The coronavirus didn’t hit wealthy countries first, but it hit them hard. So far, nearly four out of five global COVID-19 deaths have occurred in the global north, which encompasses most developed nations.

The United States, Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom contain just 7.5% of the world’s population — and two-thirds of its coronavirus death toll.

While the failures of the developed world to contain the virus have been well-documented, the successes of the global south — comprising newly industrialized or developing countries — have gone mostly unnoticed.

Last month, the World Bank reported that developing countries make up 85% of the global population but account for just 21% of COVID-19 deaths. In late May, the entire region of West Africa — which has a greater population than the United States — had recorded just 654 COVID-19 deaths, a figure some Western countries were racking up every day.

This phenomenon is no coincidence. The global south features countries with a vast range of demographic, climatic and geographic features. Many coronavirus superstars, including Vietnam, Mongolia and Slovenia, share borders with pandemic hotspots. And while it’s true that poor countries have lower testing rates — and some may be fabricating their statistics entirely — conditions on the ground give little indication that the developing world has experienced the coronavirus pandemic as severely as its wealthier counterpart.

So what explains the strikingly lower death tolls in what President Donald Trump once called “shithole countries”? The most convincing explanation, experts said, is that poor countries have simply managed the pandemic better than rich ones.

“Whenever we see success in the developing world, we tend to tell the story in terms of things that are outside their control,” said Charles Kenny, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and the author of ”Getting Better: Why Global Development Is Succeeding and How We Can Improve the World Even More.” Over the last few decades, he said, the global south has made huge strides in terms of infrastructure, literacy, health care and welfare policy. Those achievements laid the groundwork for poor countries’ coronavirus response — but have gone almost entirely unnoticed in the developed world.

“We have a problem talking about the policy successes of developing countries, which are considerable,” Kenny said. Western media sources tend to emphasize developing countries’ challenges rather than their achievements. Even when they do get credit for lifting their populations out of poverty, stories in the international press often emphasize the role of Western charities rather than domestic efforts.

But the available evidence suggests that developing countries have tackled COVID-19 not through luck or chance, but rather through the diligent efforts of their politicians and their populations.

In January, while Trump was assuring Americans that the few known cases would soon fall to zero, Senegal was closing its borders, initiating contact tracing and committing to provide a hospital bed to every COVID-19 patient. In February, as Western European leaders allowed the virus to spread at mass gatherings, Mongolia canceled its national lunar new year celebrations and set up a task force with more than 800 staff members.

And in March, as the United States distributed meager social benefits and bailed out corporations, the Cook Islands, a small country with incomes roughly on par with Sri Lanka, devised a welfare package worth 11% of its gross domestic product that included cash payments to older adults and a three-month waiver of electricity bills for every household.

These cases are not outliers. Many poor countries with small coronavirus outbreaks took deliberate, early and decisive steps while those in the West wasted precious time dithering. And they took these steps against considerable odds.

Senegal, like many sub-Saharan African countries, has a mostly informal economy, making quarantines both logistically difficult and economically devastating. The entire country had just 86 intensive care unit beds at the start of the pandemic. Nevertheless, within weeks of the global outbreak, local officials had established 78 field offices, dispatched contact tracing teams and allocated a $160 million response budget.

As of Saturday, Senegal had just 47 deaths. Pennsylvania, a state with roughly the same population, had 5,931.

Read the full article here: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5edaa785c5b6dc3de7b94546

Be decieving yourself with political CoronaVirus in Nigeria ....



U r comparing Nigeria's case where not more than total number of 5 people flew in with the VIRUS, and yet unable to contain it and with political figures to America and other countries where thousands flew in with the virus in just a day for more than a month before their borders was closed ..



OP please use your brain...You should be comparing Nigeria and fellow african countries who happens to be in same condition.

[s]

Enwhen:


Be decieving yourself with political CoronaVirus in Nigeria ....



U r comparing Nigeria's case where not more than total number of 5 people flew in with the VIRUS, and yet unable to contain it and with political figures to America and other countries where thousands flew in with the virus in just a day for more than a month before their borders was closed ..



OP please use your brain...You should be comparing Nigeria and fellow african countries who happens to be in same condition.

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