Some of the wealthiest nations on the planet– the ones that had actually been thought about the best prepared to manage a pandemic– turned out to be the ones that suffered the highest death rates.
Why it matters: The SARS-CoV-2 infection has shown that readiness requires to be worldwide, and coordinated.
By the numbers: Prior to the pandemic, Johns Hopkins University, the Nuclear Threat Initiative, and the Economist Intelligence System launched a World Health Preparedness Report ranking every nation on the planet on its pandemic preparedness.
- The highest-ranked nation was the U.S.– but now, just 8 of the 153 countries in the study have an even worse death rate than the U.S.
- The U.K. came in second for preparedness; its death rate is even worse than America’s.
- Thailand and Sweden were ranked equally on readiness, but Thailand has actually seen just 1 death per million individuals, while Sweden has seen 1,078
The huge image: The infection spread in large part since of two big failures. The Chinese government stopped working to contain it and tried to cover it up. And 2nd, the U.S. failed to handle the international management function that most pandemic specialists anticipated to see.
- Once the infection was spreading globally, it took a trip first along the world’s densest travel and trade corridors, and showed most lethal to the senior, who are overrepresented among rich nations.
Where it stands: The Biden White Home has guaranteed to rejoin the World Health Company; assistance lead the Global Health Security Agenda; and produce procedures for coordinating and releasing a worldwide action to any future pandemic.
- That’s all part of a wider effort to combat the existing pandemic and put the world on a stronger footing when the next one emerges.
What’s next: As Princeton economic expert Angus Deaton points out, future deaths might well fall more greatly on poorer nations, especially if abundant nations immunize themselves first.
- For the time being, however, even after accounting for possible measurement and reporting mistakes, the infection has disproportionately struck the richest and best-prepared nations.
The bottom line: The preparedness report made it very clear that the majority of countries were ill placed to fight a worldwide pandemic. What nobody predicted was that the best-prepared would wind up seeing the highest death rates.
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