Why the end of a pandemic looks as messy as the beginning

font size:
A-
A +

CThe chicks are currently vaccinated more than a billion times and achieved the Covid-19 milestone on the same weekend as Brazil’s own one, killing more than 500,000 people. The daily number of cases remains anxious, and patients who are hospitalized and dying include more adolescents. India, on the other hand, is at risk for a third wave of infection sooner than expected after the catastrophic second wave.

The end of the pandemic is just around the corner. However, due to the long tail and short-sighted global and national policies, this phase is not a “better equalizer” than it was at the beginning. He accuses vaccine nationalism of exacerbating uneven access to vaccination as the rich government focuses on domestic needs. Inadequate national capabilities, inadequate logistics, and often distrust and false information fueled by populist leaders have left millions behind and widened the existing gaps in the global economy. Then, in places like Australia and Hong Kong, there are isolated policies focused on the zero case, hesitating to open them up, discouraging vaccination and prolonging the end.

Past pandemics have shown that the finale will never be quick or clear. It’s easy to track the beginning of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, but it’s probably not much easier to pinpoint the end after the winter of 1920. Other mass vaccination efforts to combat infectious diseases such as polio have also taken years. It’s still over. But you don’t have to repeat all the same mistakes.

Indeed, the world has come a long way. Defeating Covid-19 is no longer a vague possibility. It looks far away. Researchers solved the vaccine puzzle faster than expected, and shots were distributed in record time, proving to be effective even against nasty variants. As Bloomberg News colleague Todd Gillespie reported this week, some epidemiologists are beginning to consider using hospitalization rather than case count as a primary measure of viral risk.

Still, 18 months later, Covid-19 continues to be devastated. Developing countries do not have enough shots, too much existing inequality is exacerbated, and there is excessive bureaucracy. It’s not just about the poorest. Japan’s performance was sluggish primarily due to conservative regulations on new drugs that delayed the deployment of vaccines, but restrictions on the number of people who could inject led to a chronic staff shortage. With the aging population and the Olympics a few weeks away, the country is fully vaccinated on only 7% of its population.

In some countries, vaccines have created the opportunity to regain the coveted political capital after failing the early stages of the pandemic. The UK manages as well as the US thanks to Operation Warp Speed, and most notably Israel, in addition to the data-rich healthcare system that Pfizer and BioNTech SE encouraged to guarantee supply, the country Helped by a deep pocket that allows me to pay premiums. .. It did not keep Benjamin Netanyahu as prime minister, but it resulted in 57% of the population being completely vaccinated.

Others have successfully managed the pandemic with effective control before returning to the inoculation race, but are sprinting to catch up as new variants threaten. Singapore became the first Southeast Asian country to distribute at least one shot to more than half of its population. China has fully vaccinated 80% of Beijing’s adults, distributed more than a billion times overall, more than one-third of the world’s total, and has been proven to commemorate the Communist Party’s 100th anniversary on July 1. I am devoted to the top-down approach of. horizon.

The problem is that state capacity, urgency, and cash reserves are not standard. As David Skilling of the Landfall Strategy Group, an economic advisory firm, points out, the ability to efficiently deliver policies, change course and maintain public confidence goes far beyond democracy, dictatorship, or other measures. It was a major predictor of the success of pandemic management. It is a rare product.

Strongman leaders are one of the worst, inflexible to succumb to science and facts, and hate telling bad news. Russia is one such turmoil. Despite the pioneering Covid-19 shots, deep-seated vaccine repellents worsen over time and never get better. Rather than prioritizing vaccination, officials, including President Vladimir Putin, showed that everything was going well, though not seen in the mask. It left the country vulnerable to the third wave of delta variant fuels and defeated Moscow. Last week Moscow was forced to oblige workers in the service sector to jab. India is too complacent and paying even higher prices after the decline of the first wave.

The late reality of this pandemic is, first of all, that the cycle of proliferation and blockade is endless without vaccination. As the Group of Seven did earlier this month, we need a coordinated push to deliver vaccines to developing countries immediately, rather than by backloading donations. At risk from the west, we need to address the weaknesses that hesitate to jab. And for the benefit of everyone, there is a great need to invest in logistics and healthcare structures that can continue to be monitored even after the pandemic disappears from the headline.

And even in the excitement of resumption, it needs to be recognized that pandemics, domestically and globally, put the most vulnerable ones even further behind. Covid-19 is accelerating some de-globalization trends, hindering the movement of humans on which many states depend, and damaging human capital through long-term school closures. According to Landfall’s Skilling, it has spurred the multi-speed global economy and made it difficult to close the gap.

After a pandemic around the world and the deaths of nearly 4 million people, investing in vaccination, future generations, and medical capabilities to ensure the next health promotion is a valuable monument. – –Bloomberg

Read again: Do you spend as before in the post-pandemic world?No, if Chinese cautious consumers go

Subscribe to our channel at YouTube & telegram