LettersCoronavirus pandemic is a brutal wake-up call for governments everywhere

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A couple check their mobile phones at a drive-through cinema in Seoul on March 21. The response of countries like South Korea and China are being examined, as public health experts look for models to emulate for authorities desperate to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus. Photo: AFP

Published: 8:10am, 25 Mar 2020Updated: 8:10am, 25 Mar 2020

Even as the World Health Organisation and leaders everywhere continue to warn us of the great risks of the coronavirus pandemic, it is necessary to look for optimism, to prevent business and community sentiment from becoming too depressed, resulting in more harm to their nations than from the virus.

For the world, this pandemic is also a wake-up call to rebalance and correct in certain areas.

Has the world become too focused on economic development, failing to do enough about the environmental breakdown, community development and spirituality? Is the crisis exposing the incompetence of bad governments (whether authoritarian or democratic), which ought to be replaced?

Is there not an urgent need for the big powers to sit down and thrash out what exactly would work for nations everywhere?

China’s fast containment of its epidemic shows that dictatorship, rightly employed, can be a force for good, contrary to sweeping American judgments.

However, the lack of feedback channels – as the bureaucratic suppression news of the outbreak in Wuhan showed – and the lack of humble consultation with people from all walks for life and with foreign observers, without evoking fear of reprisal, also represent a great risk to China and the whole world.

Kenneth Chia, Singapore