Opinion | The US topped a 2019 pandemic preparedness index. So why wasn’t it ready for Covid-19?

Deciding whether capitalism or socialism is more suited for pandemic management is a false binary. The real issue is whether officials under each system are able to test, trace and contain the virus, and work out how to reopen economies

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Refrigeration trucks are lined up near the office of New York’s chief medical examiner to serve as an expanded morgue on April 3, as the city prepared for a growing number of coronavirus deaths. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 1:00am, 11 Apr 2020Updated: 4:57am, 11 Apr 2020

Who could have imagined that the Cold War could morph into a “cool war” and now a Covid-19 war? The Cold War was fought between the United States and the former Soviet Union, ending with the latter’s dissolution. The cool war between the US and China is still going on over trade.

As for the Covid-19 war, it is not about fighting each other, but protecting each country’s citizens against a coronavirus that does not distinguish between borders and political beliefs.

History will judge how, in this public health battle, authoritarian China has reported more than 3,300 deaths, whereas more than 14,000 have died in the democratic US.

There are four hard choices in this crisis: moral, informational, political and economic. A tough moral decision has to be made between lives and livelihoods.

Most governments have rightly chosen to protect lives by shutting down economies. But with the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development estimating a loss of 2 per cent of gross domestic product for every month of lockdown, economic costs are mounting.

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