Pandemic vs. World

Over the course of this pandemic, countries all over the world have handled the coronavirus differently. And as expected, their way of handling the pandemic has defined their way of life today. As of January 26th, countries are either still actively fighting the pandemic or have overcome it and returning how they were prior to COVID. Countries that were able to catch and contain the virus quicker and earlier were able to return to almost normal life, a prime example being New Zealand. Countries that fumbled and failed to understand the severity of the virus, are left with an extremely high death toll and a never ending number of cases, an example being the United States. The following countries are ones who have either handled the pandemic well, or have not.

Let’s start off with China, the origin of the coronavirus. In February of 2020, a month before COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, China had hit its peak in cases and deaths. As of now, they have 100,291 cases and 4,814 deaths and each day, they never seem to have more than 200 newly reported cases and ten deaths. So, how have they managed to flatten the curve? China has had experience in combating infectious respiratory illnesses with SARS, a respiratory illness that hit China in 2002. They were able to act quickly (by enforcing lockdowns and stopping travel within the country) and their fast response was able to slow down the spread of the virus to where they are now.

Another country that had handled the pandemic quite swiftly was New Zealand. Under the lead of their prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, they were able to effectively stop the transmission of the coronavirus for more than a 100 days (meaning 100 days without cases that were results of community transmission, they only picked up cases from people trying to get into the country), but recently they are starting to pick up a few cases (less than thirty a day, most days are less than 10). They were this successful because they followed the words of their prime minister when she told people to stay in lockdown, despite the conditions(they only had 200 cases and no deaths). The result of this action taken early in the pandemic helped them to flatten the curve greatly, and allowed them to return to normal life, with only 1,934 cases in total and 25 deaths.

One country used quite a unique approach, and that country was Sweden. They believed that they would try to achieve herd immunity instead of putting lockdowns in place. Many health experts were against this idea because it would result in an unnecessary amount of people dying. As of now, Sweden has 547,166 cases and 11,005 deaths. They had managed to eventually flatten the curve, mostly because they knew how to contain it, not because of herd immunity. Their trend of cases and deaths are decreasing, so it seems they have managed to contain COVID to some degree. Even with their questionable response in the beginning, they managed to slow the spread of the virus.

There are two countries that have still not managed to slow the spread of the coronavirus (there are others, but these two seem to have no end in sight). The United States of America has gone through many ups and downs of the pandemic, the result of the ex.president belittling the virus and spreading misinformation. The case count as of January 26th is 24,916,899 and the death toll is 416,004. Higher than any other country. Why are they both so high? The answer to that is the nonexistent response the United States gave when COVID-19 first entered the country. The president tried to down play it as much as he could, resulting in a slow and extremely late response. It also depends on the fact that each state made their own guidelines and stay at home orders/lockdowns. The result of all of this is 100,000+ cases being reported each day and 1,000+ deaths, with more counting. If the United States’ response had been more uniform and done faster, unnecessary lives wouldn’t have been lost and Americans would be able to return to the way life was before the pandemic faster.

The second country that has not managed to slow the spread of the coronavirus is Brazil. To date, they have 8,844,577 cases and 217,037 deaths. They are now going through their second peak in cases and deaths. The response of the leader of Brazil Jair Bolsonaro has been nonexistent as well. The top “medical experts” of Brazil are contradicting the virus, saying that it is fake. Even though everyday, thousands of people are dying. They don’t actually have a plan as to how they will get over this, either. The government isn’t helping the people at all, and aren’t promoting the usage of masks or social distancing to slow the spread. They have started to record more than 20,000 cases each day and a little over 1,000 deaths everyday. From the way things are going now in Brazil, it is hard to imagine that there will be an end to this anytime soon.

Based on all of this information and analysis of countries' responses, there is still hope that the end of the pandemic will come eventually. Although more realistically, most likely not that soon. For now, all we can do is help the people fighting the virus from the frontline. The doctors and nurses in hospitals around the world need us to aid them in stopping the virus. So that they don’t have to work never ending shifts at their hospitals tending to their patients and risk their lives in the process. Different parts of the world are going through the pandemic differently, but we must help each other out in overcoming these unprecedented times.

Until next time,

Keerthana

Sources:

World Health Organization