Fight against the coronavirus is embroiled in a ‘fog of war’, with the poor becoming collateral damage
- The divergences in testing targets, reliability and reporting across countries mean the data is often misleading
- Meanwhile, the poor suffer disproportionately during lockdowns and their living conditions make them vulnerable to the disease
“War is too important to be left to the generals,” remarked a prime minister concerned about keeping field commanders from seeking small victories at massive cost. Likewise, leaders today must listen to and question not only the virologists and epidemiologists, but also the economists, unions and employer groups, social workers and ordinary people who have their own risk/reward calculations. Only then can they make decisions on behalf of the societies they govern.
The expert views are sometimes contradictory, and constantly changing as new facts emerge. Much weight is placed on data, which is often unreliable. Differences from country to country are so extreme that they cannot be measuring the same thing to the same extent.
“The fog of war” applies to the Covid-19 pandemic as much as to any military conflict.
Covid-19 data is uncertain and often misleading. Testing per million population (as of April 17) ranges from 59 in Myanmar, 220 in India and 2,694 in Malaysia to 15,509 in Hong Kong, 20,629 in Germany and 111,955 in Iceland. Some places, mainland China included, do not provide overall testing data. Other places have tested so few that it gives only minimal information about the spread. Moreover, data may be massaged or concealed for political reasons.
There is also a huge range in death rates. Some countries only count those hospitalised with Covid-19, others include people – mostly the old with existing conditions – as Covid-19 cases if they die with it rather than from it. In some European countries, deaths in care homes for the aged have only been recorded late or maybe not at all.
In Asia, it is a reasonable fear that such cases have also been missed. Hong Kong has recorded just four Covid-19 deaths in a period when total deaths in a 10-week period would be close to 10,000.
Foreign media, always anxious to preserve their access in Singapore, have long turned a blind eye to workers’ conditions. But now at least a few respected Singaporeans, such as former top envoy Tommy Koh, are waking up to this issue.
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Meanwhile, Hong Kong lags far behind modern cities in investment in a clean environment and allowing new technologies to break down politically protected oligopolies. Can this bureaucracy turn its back on concrete, on the demands of vested interests and political pressures, and refashion its taxes and spending? Just maybe, the Covid-19 hit to its finances will shake the system to its core.
Philip Bowring is a Hong Kong-based journalist and commentator