By James M.
Dorsey
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New York
governor Andrew Cuomo has become the articulate, compassionate political face
of government competence in fighting a pandemic.
That’s quite
an achievement for a man who as late as early March 2020 trumpeted: “Excuse our
arrogance as New Yorkers… We think we have the best healthcare system on the
planet right here in New York. So, when you’re saying what happened in other
countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as
bad as it was in other countries. We are fully coordinated; we are
fully mobilized.”
New York was
neither fully coordinated, nor was it fully mobilized.
In fact, it
became the pandemic’s prime hotspot in the United States, accounting for the
highest number of infection cases and the highest mortality rate. Its hospitals
were overwhelmed, its stockpiles depleted, its frontline workers perilously
exposed to risk of contagion. Many of the deaths could have been prevented had
Mr. Cuomo opted to lock down the Big Apple earlier.
For now,
that recent history has largely been forgotten. Mr. Cuomo thrives in his
element, a rising star on America’s political ferment. His sober but
empathetic, fact-based daily briefings project him as a man in command with a
mission to ensure the health, safety, and wellbeing of his state.
Unlike other
epidemics in recent years such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome or SARS
in the early 2000s, the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) in 2012 or the
eruption of Ebola in West Africa in 2014, the coronavirus, dubbed COVID-19,
left no corner of the globe untouched.
It is a
lesson that goes to the heart of all that is wrong with global, regional, and
national healthcare governance. It is a lesson that calls into question social
and economic policies that have shaped the world for decades irrespective of
political system.
It is also a
lesson that goes to the core of the relationship between government and the
people. It positions social trust as a pillar of an effective healthcare policy
in a time of crisis.
In an era of
defiance and dissent as a result of a breakdown in confidence in political
systems and political leadership that kicked off with Occupy Wall Street and
the 2011 Arab popular revolts and led to the rise of populists, mass
anti-government demonstrations and in 2019 the toppling of leaders in Algeria,
Sudan, Lebanon and Iraq, lack of trust complicated government efforts to
counter the virus.
Distrust
persuaded many Iranians to initially refuse to heed public health warnings to
maintain social distancing, stay at home and install an Android app designed to
help people self-diagnose and avoid rushing to hospital.
Pakistanis
put their faith in religious leaders who rejected government demands for a halt
to congregational prayers. So did many Russians as bans on mass gatherings
split the clergy and threatened to undermine the Russian Orthodox Church’s key
support for President Vladimir Putin.
Post-mortems
of governments’ handling of the crisis once the coronavirus has been contained
could increase the trust deficit.
Moreover, in
an indication of pent-up anger and frustration that could explode, the
imposition of curfews and stay-at-home orders failed to prevent incidental
outbursts, including protests in mid-American states, quarantined Egyptian
villages and poorer Tunisian and Moroccan hamlets.
In an echo
of the Tunisian vendor who sparked the 2011 Arab revolts, 32-year-old
unemployed and physically disabled Hammadi Chalbi set himself alight in a town
160 kilometres southwest of Tunis after authorities’ refused to license him as
a fruit seller. In Lebanon, a taxi driver set his vehicle on fire while fruit
vendors dumped their goods in the streets in expressions of mounting
discontent. The protests suggest a universal corollary with the pandemic: an
outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere.
Protesters
in 2019 went beyond demanding the fall of a leader. They sought the fall of
political elites and radical overhaul of failed political systems. The pandemic
called an abrupt halt to the protests. Protesters like the rest of the
population went into temporary hibernation.
When they
re-emerge, they are likely to put government leaders who prioritized political
advantage above their health and economical well-being at a cost that surpasses
that of the 1929 Great
Depression on par with crimes committed against humanity
during times of war.
Social,
economic, ethnic, and sectarian fault lines are likely to be hardened in
countries like Pakistan and Iraq where militants stepped in with healthcare and
other social services to fill voids created by lack of government capacity.
The pandemic
further painfully illustrated the economic cost of not only failing to confront
a health crisis in a timely fashion but also the risk inherent in policies that
do not ensure proper healthcare infrastructure in every corner of the globe,
guarantee equal access to healthcare, make sure that people irrespective of
income have proper housing and nutrition, turn a blind eye to the destruction
of healthcare facilities in conflict situations like Syria, Yemen, Libya,
Ukraine, Nagorno-Karabakh, Myanmar, and the Democratic Republic of Congo,
tolerate millions of refugees existing in sub-standard living and hygiene
conditions, and disregard environmental degradation and climate change.
The pandemic
casts a spotlight on the deprivation of populations of proper healthcare as a
result of politically motivated discriminatory social and economic policies.
The
non-discriminatory nature of the coronavirus forced the Israeli government to
ramp up testing in communities of Israeli Palestinians which had been described
by public health experts as a ticking time bomb.
The experts
warned that Israeli Palestinians, who figured prominently among frontline
doctors and nurses treating Jews and Palestinians alike, were an at-risk group,
many of whom suffer from chronic diseases, live in crowded conditions, and are
socially and economically disadvantaged.
Ramping up
testing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 constitutes an immediate effort to
stem the tide but does little to structurally prepare Israeli and Palestinian
society for the next pandemic.
Pre-dominantly
Palestinian “East Jerusalem is gravely neglected in every possible way in terms
of the infrastructure. Most neighbourhoods of East Jerusalem don’t have sewage
systems. Just about every possible public service you can think of is
underbudgeted and lacking in East Jerusalem. The only thing they get a lot of
is parking fines and (punitive) housing demolition orders, said” left-wing member of the Jerusalem municipal council Laura
Wharton.
A Monopoly
board centred on Jerusalem given to her by Moshe Lion, the city’s mayor and a
former economic advisor and director general of prime minister Benyamin
Netanyahu’s office, illustrates the political calculus that potentially puts
not only Jews and Palestinians but populations elsewhere at risk in a future
pandemic.
“You have
here the City of David, the Mount of Olives, the Knesset (the Israeli
parliament), the Montefiore windmill, the markets, (the ultra-orthodox Jewish
neighbourhood of) Mea She’arim. Al Aqsa (the third holiest Muslim site) is not
here, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not here. Basically what you have is
a bunch of Jewish sites and various illusions to other things. It’s not a very
balanced picture of Jerusalem,” Ms. Wharton noted pointing at various landmarks
on the board.
African
Americans, Hispanics and native Americans tell the story, They have fallen
disproportionately victim in the United States to the coronavirus.
Looking fit
and trim in his dark uniform, Mr. Adams said he also had a heart condition and
high blood pressure. "I represent that legacy of growing up poor and black
in America. And I, and many black Americans, are at higher risk for COVID."
The surgeon
general said that “its alarming but not surprising that people of colour have a
greater burden of chronic health conditions. African Americans and native
Americans develop high blood pressure at much younger ages… and (the virus)
does greater harm to their organs. Puerto Ricans have higher rates of asthma
and black boys are three times (more) likely to die of asthma than their white
counterparts…. People of colour are more likely to live in densely packed areas
and multi-generational housing, situations which create higher risk for the
spread of a highly contagious disease like COVID-19. We tell people to wash
their hands, but a study shows that 30 percent of homes of the Navajo nation
don’t have running water, so how are they going to do that?”
What goes
for one of the wealthiest nations on earth goes for the rest of the world too,
particularly with the last two decades suggesting that pandemics occur more
frequently and are likely to do so going forward.
What started
in Wuhan in China in December 2019 had by April 2020 brought the world to a
virtual standstill. Millions across the globe were infected, tens of thousands
did not survive, economies shut down and the prospects for recovery and return
to what was normal seemed a mere hope in a distant future.
Andrew Cuomo
may be the exception that confirms the rule. There is little in the response of
leaders from China’s Xi Jingping to Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep
Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald J. Trump that suggests that the lesson
that an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere has persuaded them to think
in terms of structural change.
If the first
six months of the coronavirus are anything to go by, the name of the game has
been jockeying for political positions, ideology trumps science, and everyone
for him or herself in a race to the bottom rather than apolitical banding
together globally, regionally and nationally to fight a dangerous and
debilitating common enemy.
The response
to the pandemic reflected the crumbling of the post-World War Two international
order that is in the grips of a struggle by big and medium-sized powers to
shape global governance in the 21st century.
The struggle
has already crippled the United Nations and politicization of the coronavirus
and healthcare threatens to undermine the World Health Organization, the one,
albeit flawed, structure capable of coordinating a global response.
Complicating
the response, was the rise of civilizationalists like Mr. Xi, Indian prime
minister Narendra Modi, Hungarian prime minister Victor Orban and Mr. Trump who
think in civilizational rather than national terms.
They
conceive of their nations as civilizations in which Hans, Hindus or Christians
rule supreme and there is no equal place for minorities rather than nation states
defined by legally recognized borders, population, and language.
Theirs is a
world of neglect for international law, increased conflict, political violence,
and mass migration that promises to be even less prepared for the next
pandemic. It is also a world in which early warning systems are weakened by
muzzling of a free press.
Former US
president Barak Obama, in his opening blast against Trump in the run-up to the
November presidential election, put his finger on the pulse.
“What we are
fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being
tribal, being divided and seeing others an enemy, that that has become a
stronger impulse in American life. And by the way, you know, we are seeing that
internationally as well. And it’s part of the reason why the response to this
global crisis has been so anaemic and spotty… It has been an absolute chaotic
disaster when that mindset of what’s in it for me and to
heck with everybody else – when that mindset is operationalized in our government,” Mr. Obama
told a virtual gathering of his former staffers.
The pandemic
demonstrates the need for coordinated policies ranging from global, regional,
and national stock piling, international cooperation in medical research and
development, conflict mediation, protection of minority rights, environment,
absorption of refugees and robust but diversified supply chains.
It also
highlights the importance to healthcare of eradication of poverty and proper
social security nets, housing, hygiene, and access to water in a world in which
an outbreak anywhere is an outbreak everywhere.
The pandemic
positions an approach towards healthcare that is integrated into sustainable
social and economic policies as a matter of global and national security on par
with regional and national defense and security policies and investments.
It also
raises the question of what role major non-governmental institutions like the
Clinton Initiative, George Soros and the Gates Foundation can play.
Dr. James
M. Dorsey is an award-winning journalist and a senior fellow at Nanyang
Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in
Singapore. He is also an adjunct senior research fellow at the National
University of Singapore’s Middle East Institute and co-director of the
University of Wuerzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture in Germany
