x Marc Vandepitte: Stress test to the USA and China
The coronavirus pandemic is the most serious health crisis in recent world history. The way to approach it teaches a lot about a country, not only about its health system, but also about how it is organized, what its priorities are, how effective its policies are, etc. In other words, Covid-19 is a serious stress test. Let's apply this test to the two current superpowers: China and the USA.
The US approach
Stock markets first, not health
The first coronavirus patient in the US was diagnosed in mid-January. A week earlier, the director of the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) had been contacted by his Chinese colleague about a rare outbreak of pneumonia. At that time it was already clear that the virus would acquire epidemic proportions in the United States if it spread. The reports from China and other Asian countries were alarming.
However, the Washington government did not take this threat seriously. On February 10, Trump calmly announced that the virus would go away on its own when temperatures rose.
It was not until the stock markets fell on March 12 that the US woke up. Several states banned mass events, closed schools, or imposed "social distancing" (safe distance) rules. Mass gatherings were still allowed in other states, such as spring break in Miami or crowded sporting events.
On March 22, confinement was declared for a third of the population. At that time there were already more than 25,000 confirmed contaminations. For comparison, in China this occurred after 548 contaminations and in Belgium after 559 contaminations. In the entire period prior to confinement, hardly any tests were performed. As a result, valuable weeks were lost to tracking down and quarantining infected people in order to root the epidemic out.
Why this slow reaction?
Trump tried until the last moment to safeguard the interests of large groups of capital, even if necessary at the expense of prevention and protection of the population. So he wanted to postpone measures such as the "safety distance" as much as he could and confinement seemed unthinkable. He vehemently opposed the state governors who had taken such measures. "We must not have a worse cure than the problem," said Trump, loudly proclaiming what many of the economic elite, even in his own country, were thinking quietly. Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's top adviser, expressed that view in the most direct way: "You have to protect the economy and if that means some retirees are dying, it's a shame."
There is a second reason that explains the slow reaction. Through budget cuts, the Trump administration has dramatically reduced, if not destroyed, its ability to fight epidemics in its country. However, in 2014 Obama had warned that a pandemic could flare up in 5 to 10 years and that the United States had to prepare for it. Trump ignored that warning. In 2018, the department that deals with pandemics within the National Security Council closed. In addition, it reduced the resources of the CDC, the Center that deals with epidemics in the United States. Just a few months before the pandemic outbreak, the CDC department in China closed, depriving the United States of vital information at the time of the outbreak. But even when the epidemic was already underway, Trump continued to cut CDC resources even further ...
The failure of the health system
The US spends 17% of its GDP on health care, 50% more than most rich countries and more than triple that of China. However, they were not at all prepared for this epidemic. In early March, the country had barely 1% of the masks necessary to fight the virus. When the epidemic broke out, there was also a desperate shortage of respirators, tests, and even thermometers.
But the problem is deeper. It is a structural problem that is not only due to Trump's policy. Health care in the US has been completely privatized and is a real money medicine. On the one hand, the wealthy can afford an excellent treatment. On the other hand, one in five inhabitants does not even have health insurance or has a very bad one. The poor receive inferior quality care or cannot even afford major medical interventions. As a result of the coronacrisis, more than ten million people are already unemployed. They automatically lose their health insurance.
Third world situations
The consequences of this political failure are dramatic. In the world's richest country, local officials and doctors compete with each other for masks, respirators, and even thermometers. Due to shortages, hospitals pay up to 20 times the normal price for the equipment, if they can get it.
In a country that spends hundreds of billions of dollars a year on weapons, nurses make makeshift masks with coffee filters and are forced to work dressed in trash bags and ponchos. There is a severe shortage of respirators and protective equipment for medical personnel in certain hospitals, leading to apocalyptic scenes in certain places. In New York, they have built field hospitals and buried many dead people in a mass grave.
Unlike China, the US has failed to limit the epidemic to one region. Right now the US is at the forefront of the world with more than 1,000,000 infected people and more than 58,000 dead. Trump stated that "they will have done a good job" if they can limit the number of victims to between 100,000 and 200,000. Epidemiologists say the death toll could have been ten times less if confinement had started two weeks earlier.
For the country with the largest economy and the most advanced medical technology in the world, this can only be described as a total failure, both medical and social. Damage to reputation is incalculable. Martin Wolf, chief economist at the Financial Times, says it very clearly: "The United States is losing its reputation as elementary competition."
China's approach
Drastic measures
As far as we know, the virus originated in Wuhan City, a city of 11 million inhabitants. In the first stage, the local authorities did not know what was happening and underestimated the severity. An ophthalmologist who raised the alarm and then died of the disease was even reprimanded. It was painful and completely wrong. His name was posthumously reinstated and local officials were fired.
That was the initial phase, when nothing was known yet. But when it became clear that it was a new and aggressive virus, the central government in Beijing immediately set to work. Covid-19 was identified on January 7. There were still no deaths at that time. The first coronavirus death did not occur until four days later. On January 20, the virus was classified as a serious infection that could cause an epidemic. Three days later, the Wuhan metropolis and 15 other Chinese cities were closed a day later.
That drastic confinement was the right decision. Following a visit to China in early February, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared: "China's bold approach to stem the rapid spread of this new virus has changed the course of an acceleratingly deadly epidemic."
The great resources
Huge resources were used to keep the number of victims as low as possible. 40,000 doctors and nurses were transferred from the rest of the country to Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic. Some 3,000 companies across China, from automakers, textile companies to pharmaceutical giants, temporarily tuned into their business to make face masks, protective clothing, disinfectants, thermometers and medical equipment. The Chinese government significantly increased mask manufacturing. On March 2, China produced more than 200 million masks a day, it had multiplied production by 20 in a month.
Chinese doctors use the latest technologies to detect and treat the disease. They use artificial intelligence to get a faster diagnosis and to map the course of the epidemic faster and better, they use Big Data (the processing of huge amounts of data by "supercomputers"). There are robots helping to decontaminate hospitals.
Mobilize the population
The cooperation of the population is essential for the success of a quarantine. Under the motto "In the fight against the virus we are only as strong as our weakest links", the Chinese government left little to chance. Through slogans on large billboards, loudspeakers on the street, radio and television programs, newspaper articles and countless videos on social networks, the Chinese became aware of the risks of the virus and explained the best way to deal with them.
But it is mainly the neighborhood committees that made sure that everything worked well. According to a report by the NRC Handelsblad (Hollanda's financial newspaper), in any case they are doing an excellent job in containing the epidemic. «For the control of Covid-19 the members of the committees can be considered as a true blessing. These members knock on the door without warning to see if everyone inside has the right to be there. They know the neighborhood people well. The committees are part of a kind of district council. They provide them with masks, coats, tents, thermometers and posters. "
This great social mobilization is described by a WHO doctor as a great feat and a great success. “The Chinese are mobilizing as in a war. They really saw themselves at the front to protect the rest of China and the world. " The Chinese see it as a "long-running war." According to Zhang Whenhong, one of China's best-known epidemic experts, people in the interior still keep their distance, continue to wear the masks in public, and continue to wash their hands regularly.
A catastrophe avoided
The epidemic broke out in Wuhan City. China managed to prevent the virus from spreading across the country. That would have been a real catastrophe. In India, for example, possibly 1-2 million deaths from the coronavirus are expected. In China, according to official figures, there are 4,636 deaths.
The financial newspaper Financial Times, which is anything but pro-China, says that fewer people may have been reported infected and killed in the early stages, but that "there is currently no convincing evidence that they have been hidden or gone through high contaminated people. "
The figure per inhabitant is comparable to that of countries in the region, such as Japan, South Korea or Indonesia. According to the renowned institute Science Daily, the Chinese approach prevented some 700,000 infections. The WHO describes the Chinese approach as "perhaps the most ambitious, flexible and aggressive disease control in history."
According to WHO Chief Executive Michael Ryan, "The Chinese government's response to the epidemic was enormous and the government deserves great appreciation for that response and the transparency with which it treated it." Other countries can draw lessons from the Chinese approach, but the prestigious medical journal The Lancet doubts it will happen: "Although other countries do not have the Chinese 'command and control' approach, there are important lessons that presidents and prime ministers can draw from the Chinese experience. But it seems that those lessons were not taken.
Graph: Cumulative number of deaths, by number of days
The best defense is a good offense
The contrast between the two superpowers is great. China managed to control the epidemic fairly quickly and was able to significantly limit the number of victims. It currently offers help and advice to 120 countries. Washington's approach, on the other hand, is disastrous. The United States is on track to have a record number of deaths. His image has suffered a lot.
To divert attention from that disastrous policy and channel public anger, the makers of public opinion and politicians are targeting China. Trump initially spoke of the "Chinese virus". Rumors are spreading that the virus comes from a Chinese laboratory. Another frequent attack is targeted at China's official figures. And since the Chinese approach was praised by the WHO, that institution is also in the spotlight, just when the world needs the WHO more than ever, Trump even wants to stop contributing money to that organization.
In the US this strategy already seems to work. 58% of American citizens hold China responsible for the outbreak of the epidemic in their country, while only 42% attribute the responsibility to their own government.
But there is another reason for the ongoing attacks on China. The US is a declining superpower. China increasingly threatens its dominance in technology, the industry of the future and weapons. Washington is doing everything possible to prevent it, and therefore is trying to counter China's economic and technological rise. By characterizing the Chinese as the bad guys they are preparing the general public for a fierce trade war or who knows if anything worse. Today, more than 80% of American citizens are in favor of a large-scale trade war with China.
Conclusions of the stress test
The stress test that we apply to both countries allows us to draw a series of conclusions.
Whatever your view of China may be in other areas, when it comes to fighting the coronavirus, no one can ignore the fact that the country was able to efficiently cope with a very serious medical crisis. Chinese society is structured in such a way that the government is able to deploy enormous resources very quickly and also knows how to involve the population. The scientific medical journal The Lancet states, "China's success is largely based on a strong government system that can be mobilized in times of crisis, combined with the voluntary consent of the Chinese people to obey strict public health procedures."
The USA is the richest country in the world. With GDP per capita four times higher than that of China, the country could be expected to face the epidemic at least as well as the Chinese, but we see the opposite happening. In any case, the US approach makes it clear that public health is not a priority there. In the first place of the priorities is the maximum benefit of the large groups of capital and everything else is subordinated to that. The government works in the service of these groups. In China it is just the opposite. There the big economic actors are under the control of the government.
The surprising thing is that, to avoid a possible economic crisis, the US government, as in the 2008 crisis, is considering typically "socialist" measures: ordering companies to accumulate strategic reserves, injecting huge amounts of money into the economy. , the massive purchase of shares of threatened companies (to prevent them from being acquired by foreign capital), including the nationalization of entire sectors. According to the Wallstreet Journal, the current stimulus measures are "the biggest step towards a centrally planned economy that the US has ever taken." Laura, a doctoral student in Seattle, comments: "I don't know much about economics, but one thing is clear to me: this is the time to force serious change. If socialism has to save capitalism every ten years, it is clear that it doesn't work, I think ... "
Translated from the Dutch by Sven Magnus
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