Essay: COVID-19 Response in Iran: Government’s Poor Handling and Citizen Solidarity

Introduction
COVID-19 has become monumental in our world. The pandemic has brought on a lot of difficulties for families, governments, economies, and other industries. The virus has caused ripple effects in every aspect of our life and is causing us to appreciate the more simple things in life. Countries are handling this situation differently in their own way. One country; which was one of the three with the highest rates of COVID-19 in the early stages of the pandemic; is Iran. Despite the poor handling of coronavirus in Iran by the government, citizens are finding hope and solidarity by comforting each other which goes to show there’s positives and negatives which come from the pandemic.
Response of Iranian Government
There has been backlash due to the way the Iranian government has handled COVID-19. “There are growing indications that the Iranian government knew about the outbreak even as it avoided doing anything to stop it-or even inform the public about it” (Behravesh, 2020). Suffice to say, some citizens are not surprised since the Iranian government has had a long history of concealment. It was noted by Bahram Parsaei, a member of parliament, how the government had made a decision on January 31 to suspend flights between Iran and China but never did, there were still flights going in between the two countries up until February 23 (Behravesh, 2020). The first two cases were confirmed in Qom by the Iranian government on February 19 (Behravesh, 2020).
The first announcement the Iranian government made was on February 19, where they told people not to worry about the virus at all (Hosseini, 2020). This shows how botched the response to the outbreak was. Behravesh went on to explain how the first acknowledgment of the virus by the Iranian government was made when someone died rather than announcing there’s risk of infection (2020). Most countries have put out official acknowledgements of the virus and informed the public to be aware of who they come into contact with. Behravesh explained how the virus could have spread already before they made the announcement “and that Iranian officials may have known as much” (2020). Without the public knowing COVID-19 was a threat to them, most Persians have gone on as usual which caused infection and death rates to spike.
Meanwhile, the government took extra precautions to take care and protect the Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. “On February 15, four days before Iran officially reported its first coronavirus cases, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei had a customary meeting with a group of religious eulogists, but unlike in past years, his security detail did not permit them to approach Khamenei and kiss his hand” (Behravesh, 2020). This shows how on top of the transparency, the government favoured protecting their leaders over the public. The government “failed to care for the lives of the 83 million Iranians and prioritized its partnership with China over the nation’s public health” (Behravesh, 2020). I believe the government concealed information from the public and did not take necessary precautions to protect society in order to keep their economy running. Due to sanctions set into place by Trump back in 2018, “this rendered the country critically dependent on Chinese investment and assistance” (Behravesh, 2020). This might explain why the Iranian government did not stop flights from China entering Iran, so they could preserve their relationships with the Chinese government and keep getting money.
The Iranian government also kept from informing it’s citizens about the COVID-19 threat because they didn’t want it to affect the elections on February 21” (Behravesh, 2020). Due to turmoil in the country because of protests and the shooting down of the passenger plane, the government feared they would not get the results they wanted in the election so they mishandled responding to COVID-19. Due to the upcoming elections, it’s possible they didn’t inform the public of the COVID-19 threat because they didn’t want to upset them even more because of the issues it had dealt with recently. However, they had low voter turnout regardless. Another reason they handled the situation poorly may have been because of what the Deputy Health Minister stated about how“quarantines belong to [the period] before World War I for [diseases like] plague and cholera, and even the Chinese are not satisfied with the quarantine that has been put in place” (Behravesh, 2020). The Iranian government keeps making silly claims and responses to the pandemic to try and sound smart and educated on the topic. However, this just makes them look sillier. Another message which was given by the Supreme Leader was about how “the coronavirus might have been produced by the United States and specifically engineered for Iranian genes” (Behravesh, 2020). The Iranian government is trying to make as many excuses as they can to try and prove to the public they are dealing with the virus. The Supreme Leader explained to the Iranian public and “warned against conspiracies and fear-mongering of our enemies…[they] were designed to bring the country to a standstill and urged Iranians to continue their everyday lives and carry on going to work” (Hosseini, 2020). This is why they make unsubstantiated claims about how there’s no need to quarantine and how they are being targeted by the United States. It seems that the Iranian government and the health officials refused to believe COVID-19 was a big threat to them and they didn’t need to follow preventive measures other countries were doing in order to keep their public safe.
Due to their ignorance and transparency with the Iranian public, Iran became one of the top three countries with the highest rates of COVID-19. A nurse who was anonymous in an interview with BBC stated how “[they] do not know how many people died but the government is trying to cover up the true scale of the crisis” (Hosseini, 2020). The rates are expected to be a lot higher since the Iranian government has been untruthful in revealing exactly how many people have died due to the virus and was transparent with the Iranian public in the early days of the pandemic. Doctors and nurses have spoken out about how there is an insufficient amount of masks to go around and how hospital workers are dying everyday but it’s not being acknowledged by the government. One nurse collapsed during work, died a couple days later “but the government denied she had died of COVID-19” (Hosseini, 2020). Due to the way the government handled the response to the pandemic in the early days of the virus, the virus spread throughout the country in a matter of just two weeks. On top of the rapid infection rates throughout the country and the botched response to closing the borders, 16 other countries claimed “they [had] cases of the virus that originated in Iran” (Hosseini, 2020). If the Iranian government had taken the necessary steps to protect their citizens it is possible they could have avoided infecting the other countries.
Hope and Solidarity: How Persians are Maintaining Happiness During COVID-19
Despite the issues with the government, the Iranian public are doing their best to find hope and solidarity in this difficult time. By sharing recipes and poetry, citizens are finding as many ways as they can to connect with each other while maintaining social distancing measures in place. Although there are not many measures being taken by the government to prevent the spread of COVID-19 as I explained before, “Iranians are encouraging each other to stay at home” (Qiblawi, 2020). This shows that even though the government isn’t taking necessary steps to keep the public safe, citizens are making sure they keep their families and neighbours safe as much as they can. The pandemic affected Persian New Year traditions as that was the time when the government decided to close down mosques and go into partial lockdown. “CNN spoke to a university student in Tehran, who describes how locals are trying to preserve the communal traditions of Nowruz while staying apart” (Qiblawi, 2020).
Nowruz is a big part of Persian culture, it’s the biggest event of the year that lasts two weeks where we celebrate the spring equinox. It’s “the most important holiday in Iran, a time when families gather together, neighbours visit and share food, and friends throw parties and wish each other well in the year to come” (Shams, 2020). There’s a whole list of traditions in which we participate in for example, Chaharshanbe Suri which we participate in jumping over fires asking for health and luck in the new year, we also participate in visiting every family member’s house, starting with the elders in our families. “Nowruz marks the first day of Spring, and its most popular rituals involve gathering in large groups” (Shams, 2020). With COVID-19, we’ve had to adapt a big part of our culture. “The idea spread: Nowruz would be welcomed with banners”(Shams, 2020). It was pointed out how banners started to pop up one by one throughout the city to wish neighbours Nowruz Mobarak. Shams pointed out how even though it’s a difficult time where Persians are finding themselves “isolated in quarantine and fearful of human contact, [the banners] can offer a glimpse of hope, of the possibility of solidarity between neighbors, between those who share a city, a home, and a world” (2020). He went on to point out how these banners have proven to be extremely helpful and how “they are a reminder of how interconnected we are, as well as of the shared future we all have in the world that will come when quarantine finally ends” (Shams, 2020).
When social distancing measures were put into place, it prevented people to connect with each other and therefore, people have tried to replace physical connection with virtual connection” (Qiblawi, 2020). Nowruz is a time where everyone connects with each other especially during street celebrations which “bring together people who often don’t even know each other” (Qiblawi, 2020). So with virtual connections they have been sending everything they’ve been doing with other friends and families as much as they can in order to make up for the loss of physical connection. They’ve been “sharing moments they’re having and sending it to their grandparents who they haven’t been able to see in weeks…or neighbors greeting each other from balconies” (Qiblawi, 2020).
Persians are also “reading poetry to each other through voice messages” (Shams, 2020). It was noted by Golrokh, a Persian artist who “made a collection of drawings based on the experience of sharing poetry with friends” about how “without poetry this will never be possible for us to endure” (Shams, 2020). This goes to show how despite issues with the government, Persians are doing their best to connect with each other and maintain hope during this difficult time. While in quarantine, another thing Persians have done to find joy is sharing recipes with their loved ones. “The lights and sounds from kitchens break through the silence and darkness outside, reverberating through the shared gardens of apartment buildings, now more than ever before” (Shams, 2020). Although mothers are usually the ones spending time in the kitchen cooking meals for their kids, others such as young people and those who normally eat out have started to learn how to cook and “the experience of spending long hours in the kitchen is a fresh one, like an old friend that has come back to visit..the kitchen has again become the heart of the home again” (Shams, 2020).
Discussion