There are leadership lessons in how different countries dealt with COVID. I can first-hand compare China, Hong Kong, US and UK, all of which I visited during the early stages of the epidemic. However I have also monitored how Korea, Singapore and Israel dealt with the virus, given that these are countries do business with. I can also compare China in 2003 when SARS-classic first arrived, because I came to China in Feb 2003, just as SARS was first identified, and then observed how the Chinese regime reacted to it, and can compare China's response in 2020.
I believe it is possible to evaluate different regime's responses without entering into a political/economic discussion, but rather to look at COVID response on a pure leadership basis.
In China 2020, the key strategy that eventually evolved was 'the 3 maximums' : maximize tracing, maximize testing, maximize hospitalization. HK did similarly. However in Dec 2019 and Jan 2020, the government did quite poorly. They first 1) obfuscated and hid information due to fear of upsetting the population and provoking internal instability during the Feb CNY holidays, and fear of instability in advance of the Party meeting in early 2020. They also 2) sought to minimize blame to China by coopting the WHO, minimizing foreign assistance, and coming up with scapegoats such as the US.
However by Feb 2020, China reversed its internal denialist policy, and began a campaign of spreading information on how serious the virus was. The state-controlled media spread stories of whole families becoming infected and dying, and the fear of the virus was instilled in the population. This paved the way for widespread isolations and shutdowns. All foreigner visas and work permits were shut down, all businesses were shut down, travel restrictions were put in place. This prevented intra-city spread of the virus and import of the virus. Moreover because the population had experienced SARS, there was a population-level-driven embrace of precautionary measures, such as voluntarily purchasing and wearing masks, refusal to travel even when permitted, and companies ordering employees to WFH. It was a sight to behold to see how Shenzhen turned into a ghost town and everyone being fully masked up at all times irrespective of when the government put in place the mandatory masking. Tracing - Contract tracing was thorough, with every person having to use smartphone apps in order to do things like access public transport or enter their apartment building.
In HK, there was a similar emphasis on tracing, hospitalization, and testing. However HK resisted border shut-downs and this led to imported cases (most from UK). There was a big demand in Feb by the healthcare professionals that HK's government shut all the borders to HK, but the government resisted calls to do so for weeks, and resisted putting in place mandatory quarantines. Currently the border are still open, but now new arrivals to HK are required to do 2 week quarantines when arriving. Quarantines are strictly enforced by both tracking bracelets as well as random Whatsapp/Wechat video check-in inspections by healthcare officials, with each quaraninee being checked several times per week, with harsh legal penalties for violators. Tracing - any infected people discovered trigger contact tracing, and all people who were in contact with an infected person are whisked away to concrete bungalows in the outskirts of HK. Testing - testing is free, fast and accessible. Public school gyms were used as the distribution for testing. The community was encouraged to drop by and take a free nasal swab test, with results sent by SMS within 7 hours. Hospitalization -
The US stood in stark contrast to this. Multiple political officials denied (and continue to deny) the severity of threat, thereby weakening population-level resolve to mask up. Borders remained open to travelers with nearly no healthcare precautions, with the exception of bans on travel from China. I flew from HK to US in early February, and was unchecked at the border. There was zero masking, social distancing, and the weird idea being touted by the POTUS that somehow the virus case count would remain at 15 people, as if viruses don't travel.
Lessons: I can't say enough how the difference between maximizing transparency and sticking to facts is a mark of good leadership. In 2003 the Chinese government cocked-up the virus management on a colossal scale. They tried to hide and deny SARS, the media was muzzled and it caused massive panic among the population. The gov also failed to properly quarantine and isolate, and it led to viral spreads. China in 2003 SARS was a colossal clusterf-ck. I think China's 2020 reaction was looking similar, but then flipped, and they changed their program to maximize those 3 factors of hospitalization, tracing and testing. The same good execution was done at other SARS-experienced countries around the region, like Korea, Vietnam, HK, Singapore, etc. and they have come out on top. Both China and Hong Kong have been internally open and free of quarantines since mid-March. Vietnam, poor country and crowded though it is, has their new cases down to zero. Zero. HK and Singapore has had some flare ups recently, but there were multi-day stretches with zero new cases.
Bad leadership is self-deception/ignoring or obfuscating difficult facts, failing to set a direction and rallying people and resources, and failing to deal with things early and decisively. Leaders lead from the front and need to exemplify good behavior as well. They look at the difficult situations, call it like it is, and put in place programs to beat the challenge. I hope case studies can be done in leadership after all this is done. I think the US in 2020 and China in 2003 are similar studies in how to cock up a response.
You just described how China, a fascist dictatorship, deals with pandemics that China created. With complete control of the media, a compliant public, and the ability to strip all freedoms from its subjects, it was able--according to itself (if you take China at its word)--to get control of the situation. The U.S. and the EU/UK, with similar populations, have experienced similar deaths to one another (the U.S. is still higher per capita thanks to the early spike in NYC) because in the Western world the public is not nearly as compliant when it comes to loss of basic freedom, and also they are free nations, making it much more difficult to lie about actual deaths due to transparency. China, on the other hand, can say whatever it wants and the useful idiots will take them at their word.
FWIW, the most reasonable response appears to have been Sweden's response, which took no extreme measures, barely masked up, and overall kept civil society going as normal. This approach saw large upfront deaths, causing Sweden to endure extreme criticism, but Sweden experienced a much smaller second wave. Last I heard, Sweden's GDP growth is going to be less bad than many others. It takes incredible leadership--true courage--in the face of intense international criticism, to take the path and maintain the path taken by almost no one else. While the entire rest of the world--the U.S. included--stripped its citizens of basic freedoms, Sweden pushed ahead, keeping true to its liberal beliefs.
Sweden's response is certainly noteworthy. Worth exploring. I don't know very much about the nuances and details so I will refrain from comment though.
I did NOT compare the response of a single country vs. US/UK, but compared HK, Singapore, Korea and China (both 2003 China and 2020 China) to US. With the exception of China, not a single one of those countries could be construed as fascist. My comparison was explicitly NOT of politics or economics but about the actions taken in the face of a crisis. I also made a point of contrasting the 2003 and 2020 in terms of response.
China's political system and its authoritarianism is not exactly related to the proper ways of dealing with a crisis. In fact I brought up China's poor 2003 response to illustrate how proper crisis response is irrelevant to the political system. In both 2003 and 2020 China was a totalitarian and authoritarian regime, but the response was diametrically opposed.
You literally described China's response of taking over the social networks, using state run media to spead its messages, strictly enforcing quarantines (you forgot to mention Chinese officials boarding people inside their homes), etc. These are actions that only a totalitarian dictatorship could enact. Not sure why you would expect that to be an example in leadership for future pandemics. That can't happen in a free society.
My point in bringing up Sweden's response was to show how counterproductive the so-called leadership has been around the world on C19 that has resulted in economic ruin and the taking of all civil rights from the public due to a disease with average mortality rate of 80. 80! Your entire premise about the leadership of these Asian nations is that a disease with average mortality passed life expectancy is worth stripping the public of its civil rights. That is a false premise.
Weh weh weh, classic Mike Pompeo/Peter Navarro/Fox News-inspired "China bad" rhetoric. China created the problem? On what basis? Feed me with your lies so I can debunk them. Also keep denying China's numbers. Multiply those by 100 and they are still better than the US. Most of China has been back to normal for a while now. If you don't believe what my family and friends on the ground there told me, at least look up some vloggers in China before you conveniently fall to the argument that China lies.
Oh yes but you have freedom. Forcing you to wear masks or quarantine is taking away "basic freedom"? Maybe I don't understand what "basic" means. Pardon me, English is my second language. Or maybe you just know about freedom more than I do.
Sweden's case and death per capita are 3-4 times higher than its Nordic neighbors and higher or on par with other European countries that are far denser population wise, year to date. So too soon to celebrate.
Not just leadership. It also teaches us lessons in organizational structure. Particularly how much of a mess that the US executive branch is, which is exactly why the US executive branch has an unusually high "key man risk" because its effectiveness depends on the competency of the president more than it really should.
We literally had 2 Federal organizations, HHS and CDC vie for the control of the situation. They both used a lot of their resources playing the political game instead of actually trying to save lives.
From the looks of it, there was no centralized and singular effort backes up by a plan. Bunch of independent moving pieces with their own agendas doing their own thing. That's why the US failed so miserably.
The US "failure" is almost totally the result of the disease running rampant in NYC and NJ early on. The other failure was the various governments shutting down civil society to stop a disease with average mortality of 80. And continuing to do so. Half of America's unemployed are in California because the government refuses to open no matter what, ensuring the maximum pain is inflicted on California's subjects.
You kidding right? Somehow you conveniently left off places like Texas , Florida, and Arizona?
And exactly whose responsibility is public health? States? No it's the responsibility of the federal government. While the 2 federal agencies were busy fighting a turf war, states were left to their own. Some screwed up (NY, NJ, TX, CA, AZ, FL), some did well (most of New England states and maybe Ohio).
If we didn't have bunch of different agencies seemingly doing the same things that even they are unsure who's supposed to do what (so they end up fighting over whose "jurisdiction" it is, like they always do), then the US wouldn't be in this much of a mess.
This kind of stuff happens so many times that it's ridiculous.
How come corporate America is.so great at M&A action and corporate restructuring but public sector America is a gigantic bureaucracy and silos that never goes away? I didn't pay taxes so bunch of Feds can waste time fighting over what's their job and what's not.
A lot of US states have moved towards the Sweden model. We have had schools open for weeks and have a decreasing rate of spread in the state. Why? Probably because a ton of people have already had it and recovered and the most susceptible population remains diligently safe, essentially reaching a pseudo-herd immunity at far below 80-90% of the population being infected.
New York’s infections kept rising despite masks, lock downs, etc. and then gradually dropped back down. They developed herd immunity in the most at risk communities and have kept low infection rates since then.
It's honestly sad how big of a difference there is on how each state has handled the situation. Public health is a federal reponsibility and hence there should've been a whole a lot of cooperation between federal and state governments, with the federal government having a larger say in things.
I ultimately attribute that to how the federal.government, particularly the executive branch, is structured. I'm not blaming Trump for the structural failures, rather if there's one person who deserves blame is FDR for creating a terrible precedent of a certain way we create federal agencies.
HHS and CDC fighting a turf war over whose "jurisdiction" while forgetting to commit to their actually jobs should remind us of bunch of past occuremces. ATF and FBI pulled the same shtick with Waco, a disaster that could've been avoided. Also why the hell do we have like 20 different federal law enforcement agencies? Why the hell do we have so many intelligence agencies? CIA and NSA have been bickering around for decades. Who knows how much time and money is being wasted just because we have so many agencies that there virtually can never be any centralized effort to do anything within the federal government?
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