Best and worst countries on COVID-19 response

[😥]

Best: China, Germany, Czech Republic
Worst: Russia, Ukraine, Italy (month ago), Romania

[jaichind]

I think ROK and ROC also did a pretty good job as well

[Bismarck]

Vietnam May be the best.

[parochial boy]

It's worth Google translating this article, because researchers at the University of Southampton and Reporters sans frontières have estimated that if China had a free press, the number of people infected could have been almost 90% lower. And the world would have gained precious time in responding to the disease.

Worth thinking about before you jump to quickly to praising China's response.

[kelestian]

China the best? Are you serious?
Russian answer so far is pretty mediocre, good steps, but too late. Testing seems OK.

From post-Soviet countries, best - Kazakhstan, worst - Belarus, Turkmenistan

[Zinneke]

Best: China, Germany, Czech Republic
Worst: Russia, Ukraine, Italy (month ago), Romania

.

To add to what parochial boy said, the local CPC apparathiks deliberately covered this up to the central government, who then refused the entry of American specialists. They also knew after SARS how dangerous their wet markets are. And they essentially night the WHO who only declared this a pandemic at a ridiculously late stage.

It makes me angry how many people are so blaze about the "International Community" tying it's mast to this tin pot dictatorship that still evidently has serious flaws. They've set human rights back to cold war era levels, they've normalised face recognition and other mass surveillance techniques to an unprecedented level and they have an aura of invulnerability due to their implantation in our supply chains for cheap goods. And now they have mismanaged an epidemic and accused the US of biowarfare.

Write to your local official and tell them to oppose this serious menace to our way of life.

[CumbrianLefty]

China the best? Are you serious?
Russian answer so far is pretty mediocre, good steps, but too late. Testing seems OK.

From post-Soviet countries, best - Kazakhstan, worst - Belarus, Turkmenistan

Still officially zero cases yesterday, hur hur.

[kelestian]

China the best? Are you serious?
Russian answer so far is pretty mediocre, good steps, but too late. Testing seems OK.

From post-Soviet countries, best - Kazakhstan, worst - Belarus, Turkmenistan

Still officially zero cases yesterday, hur hur.

https://twitter.com/niktwick/status/1239239477912092678
maybe this Berdimuhamedow's seeds are helping, after all

[Tintrlvr]

Best: South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore
Worst: This is hard to say currently. I am reserving judgment for now.

China bungled things badly. They got it under control in the end, but their actions as a whole were a disaster.

[🦀🎂🦀🎂]

well the Kosovo government just collapsed, so they might take marks for being the worst. The Indonesian and South African governments are both going on spectacularly as well.

[dead0man]

Best: China, Germany, Czech Republic
Worst: Russia, Ukraine, Italy (month ago), Romania

China?  WTF?  You mean the country that put people in jail for mentioning it?  The country that tried to sweep it under the rug for most of 2 months?


This isn't the first time I've seen someone make this type of claim....where is it coming from?

[Skye]

Have you seen how AMLO is managing the crisis in Mexico? His behavior is bizarre with regards to it. Bolsonaro in Brazil is also pretty bad.

[It’s so Joever]

Best: China, ROC, Douth Korea, Singapore
Worst: USA, North Korea, Iran

[It’s so Joever]

Also very brave of you to praise China for anything on this forum.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

Best: South Korea, Taiwan
Worst: China, UK, various Global South countries

This isn't the first time I've seen someone make this type of claim....where is it coming from?

Power-worship. This crisis is revealing some ugly things about lots of people's real attitudes towards muh Strong Leadership.

[dead0man]

Also very brave of you to praise China for anything on this forum.

indeed, as it's an impossible position to defend.

[It’s so Joever]

Also very brave of you to praise China for anything on this forum.

indeed, as it's an impossible position to defend.

China can’t be praised for literally anything?
This is peak China derangement syndrome.

[dead0man]

Also very brave of you to praise China for anything on this forum.

indeed, as it's an impossible position to defend.

China can’t be praised for literally anything?
This is peak China derangement syndrome.

I'm sure if we really thought about it, we could find something to praise the PRC over.....but I can't think of anything....what do you got?

[Zinneke]

After reading Bolsonaros cavalier response he takes the cake. Brasil is going to get ed.

[urutzizu]

I would argue the fact that local authorities in Wuhan made such severe missteps, and China was able to contain the Virus so quickly regardless, while Western countries have, despite being warned by Chinese doctors and had much more time to prepare, have failed so spectacularly, actually strengthens the argument that the response from the Chinese central government exceptionally good. China didn't have the faintest idea of what they were dealing with. They didn't know whether people like Dr Li Wenliang (who was never jailed, despite the false claims in this thread) were well meaning or just going way outside his area of expertise as an eye doctor. The Chinese Communist Party that everyone loves to hate had to make its decisions without foresight of what might happen - and all things told, though they weren't perfect, they passed. They managed to stop a virus with less infections and economic damage than America and fewer deaths than Italy. That's something to be proud of.

And it's why it is already clear that by any metric China will go out of this Crisis winning (both internally and, more importantly, externally). Why? Because at the end of the day, results are all that matters on the international stage. You can virtue signal all day long about human rights and democracy, once in a crisis like this, where you run the risk of economies collapsing and people are dying at their altar, they are become abstract metrics at most. International leaders of their respective countries are  where they are for the most part, because they're competent, smart and most importantly of all, they know how to read the geopolitical wind. I don't think any smart leader has ever doubted the competency of Chinese leadership, but even so, most leaders chose to remain neutral in the battle for geopolitical supremacy between China and the US, because no-one wanted to commit before more cards were on the table. This is a power dynamic that has long been shifting, with tensions between China and the US growing in recent years, with Countries like the Philippines first to break ranks, but broadly still remains.

The coronavirus has completely flipped the table upside down and basically forced every single government in the world to directly compete in a public tournament of competency. Remember, broadly speaking, leaders of countries are smart. And they will be watching closely and clearly who has come out way ahead of any other government in the competition. This Coronavirus outbreak is likely to be remembered by historians as one of the most defining moments of the coming century, just like WW2 was before. The discrepancies between China and the West have been put out for everyone to see, China has come out of this crisis with a basically intact economy that is recovering fast, supplying medical equipment across the world and a renewed faith of Chinese citizens in their government, it is already leading in key tech sectors like renewable energies, AI, quantum computing and 5G and it is the manufacturing hub of the world with one of the world's best infrastructure. These are by and large, the same conditions that the US had after Second World War.

China is likely to gain a massive increase in soft power in the coming years, with a lot of countries completely committing to china's side. China will almost certainly dramatically close the gap to America's economy, with their's being in free fall whilst the Chinese economy will recover in a matter of months. As a direct result of this, the Belt and Road Initiative will explode. A lot of countries that have been on the fence about joining the BRI, will no longer have any reason to hesitate.

Remember these next few months folks. In the decades to come we will be looking back at right now as the most redefining time for the geopolitical balance in the world since the collapse of the Soviet union. Truly a moment to behold.

[Velasco]

I'd say South Korea's response is the best, despite I have some objections concerning intrusive apps. China's response must be quarantined, due to lack of accountability and transparency. However, the Chinese government is launching an effective public relations campaign, as well as taking advantage of the weaknesses of the western countries. We need medical supplies manufactured in China (prices are skyrocketing due to speculation) and the assistance of Chinese medical teams and experts is welcomed in the present hardship. So, despite reasonable doubts and objections, China is objectively in a strong position during this crisis. While some people blame China for being the origin country of the virus, the Chinese regime is also gaining prestige among certain people praising its strong response. I think that's a matter of concern, due to the authotitarian nature of the Chinese police state. But, on the other hand, we cannot afford ruling out the achievements and the experience in fighting the virus. Troubled question

As noted above, AMLO's response is astonishingly on par with that of Bolsonaro. Also, I don't know how Modi will manage to enforce a quarantine to the Indian subcontinent. That's not a 'bad response', but a huge matter of concern (let alone the poorest corners of the world ravaged by war)

[The Simpsons Cinematic Universe]

It's worth Google translating this article, because researchers at the University of Southampton and Reporters sans frontières have estimated that if China had a free press, the number of people infected could have been almost 90% lower. And the world would have gained precious time in responding to the disease.

Worth thinking about before you jump to quickly to praising China's response.

If al-Jazeera or something reported that, if Western countries had the CPC in power, the rate of infection could be 90% lower, would you believe that? I have nothing against RSF, but is that not the most biased organization you could possibly find on this subject?

Information about the virus has been public in the West for months. Has that helped at all? There's barely even a consensus in the West as to whether or not they should be doing anything. Here the government took a position pretty fast and it worked. They went public with it when it was prudent to, instead of encouraging mass panic and having people flee Hubei and spread it like wildfire across China.

Libertarians, especially, seem to be shilling hard on every front that either the virus is not that bad in the West, or that WELL AKSHUALLY it's all China's fault, and people are dying on the streets here and the government is just lying. Why? Because whether you like liberal democracy or not, this is clearly an example of a time when autocracy seems to work better, and there will almost certainly be a global increase in support for "statism" in its many different forms.

South Korea and Taiwan have both handled this crisis excellently, anyway, and probably better than any Western country. But I don't think you can directly compare different countries here. They have not had the same things on their plate. China just announced that the border is being closed almost entirely to new entries. There was a new case in my city imported from the US a day or two ago, and I think this is the right move.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

China's government deserves heaps of praise for what they've done after stopping their effort at covering this up, and heaps of condemnation for what they did prior to that. Its very much a mixed bag, but one ought not to forget the CCP was responsible for this going worldwide to begin with.
China is really smack dab in the middle as far as responses go - neither near the best nor near the worst.

[Zinneke]

The China defenders here are ignoring several points :

The Western way of dealing with pandemics is not allowing them to happen in the first place, by firstly having stringent health and safety standards that the Chinese say is a cover for protectionism, and secondly relying on the WHO as an independent actor who can give them proper prior warning of outbreaks.

China had 2 cases before of novel viruses almost certainly coming from their wet markets. They failed to act upon it. China also bought the WHO. That admittedly is also the West's fault. We should never have allowed such a major power that still didn't "believe" in health standards and multilateralism as anything else but "Western Neo-Imperialism" (a buzz term for not being able to follow their orders). And its the same story for the WTO, and for other international institutions we included them in after the Dengist turn thinking we were the ones " not just exporting goods but exporting ideas",when in fact it is they who are exporting theirs. 
China has consistently failed to grasp how multilateralism works and we are paying the price for accomodating them into our own system.

Secondly, this idea that I should throw my civil and political rights out of the window because of an epidemic is really far fetched. Belgium right now is showing that you can have measures and discourse than is not war-like or state of emergency like : https://www.ft.com/content/3d24b654-187e-4270-b051-acfc350498d2 . South Korea is another example of a successful response with some intrusive measures that will likely not stay after the crisis. Plenty of other countries will come out of this still hopefully as democracies. This blatant CPC rhetoric of "most problems need our brand of technocratic authoritarianism to be solved, democracies can't handle this crisis" needs to be nipped in the bud.

Lastly, let's not pretend that China, as they would love to have you all believe, are the only country capable of helping in this crisis :

https://twitter.com/IsaacvaleroEU/status/1243138312103215108

Where the EU countries have failed ( I won't defend the Trumpian response in the US) is tying their production lines of essential health goods like drugs and masks to the tinpot dictatorship, having a health system that works within tight margins (that is admittedly a flaw in Western society - the market taking over every aspect of society), and relying on the WHO, whose China-bought director was still saying things like this in late January, when China was refusing US experts into Wuhan :

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152
 

[Tender Branson]

Our response has neither been really good, nor bad.

I'd rate it as "lean good".

Considering we are bordering Italy's most impacted regions, the thing could have swamped in and led to a much worse situation.

On the economy, we could have been more like Sweden - keeping the stores and restaurants open, to avoid a total economic collapse, which is now likely. Or at least, there will be a huge economic loss, high unemployment, mass bankruptcies among small businesses.

We are currently walking a tight rope between Italian/Spanish madness and "normality" ...