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LettersCoronavirus: lockdowns as a cure can be worse than the disease for poorer nations
- Developing countries need a model which allows their people to safely go to work so they can feed their families, while practising high hygiene standards and social distancing
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Strict lockdowns – which have had mixed effectiveness in wealthy countries – have been catastrophically replicated in the world’s poorest states. The poor are now suffering more from destitution than from the virus itself. Developing nations must safely lift their lockdowns now, to prevent any further damage.
Currently, almost a third of the world’s population is under some sort of restriction. However, there is debate as to whether lockdowns actually work. Sweden has rejected this approach based on doubts over their effectiveness and the economic cost.
Governments in the Global South, however, have felt obliged to implement the toughest lockdowns, at huge economic cost. In China, the lockdown led to the first official year-on-year decline in economic output in more than 40 years, but in poorer countries, the effects have been exponentially worse.
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This is because the lockdown model has been copied and pasted in the developing world, without the government assistance that accompanies it in the first world. Afghanistan’s capital Kabul has been under lockdown since March, which has meant that informal work has dried up and food prices have soared. With little help from the government, poor Afghans are now scrambling to survive.
Lockdowns may be an option in wealthy countries with the resources to take care of their people. In many places, however, lockdowns are a luxury governments cannot afford.
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This mindless replication of a first-world solution is made more painful by the fact that it is, largely, a solution to a first-world problem. Many poorer nations have had minimal Covid-19 cases. They do not have the high level of international visitors that have spread infection elsewhere.
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