature throws our way.

I wonder what would have happened if this pandemic had occurred 30 years ago. It might have taken scientists 10 years to develop a vaccine, based on the technology we had at that time. And we would have gotten all of our information from radio, television, telephones connected by landlines, newspapers, magazines and fax machines. No internet, no email, no smart phones, no ecommerce, no ability to telecommute. The developed world has been able to much more easily use today's technologies to adapt while the underdeveloped has struggled.

Authoritarianism vs Liberal Democracy and SARS-CoV-2

National pandemic response depends on the country and method of governance: Many are asking if authoritarian countries have a better record of arresting the spread of coronavirus than democratic countries? Can pandemic response be measured that way?

Authoritarian and democratic governments both have mixed records when it comes to pandemic response. At the beginning of the pandemic, it seemed that authoritarian regimes took the lead in using the pandemic to double down on autocracy in other areas of their governance.

China

China initially was able to force millions of its citizens into quarantine by closing cities and provinces and restricting travel, something that would not be possible in North America or Europe. It was seen by the West as heavy-handed authoritarianism. China’s tough measures were reported by the Washington Post under the headline “China’s coronavirus lockdown — brought to you by authoritarianism.”

China’s temperature-checking apps, facial recognition tracking software and drone surveillance have been criticized by Western countries as "Big Brother Authoritarianism", but similar high-technologies are not all that dissimilar to what is employed in other parts of Asia and the West.

China is eager to declare victory over the coronavirus. The actual rates of Chinese coronavirus infections and deaths is irrelevant in a country that places very little value on the "truth". The Chinese communist party determines what is true and nothing is "true" if it erodes the party's image. China's response has been to control the coronavirus response message, protect its national image and capitalize on the geopolitical opportunities the pandemic provides. It has used its considerable propaganda machinery to engage in a Western-style campaign to cast its pandemic response as a confirmation that it's brand of high-tech authoritarianism is a model for the world. It's projected pandemic response is designed to demonstrate to the the world that China is the best response. Whether or not power, oppression and control is the right prescription, the image that China is projecting to the world is that order, economic prosperity and effective government is the most effective response.

China is paranoid about being blamed by the West for the fact that the virus broke out in either the Wuhan wet markets or its much publicized Institute of Virology. When President Trump slapped China with the “Made in China” label and blamed the uncontrolled spread of the "Wuhan Flu" on China’s authoritarianism and censorship for the delays that allowed a potentially containable virus to infect the world, China responded by spreading a false story that the illness originated as U.S. military bioterrorism.

While China has been busy projecting the manufactured "victorious" image of its pandemic response, it has also been projecting America's response as evidence of a nation in decline. America's pandemic response is being labeled by Chinese propaganda as proof that democracy no longer works - that it has resulted in political division, social upheaval, governmental gridlock and the consequence has been the unnecessary death of 800,000 (and counting) citizens.

The United States is underperforming in terms of pandemic response, relative to its wealth. While it is the wealthiest and best-resourced government in the world, the nation's response has been hampered by politics and ideology, as well as bureaucratic red tape and rigidity.

Various factors appear to have a greater bearing on a nation’s pandemic response success than its type of political regime.

The Lessons from SARS

Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore may all differ in their political approaches, but they all shared one thing: they all learned the same lessons from the SARS epidemic. Countries that dealt with SARS also developed speedy tests soon after SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus began to spread. They adopted broad testing, tracking and tracing. In addition, they relaxed privacy protections and relied on heavily-enforced quarantines to corral outbreaks.

Trust in Government

When Hong Kong attempted the same strategy as other neighboring countries with SARS experience, it faced resistance from striking nurses and violent opposition to quarantine. What differentiated Hong Kong from the other countries with SARS experience? The Hong Kong government was distrusted by nearly 60 per cent of the population.

But many democracies, dogged by political polarization, social inequality and a sense of failed promise, also face low citizen trust.

Italians’ trust in their government hovers near that of Hong Kong. Many European democracies have faced declining trust since the 2008 financial crisis, with Spain, France, and the UK rating particularly low in successive Gallup polls.

In the United States, polling finds that trust in the government has plunged from 75 percent. With this in mind, it's no wonder that many Americans ignore mask and vaccine information and advice. Political and social polarization affected the public's view of legitimacy. Observance of pandemic measures broke along the red and blue partisan political divide. There was an additional erosion of public trust when the president downplayed the virus and offered medical advice that contradicted the nation's medical experts. As state governments (which enjoy greater public trust levels) stepped into the breach, they implemented widely different public health approaches that mirrored the red-blue electoral map.

But Coronavirus doesn't take political sides. Its existence depends on the opportunity for it to effectively hijack human cells, mutate and evolve.

The important question is how will human civilization adapt and evolve to live with the coronavirus. Coronavirus did not create the differences and conflicts between people. Those differences and conflicts were already there. The virus has exposed the strengths and weaknesses of all nations. The greater a nation's economic and technological resources, the more effective its coronavirus infection response. It has stressed tested our political, economic and health care and education infrastructure and the results of that stress test should be used to harden our political, economic, health care and education infrastructure.

Western liberal democracies are challenged to compete with China by demonstrating their ability to manage the spread of the virus while protecting and growing their economies. The worldwide pandemic experience so far is that authoritarian China is outperforming the West. The great failure of the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 worldwide pandemic response might be that liberal democracies don't learn the lessons they need to learn and fail to invest in the future. The result could be a global shift toward authoritarianism.