Ian Bremmer: As Global COVID-19 Case Rate Rises, Polarization Hurts Pandemic Response | GZERO Media

First of all, the exploding cases that we're seeing moving from Europe and at least many states in the United States (though certainly not all) towards the developing world is getting you an exploding overall case rate. We've now seen from the World Health Organization yesterday the largest single day tally since the pandemic has begun over 180,000 cases that we know of. Add to that much lower testing rates in the developing world than in the advanced industrial economies and you'll see that we are nowhere close to being on the backside of this first wave of coronavirus. But that doesn't mean that the poorest countries in the world are all a disaster.

What we are seeing is that there are there are poor countries that have done a much better job in responding to the crisis. You don't have to be rich, but you do need to put politics aside and have a leadership that's willing to get the country together. Lead, you know, in a bipartisan way, focusing on expertise, focusing on science, a few of the poorer countries that have actually done a pretty good job of that: Vietnam. Now, in that case, because it's not in any way a democracy: single party rule, authoritarian. And the experience of lots of pandemics that gives them a playbook that they knew how to respond to - MERS, SARS - Southeast Asia has a bunch of that in recent years.

Secondly, Argentina, they're a democracy, but a weak one and a country in massive economic challenges. I mean, major default, debt spiraling through the roof. But a leader that did everything possible to get all of the governors, all of the legislators together, knowing that the response to the pandemic in very early days was going to make or break that country's very weak economy.

Then Greece, which is I mean, of the poor countries, we're talking about probably the most robust democracy, but which has gone through a depression. And in part, the fact that they've been on crisis footing for the last 10 years made it easier for them to pivot to the latest crisis. You know, on top of refugees, on top of massive unemployment, on top of challenging debt, dealing with a major lock down in a pandemic, too. And they've done it fairly well. So there is some good news out there. It's not about: are you a democracy? Are you an authoritarian regime? It's more about: do you have capable governance that is prepared to put politics aside for at least a short period of time to to address effectively this horrible pandemic?

And if you look at some of the countries that now have the largest caseloads: Brazil number one, the United States, number two, India, number three, not leading with science at all, very politicized. The country is more divided on the back of this crisis and makes it a lot harder to respond effectively, at least across the whole country. And, of course, that's what we're seeing in the United States as some states have very effective responses. Some states have very ineffective responses. And compared to Europe, where they put out, you know, all the countries put out fairly consistent advice for, you know, what a incremental end of lockdown would look like - and the local governments responded according to those rules. In the United States the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control, puts out their recommendations and most of the states that start opening don't actually pay attention to the recommendations.

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