The asymmetry in COVID outbreak in India and US : Leadership or demographical advantage
The first cases of Covid-19 had already breached India and the United States of America when they were anxiously preparing an important political visit in the month of February. US President Donald Trump was visiting India and largely ignoring warnings from American health experts that the virus was a serious threat requiring aggressive action. In India, the public affairs were focused on deadly communal riots that had torn through parts of the capital between 23rd and 26th February. This clearly showed how populism is prevalent amongst the political leadership of both countries. They’re both huge, chaotic democracies with very polarised politics. But that’s where the similarities end. Let us see how India and the US followed completely asymmetrical trajectories on their response to the pandemic in the following months.
LEADERSHIP DIFFERENCES
On 13th March, India stopped international travel from hard-hit countries. It was still testing only symptomatic people with a history of foreign contact. Financial capital Mumbai recorded high numbers and went on to lead the case count in India. On 24th March, India imposed a nationwide lockdown with little warning when it had 536 confirmed cases.
In mid-March, Trump recommended social distancing across the country and halted travel from Europe. New York quickly became a Red Zone in the US. Starting on 19th March in the US, when there were 14000 confirmed cases, stay-at-home orders were imposed state by state. The US president has been considerably criticised for downplaying the importance of the pandemic. Some observers attribute this to wanting to keep the economy running in an election year. He also made statements contrary to basic medical evidence theorising on the benefits of ingesting disinfectants directly. Modi, on the other hand, published multiple advisory videos online, emphasising on the crippling effects of the pandemic and the need to stay at home. He asked citizens to perform unifying gestures including banging utensils, lighting diyas and conducting a trial one-day complete nation-wide lockdown.
TESTING
Towards the end of April, the US had more than 1 million confirmed cases and more than 60,316 coronavirus-related declared deaths. India had more than 33,062 confirmed cases, and more than 1079 reported deaths during the same time. According to some experts this vast difference is not only due to different approaches to the pandemic but also due to the ugly realities of economic inequality, which has allowed only limited testing in under-developed economies. While the US was testing 18,408 per million people, India was testing 559 per million people during the same time.
ECONOMY
Whereas the US is the biggest and the most influential economy in the world, India is on its way to realize its full economic capacity and find its global identity. Albeit the effect of the pandemic on these two very different economies is vast and incomparable, there are certain areas where both have had a hard hit. By some estimates, lockdowns could result in a 16% unemployment rate in the US and 23.8% in India. The airline, tourism & hospitality, automobile and countless other industries are irreversibly down and recovery in the near future seems impossible.
In the US, Trump has tried to keep the economy running by downplaying the impact of the virus. His administration has essentially always had a pro-business stance and he didn’t steer away from that. In India, on the other hand, the government simply couldn’t afford to take such a gamble, considering our massive population and below-par healthcare system. India also didn’t account for precarious migrant workers who, out of work, left large cities in gigantic crowds to travel to their native villages, sometimes for days.
DEMOGRAPHICAL ADVANTAGE
There is now a general consensus that the coronavirus pandemic is affecting many more individuals above the age of 65, with the possibility of dying being as high as 15% for people above 80 (and 8% for 70-79 and 3.6% for 60-69 years age group), as opposed to 3.6% for all.
Not unexpectedly, it is now becoming clear that countries with a large share of ageing population are in a worse position in combating the pandemic. It has been suggested that because of India’s favourable demographic profile, India has had comparably fewer cases of infections, but the statistical truth behind the claim still needs to be seen. Demography is just one of the factors that affect the vulnerability of the population to COVID-19 deaths. The strength of the healthcare system and the base level of health in the general population are two other important factors that matter crucially.
CONCLUSION
All the above topics have just been introduced in this paper and will be further analysed in the next assignment. These issues need to be scrutinized carefully, whether it is leadership differences or demographical advantages, in order to fully grasp the extent to which they have influenced the events that have unfolded in these two nations during this extraordinary time.