Worst Covid crisis manager

[President Johnson]

A handfull of leaders whose tenure was/is more or less influenced by the Covid pandemic and whose management made into international news. I included governors of the four largest US states as well.

The obvious answer in my opinion is Bolsonaro.

[Lumine]

It's Bolsonaro. It's not even close.

[KaiserDave]

Bolsonaro, not close

[Xing]

Yeah, hard to argue it isn't Bolsonaro.

[GregTheGreat657]

Xi Jinping followed by Cuomo

[Sir John Johns]

Write-in: Lenín Moreno.

Five successive health ministers, gross incompetence, corruption, favoritism, an inexistent vaccination program and a lack of empathy, what more can you ask for?


Here a summary of his management of the pandemic:


Only two months after the first Covid patient was recorded in Ecuador, the health minister, Catalina Andramuño, gave her resignation to protest lack of financing and political interference from the vice president who had been bestowed the coordination of the fight against the pandemic.


Then, in April 2020, Guayaquil, the most affected city was overwhelmed by the number of deaths, partly the consequence of a lack of preparedness from the government, shortage of Covid-test kits and medical supplies and massive cuts in health budgets (the neoliberal policies and town-planning choices of the right-wing municipality could also be blamed: namely the building in hospitals in the wealthiest neighborhoods far away from the slums of the city, a deficient drinking water networks and, possibly also, the lack of green spaces).

As a consequence, the city’s morgues were quickly overwhelmed and there were delays in the collection of corpses as well as a shortage in coffins. The response of the government was to produce in a hurry cardboard coffins (deemed as inadequate) and to build emergency cemeteries where dead persons were buried in an anarchic way. There were numerous cases of people trying to figure out where their dead relatives had been entombed by the authorities.


In the meantime, the director of the Social Security Institute had to resign for the overpriced procurement of masks, followed by the president of the Social Security Institute for the same accusation. Next, the director of the National Service for hazard management also resigned for the overpriced procurement of food kits.


In July 2020, the vice president (in charge of coordinating the fight against the Covid-19, remember), abruptly resigned to prepare his presidential bid (he ultimately didn’t run).


This was shortly before the revelation of massive corruption in the hospitals and related distribution of posts and financial resources between lawmakers of the ruling party organized by the interior minister to ensure a working majority in the parliament.


Not directly the responsibility of Moreno, but the right-wing prefect of Guayas (Carlos Luis Morales, a former soccer player) was for his part arrested for the irregular awarding of medical supplies procurement contracts to dubious companies (including one specialized in the sale of car spare parts and managed by a cabinetmaker nobody was able to locate) before suffering a heart attack and brutally dying. The family of the prefect blamed his death on him being forced to wear an electronic tagging that the doctors were allegedly unable to remove, hence preventing the use of a cardiac defibrillator; however, it is now known that this idiot caught Covid-19 and died of it.

As for the mayor of Guayaquil, she was sued for her insane decision to prevent a plane coming from Europe to pick up Spanish expatriates from landing in her city by blocking the airport runway with vehicles of the municipality.

Not to mention the case of a former president being investigated, firstly for his participation into a traffic of medical supplies with Israeli conmen, then for the murder and the attempted murder of the aforementioned conmen.


Anyway, after a brief respite, the Moreno administration embarrassed itself once more with the management of the vaccination campaign. The successor of Andramuño as minister of health, Juan Carlos Zevallos, resigned in February 2021 and flee to the United States after it had been revealed that his own mother as well as various high officials were vaccinated while not on the priority list. And that while not even nurses were vaccinated due to numerous problems in the vaccine procurement.


Zevallos’ successor, Rodolfo Farfán didn’t lasted long as he resigned after eighteen days in office, due to numerous scandals ranging from the website to get registered for vaccination being down for three days to the head of the vaccination program departing after only four days in office to protest against alleged political interference and from the leaking of a shocking video showing the 500 members of the Guayaquil and Samborondón’s Rotary Clubs lining up to get vaccinated (with a buffet at disposal and saxophonists playing in the background) to the refusal of the government to disclose the list of people having been vaccinated (it thereafter emerged such list included Moreno’s own wife as well as several of his collaborators). At the time of Farfán’s resignation, a grand total of 0.7% of the Ecuadorian population had received a dose.


Mauro Falconí, the new health minister, had to go into self-isolation one week into office as he had been tested positive to Covid-19. There, he had to elaborate a vaccination program from scratch because, as acknowledged by Moreno himself, the previous program ‘only existed in the head’ of the ousted Zevallos. Shortly thereafter, an audio was leaked in the media in which the new minister was hearing ranting against officials of his ministry about the total absence of vaccination count and yelling ‘Why the hell don’t we have data?’. Anyway, he was fired in early April 2021, after just nineteen days in office, being held liable for the chaotic vaccination campaign with damaging media reports on elderly persons having to wait up to over eight hours for the vaccine, only to be said the doses hadn’t been received.


The following health minister, Camilo Salinas (the sixth holder of the post in the Moreno administration and the fifth one since the outbreak of the pandemic just a bit more than a year before), was only there to fill the job until the end of Moreno’s term of office.


Before leaving office, Moreno somehow found an opportunity to insult his constituents in a radio program when, discussing about the corpses left in the streets of Guayaquil in April 2020 and the problems faced by families to identify the bodies, he declared that:

The same people who dumped the corpses in the streets are the ones who are complaining the government is unable to identify them

In the same broadcast, he also discussed a meeting with a woman suffering from hunger in such insulting terms he had to apologize:

A woman, quite filled with meat, told me: ‘President, we are hungry’. I told her: ‘You aren’t, madam, you look quite fat.

When Moreno left office (with only 6.3% of Ecuadorians trusting him according to a poll), only 2 million of vaccine doses had been administered; hundred days later under the new president Guillermo Lasso this number had increased to 16 million (including 10 million of first doses).

[KaiserDave]

Xi Jinping followed by Cuomo

How is Cuomo worse than Bolsonaro?

[Schiff for Senate]

Other: Kristi Noem, but note that I don't know much about international affairs and it's quite possible people like Jair Bolsonaro handled it much worse than even Noem.

[GregTheGreat657]

Other: Kristi Noem, but note that I don't know much about international affairs and it's quite possible people like Jair Bolsonaro handled it much worse than even Noem.

Bolsanaro said COVID was basically the flu, and at first said he wouldn't get vaccinated

[Schiff for Senate]

Other: Kristi Noem, but note that I don't know much about international affairs and it's quite possible people like Jair Bolsonaro handled it much worse than even Noem.

Bolsanaro said COVID was basically the flu, and at first said he wouldn't get vaccinated

The funny part is Trump did a lot of this, but you and most other Republicans will not notice that. This is literally projection. And if that is all he did (he probably did more, I'm sure, given his record on other issues), then he's about as bad as Trump and better than Noem.

[thebeloitmoderate]

Other: Kristi Noem, but note that I don't know much about international affairs and it's quite possible people like Jair Bolsonaro handled it much worse than even Noem.

Bolsanaro said COVID was basically the flu, and at first said he wouldn't get vaccinated

The funny part is Trump did a lot of this, but you and most other Republicans will not notice that. This is literally projection. And if that is all he did (he probably did more, I'm sure, given his record on other issues), then he's about as bad as Trump and better than Noem.

Same and the extremely ironic funny and sad part not trying to be a Trump apologist there but under Biden's watch there are more COVID-19 deaths and cases than under TFG. And also members of the president's party in Congress got tested + for COVID more than under Trump and the GOP this includes breakthrough cases as well

[LAKISYLVANIA]

Other: Kristi Noem, but note that I don't know much about international affairs and it's quite possible people like Jair Bolsonaro handled it much worse than even Noem.

Bolsanaro said COVID was basically the flu, and at first said he wouldn't get vaccinated

The funny part is Trump did a lot of this, but you and most other Republicans will not notice that. This is literally projection. And if that is all he did (he probably did more, I'm sure, given his record on other issues), then he's about as bad as Trump and better than Noem.

Same and the extremely ironic funny and sad part not trying to be a Trump apologist there but under Biden's watch there are more COVID-19 deaths and cases than under TFG. And also members of the president's party in Congress got tested + for COVID more than under Trump and the GOP this includes breakthrough cases as well

Yes but that's the case globally, not something you can blame Biden for, and to be honest Biden doesn't shut down it's economy like a moron, and lock people up for something like an Omicron wave.

Trump made mistakes by ridiciluzing/minimalizing it, maybe not even mistakes but intentionally spreading disinformation about the virus as well as spreading asiaphobia by calling it the Chinavirus, but you can't impossibly say that Trump is responsible for 300.000 covid deaths. And Trump was right that Chinese government mishandled the virus and disaster response, also by actively disturbing international research efforts about it's origin.

But some of the things Trump did (like the "drinking bleach" thing) are incredibly stupid. You can't say Trump managed covid very well, but you can't say Trump is responsible for 300.000 covid deaths either.

Bolsonaro is degrees and degrees worse, but some European auth nut leaders also have done a very bad covid crisis manage response.

2 years after the start of the pandemic, some governments still lock people up at home, create lockdowns, contribute to polarization, close the economy and forget that we're supposed to live as well. At this point, it is out of proportion and blown up, and it might harm education & mental health for lots of people too.

In Uganda, they closed schools, and for what... the people there are very young, no-one really is that much at risk, and what happens now, they open schools again and one third doesn't return because they're forced to do child labour.

Lots of government people are forgetting, ignoring the young because of the aging society in western nations and because young people aren't politically relevant, they have basically no say as it is the older people who are in the majority. We need to focus on education and guaranteeing every's child's right for good education, as well as mental health efforts as prolonged exposure to indoors might harm lots & lots of young people too. It might create another hikikomoru wave but globally (people refuse to leave indoors because they don't see any purpose in going outside, loss of social skills, depression because they're not allowed to see friends or because the outside world is normal).

At some point, this will avenge itself. The concept of hikikomoru is an issue in Japan because it is an aging society and around one million people are dependant on their parents to survive as they don't leave their room anymore. This is an extreme example, but as i say those lockdowns aren't really healthy at all, and might increase the number of people unfit to work, which in an aging society is generally is a trend you don't want to see.

If this continues and with the rise of virtual reality (which likely will be addicting) you might increase the number of people unfit to work, while the number of elderly also increases. This might be a recipe to collapse countries and society.

Japan can solve this two ways (because there the issue is the biggest): opening their country for foreign immigrants to be fit into the work force and also focusing on automatic and AI labour to replace human-required forces. Raising retirement age isn't really fair at all, and Japan already has issues with a very demanding work ethic in their society (concepts like karoshi -> death by overwork do exist). This also creates a burden on re-integrating people into society, because at some point: the benefit of work will not be bigger than the benefit of not working.

Japan has one of the largest groups of inactive people and also one of the highest retirement ages and also one of the highest averages age of it's population. It's immigrant force or pool is also very small, and it will suffer from issues. It might be one of the reasons why there's a decline in it's economy (or stagnation). Normally the stagnation since the 1990s should long have been stopped, but it is still continuing and conditions aren't ideal to increase the economy of Japan short term.

The pandemic might have caused this issue to arise in other countries too, and to explode in Japan. It's not like people choose to be hiko, if you suffer from mental health issues you're not fit to work and if you increase the number of people who suffer from mental health issues, the pool of active work force will get smaller eventually creating a higher demand for work force than availability, which will shrink the economy of a country slowly (or altogether collapse).

[LAKISYLVANIA]

So see above posts but the society of CST pass, lockdowns and measures is very oriented towards the older demographics. Children have to vaccinate, not to protect theirselves but to limit spreading and thus protect the old. But the lockdowns in general, especially the later ones have been a mistake, some were done to limit the burden on hospitals because there weren't ICU beds, and people have done austerity politics in healthcare which is now there to avenge itself.

But the long-term effects of those measures and lockdowns should not be underestimated. The continued coverage of covid also won't do well on our mental wellbeing, together with the rise of fake news on social media or smaller media outlets.

People are ignoring the issues with the youth and the young, and it's going to have a lasting noticeable effect, perhaps even to a destabilizing amount.

[Antonio the Sixth]

As others have said, it's undeniably Bolsonaro.

[DavidB.]

Not sure why Scott Morrison wasn't included. Many countries have experienced democratic backsliding but Australia has easily been the worst. Voted "other". Austria and Israel (which, at least, seems to be changing course now) are two particularly bad cases out of a whole lot of other countries (including my own) that failed this democratic stress test.

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

[Santander]

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

Emphatically agree. Jacinda Ardern was horrible too, but we expected that.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

Emphatically agree. Jacinda Ardern was horrible too, but we expected that.

One person sneezes or coughs in Auckland and the whole country shuts down, yeah.

[Conservatopia]

Not sure why Scott Morrison wasn't included. Many countries have experienced democratic backsliding but Australia has easily been the worst. Voted "other". Austria and Israel (which, at least, seems to be changing course now) are two particularly bad cases out of a whole lot of other countries (including my own) that failed this democratic stress test.

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

Wasn't it more the state governments rather than ScoMo himself though?

[Pericles]

Not sure why Scott Morrison wasn't included. Many countries have experienced democratic backsliding but Australia has easily been the worst. Voted "other". Austria and Israel (which, at least, seems to be changing course now) are two particularly bad cases out of a whole lot of other countries (including my own) that failed this democratic stress test.

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

Wasn't it more the state governments rather than ScoMo himself though?

Yeah, even if you hated Australia's response, Dan Andrews should be the villain rather than Morrison, who has consistently tried to tone down the restrictions. Andrews by contrast presided over the longest total lockdown period in the world (262 days for metro Melbourne)-though I think it was almost entirely bad luck and Victoria did pretty well.

[RINO Tom]

Not sure why Scott Morrison wasn't included. Many countries have experienced democratic backsliding but Australia has easily been the worst. Voted "other". Austria and Israel (which, at least, seems to be changing course now) are two particularly bad cases out of a whole lot of other countries (including my own) that failed this democratic stress test.

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

I mean, look who made the poll...

[RC (a la Frémont)]

Bolsonaro, but I have a hunch Kim Jong-Un really is. No way in hell there aren't any cases there.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Not sure why Scott Morrison wasn't included. Many countries have experienced democratic backsliding but Australia has easily been the worst. Voted "other". Austria and Israel (which, at least, seems to be changing course now) are two particularly bad cases out of a whole lot of other countries (including my own) that failed this democratic stress test.

Never thought I'd see the day where I would criticize Scott Morrison and praise Stefan Löfven, but Sweden managed it the best.

Israel didn't do anything particularly weird, probably less than other countries. The vaccine passport is less forceful than a mandate, which some countries did, and I personally think it's a very fair tool too. From my experience, a very solid chunk of the population got vaccinated thanks to the passport.

[DavidB.]

Israel didn't do anything particularly weird, probably less than other countries. The vaccine passport is less forceful than a mandate, which some countries did, and I personally think it's a very fair tool too.

Israel has rather radically chosen for (presumed) "security" over "privacy" and "freedom". Secret services engaged in phone tracking to make sure people having to quarantine did so, which is very heavy-handed and sets a very dangerous precedent. (I believe this now requires approval, but for a long time it didn't.) What's more, Israel had an Australia-style entry ban to foreigners for more than a year. I also remember Israel had rather tight restrictions with regard to the range outside your house you were allowed to go (with drones flying around to enforce it). A few other countries did this too and I will criticize them just as much, but in the case of Israel, it was quite a heavy combination of all of these things. It's no surprise and I'll cut Israel some slack because it is understandable that every supposed threat is framed as a national security threat, but I do think that Israel has been among the most heavy-handed countries (talking about Western democracies here) in curbing fundamental rights and I am really disappointed by that.

From my experience, a very solid chunk of the population got vaccinated thanks to the passport.

It's the same here (I got vaccinated for this reason) - and it actually makes it a lot worse. Imagine taking an experimental vaccine whose long-term effects are unknown NOT because you think you need it for your health but because the government essentially forces you to do it by banning you from essential parts of society if you don't - while those who produce the vaccine refuse any and all responsibility when things go wrong.

A mandate is worse, but very few democracies have actually done this.

[America Needs R'hllor]

Israel has rather radically chosen for (presumed) "security" over "privacy" and "freedom". Secret services engaged in phone tracking to make sure people having to quarantine did so, which is very heavy-handed and sets a very dangerous precedent. (I believe this now requires approval, but for a long time it didn't.) What's more, Israel had an Australia-style entry ban to foreigners for more than a year. I also remember Israel had rather tight restrictions with regard to the range outside your house you were allowed to go (with drones flying around to enforce it). A few other countries did this too and I will criticize them just as much, but in the case of Israel, it was quite a heavy combination of all of these things. It's no surprise and I'll cut Israel some slack because it is understandable that every supposed threat is framed as a national security threat, but I do think that Israel has been among the most heavy-handed countries (talking about Western democracies here) in curbing fundamental rights and I am really disappointed by that.

It's true that there was quite a heavy-handed approach at first, but it was really concentrated on a very panic-heavy period when we didn't really know much about Covid- the first lockdown, which took a few weeks at most iirc. After that, we had two "lockdowns" which weren't nearly as restrictive and weren't really felt- I, for one, was traveling around to work normally during those lockdowns.

As for the use of tracking, I agree it's problematic. The problem is, Israel has been using such measures for decades- both in the name of fighting terrorism, and outside of it (just recently the media broke that the police was tracking and spying on activists and protest leaders during 2021). And while I agree that some tracking is necessary to save countless lives, (allegedly) using it to blackmail Palestinians into becoming double agents was never a moral choice and no one is or was making any noise about it. If we oppose these measures, we need to make sure they're not used outside of the most extreme cases of active terrorist threats.

It's the same here (I got vaccinated for this reason) - and it actually makes it a lot worse. Imagine taking an experimental vaccine whose long-term effects are unknown NOT because you think you need it for your health but because the government essentially forces you to do it by banning you from essential parts of society if you don't - while those who produce the vaccine refuse any and all responsibility when things go wrong.

A mandate is worse, but very few democracies have actually done this.

Well, here we'll disagree because in my opinion these vaccines were 100% proven safe and were not just the right choice for personal health but the moral choice for the rest of society- whether it's stopping the spread of the virus before Omicron or making sure vaccinated people who go to the hospital for non-covid reasons can get treatment. The numbers about the pre-Omicron cases, or the hospitalization and critical condition cases before and after Omicron, were irrefutable. Unvaccinated people passed in my opinion a critical line that allows the use of indirect enforcement to make sure as many people as possible are vaccinated, and I have absolutely no problem "pissing them off", as Macron put it.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Putin i would say, even worse than Bosslarno for explicitly directing his propganda outlets to spread anti-vaxx sentiment globaly.