The Coronavirus Hits the Global South Even more than developed nations, the world’s poor will need faster economic growth to recover from the pandemic.By Walter Russell Mead
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-coronavirus-hits-the-global-south-11587422555?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
The pandemic may have peaked in many countries, but for much of the world the worst is yet to come. Despite hopes that warmer temperatures would slow Covid-19’s spread in the Global South, the disease is spreading with relentless speed in countries like Kenya and Brazil. The strategies that have limited and slowed the virus in the Global North won’t work for the most part in the South. Without a vaccine or treatments, the people living there will be almost as powerless before the disease as humanity once was against smallpox.
Take the “lockdown” strategy. The purpose of this extremely costly policy is to “flatten the curve,” by shutting down much of the economy to ensure that health systems aren’t overwhelmed by waves of desperately ill patients.
In much of the world, this strategy is impossible. Only rich countries and rich peoples can afford lockdowns. In much of the Global South a substantial percentage of the population lives from hand to mouth. Many people make money selling things on the street or in crowded informal markets. They draw their water from communal taps; they use community latrines, if they have sanitation at all. Hundreds of millions do not have reliable access to clean water, much less to soap or hand sanitizer. After a few days without work, hunger will drive people back out onto the streets.
Even if lockdowns could be sustained, they would do little good. There are five ventilators in the Democratic Republic of Congo, one for about 20 million people. Ten African countries have no ventilators at all. Even if the disease’s spread could be slowed, medical capacity in the Global South is so lacking that there’s no chance it could be built up in time to help. The most stringent lockdown could not prevent a massive public-health crisis in many countries, and no such lockdown can endure.
Short of finding a cheap and simple therapy or a vaccine, there is very little that can be done to prevent the coronavirus from taking its natural course across much of the world. Those who can self-isolate will do so in their compounds or country homes, much as rich Londoners fled the plague in the 1660s, but for much of the population exposure cannot really be prevented, and whatever care the infected receive will in many cases fall critically short of what’s needed.
In parts of the Middle East and Africa, state failure cannot be ruled out. As economies collapse and the pandemic rages, weak states may well lose control of some or all of their territory. Drug gangs, warlords and jihadist groups will be ready to step in.
Some blame national leaders and international institutions for a “lack of international leadership.” That’s more than a little unfair. While the World Health Organization has not covered itself in glory, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the U.S. government and the European Union have all been much more proactive and generous in 2020 than any of them were in the 2008-09 financial crisis.
Substantial debt relief is in the pipeline and more will almost certainly come. As the supplies of vital medical equipment ranging from personal protective equipment to ventilators and test kits increase, much will be sold at cost or given to needy countries. And any vaccines or treatments will be shared and—thanks to what the world learned in the fight against HIV/AIDS—poor countries will have faster and cheaper access to these drugs than ever before in world history.
The short-term priorities are clear: These countries need debt relief and aid to help manage the extraordinary costs of the pandemic. And after experiences with HIV/AIDS and Ebola, rich countries have learned how to collaborate with countries in the Global South to build up their public health capacities. Current support comes more easily because of past successes.
But what these countries really need to avoid or at least mitigate disasters like this in the future is the most unfashionable thing in the world right now: more capitalism. We hear a lot of loose talk in the rich world about the downsides of economic growth and the supposed immorality of the free market, but without the technological progress that capitalism promotes and the economic resources it provides, the rich world would be as helpless in the face of global pandemics as our ancestors were in the times of the Black Death.
Economic growth is going to be more important than ever as the world recovers from the pandemic. Only growth can help rich countries recover from an economic shock of this magnitude and service the vast amounts of debt they have taken on to meet the emergency. For the world’s poor and middle-income countries, economic expansion matters even more. Without pro-growth policies in the rich world and pro-growth policies at home, the Global South will face the next pandemic, as it has faced this one, depending too much on the kindness of strangers.
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