Since the beginning of the year 2020, the whole world has been stupefied by the rapid spread of a deadly coronavirus known as COVID-19. World superpowers in the West were unable to prevent the virus from reaching their borders. Because of this fact, the novel coronavirus COVID-19 became a world-wide pandemic no less than three months since its formal identification.
In less than six months, the world suffered more than 1.5 Million infections with death tolls reaching more than 300,000 people. Countries all over the world are in a race – not anymore to contain the virus but to combat it. The lives of billions of people are now in the hands of the government, especially its highest power.
How to Mishandle a Pandemic
All the world’s eyes are in the center of the government, waiting on their every move. With lives at stake, people are particularly delicate to insurmountable blunders. But the world sure is a magical place where not-so-impressive people are heralded as leaders. Here are some of the worst politicians in this pandemic.
Donald Trump
A firm non-believer of science handling a pandemic – this is pretty much how it sums up. Currently, the US actively has the most number of confirmed cases all over the world. When asked about it, President Trump insists that it’s because the country is doing a lot of tests. This is true, he also said that conversely, the country would have very few cases if no tests were done. His point is that the test is “overrated” as if not testing patients would magically cure the coronavirus.
This is just one of the incredible blunders Trump has versus COVID-19. He has been actively playing down the threat focusing more on the origin of the virus rather than preventing its further spread. It is difficult to speculate if he clearly understands how grave the situation truly is and how his fellow Americans are suffering from COVID-19.
Rodrigo Duterte
The Philippines was originally commended by the World Health Organization as a model in combating COVID-19. The country only reported two imported cases in January. The Health Secretary was confident that his countrymen are safe. The President promised that the country has enough resources to fight the virus. But all hell broke loose as another case was reported in early March. The Philippines now has the largest number of positive cases in South East Asia.
The government immediately imposed an island-wide lockdown, freezing thousands of businesses and keeping millions of people in their homes. Supplies and aids were provided for the people. However, resources started to dwindle soon enough. A clear bias in the enforcement of the quarantine law between the powerful and the powerless was evident. People waited hours for press conferences only to learn nothing.
The biggest problem – the lack of mass testing. As the country starts to relax its quarantine efforts this May and numbers are still rapidly increasing by the day, it is unclear whether the country will flatten the curve any time soon.
Giuseppe Conte
Prime Minister Conte is not the ‘typical’ politician. He is a person to never hold a title of a politician in his life. Yet, he was thrown in the fires of hell with the worst crisis Italy has ever faced since the Second World War. As people’s attention is in the growing cases in China, the number of infected patients in Italy started to grow. The lax treatment of Italy to COVID-19 proved that the virus is not something to toy with.
The government was originally reluctant to impose a nationwide quarantine. People were on the streets, the elderly were doing their shopping, and public transport was still packed. It was only when numbers increased daily by the thousands that people started to take the quarantine seriously. Hospitals were overwhelmed to the point that the government outright said that the elderly were not anymore a priority.
Boris Johnson
The concept of ‘herd immunity’ is not new in the world of the health sciences. The UK only chose to protect the younger and elderly members of the populace. The rest of the country can go about their lives as normal – no social distancing, no hygiene requirements, nothing. However, it is a risky move to expose the general public to a rapidly spreading, deadly virus. There are a variety of questions for this action. Is there immunity to the virus? Is there a proven method of treatment? The adverse effect of this? Prime Minister Johnson is the first world leader to test positive for COVID-19. Not only that, but even the UK’s Prince Charles was also diagnosed with the virus.
The Common Denominator?
In a lot of instances, these politicians might need to fire their speechwriters for ridiculous misinformation blunders. Lobbying that the high infection rate is an adverse effect of aggressive testing. Accidentally causing death to constituents by saying that injecting disinfectants is a possible cure for the virus. Choosing to fight Leftists instead of the virus. Learning curves are expected but a constant stream of crazy is sure to cost millions of lives.
There seems to be one behavioral trend similar in all these politicians – it was how they publicly played down the possible threat of the virus. Slacking off, overconfidence, or mere ignorance – it is difficult to speculate at this point what pushed them to treat COVID-19 like it’s the common cold.
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