Miércoles, 1 de abril de 2020 (Continuación)

‘In Hungary Viktor Orbán has been allowed to rule by decree during this state of emergency without any clear time limit.’ Orbán addresses parliament about the coronavirus outbreak on 23 March. Photograph: Tamás Kovács/EPA

To say that Europe is united by its divisions is an exaggeration – but only a small one. Closing national borders during the pandemic may have been a rational health response, but the longer term political consequences become more troubling when we look at the order in which European governments began to reimpose frontiers.

Italy made the decision on 10 March, when the number of confirmed cases had already exceeded 10,000. Over the next five days, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary closed their borders one after the other, even though by that time in any of them the number of confirmed Covid-19 cases had not reach a hundred.…  Seguir leyendo »

Police officers wearing protective face masks patrol during coronavirus lockdown enforcement in Wroclaw, Poland. Photo by Bartek Sadowski/Bloomberg via Getty Images.

It is less than a month since we published our research paper on the future of democracy in Europe. But it feels like we now live in a different world. The coronavirus has already killed thousands of people in Europe, led to an unprecedented economic crisis and transformed daily life – and in the process raised difficult new questions about democracy.

The essence of our argument in the paper was that democracy in Europe should be deepened. But now there is a much more basic question about whether democracies can protect their citizens from the pandemic.

There has already been much discussion about whether authoritarian states will emerge stronger from this crisis than democracies.…  Seguir leyendo »

Una emergencia tiende a revelar el carácter real de los líderes nacionales, junto con el de los sistemas políticos que los crearon. Lo realmente excepcional de la pandemia de coronavirus es que enfrenta simultáneamente a muchos países con el mismo desafío brutal. Como resultado, estamos aprendiendo mucho sobre el estado de la gobernabilidad global.

En una categoría están los populistas democráticos, como el presidente estadounidense Donald Trump, el brasileño Jair Bolsonaro y el mexicano Andrés Manuel López Obrador. La respuesta de estos líderes a la propagación del nuevo coronavirus ha sido arrojar información errónea, minimizar la amenaza y esquivar la responsabilidad.…  Seguir leyendo »

Lintao Zhang/Getty Images. A Chinese man and a child wearing protective masks on a bike, Beijing, China, March 27, 2020

BEROWRA CREEK, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA—Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, 2020 was a terrible year for Australia, and in such dark times, humor helps us cope. The triple-whammy began with an apocalypse of smoke and fire. Megafires that created their own weather converged to become the most extensive conflagration ever recorded on any continent, destroying 20 percent of the nation’s forested land. They were finally extinguished in February—by deadly flooding. Then, as the floodwaters were still receding, the Covid-19 pandemic arrived.

I’m not a great reader of the Old Testament, but after our three plagues, I consulted Exodus on the nature of the fourth disaster inflicted on the ancient Egyptians.…  Seguir leyendo »

A street in Seoul, South Korea, last week. Initially in short supply, face masks became more widely available after the government purchased a substantial proportion of national production. Credit Ed Jones/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The coronavirus erupted in South Korea in late January, six months into Yoo Yoon-sook’s new job. She had just moved from Seoul, where she spent three decades working in the same pharmacy, to open the Hankyeol (“Steadfast”) Pharmacy in the city of Incheon, near the international airport. Ms. Yoo hadn’t really gotten a sense of the neighborhood around her new pharmacy “before this all happened,” she told me. It became all coronavirus, all the time.

Incheon’s 1,100 pharmacies, including Ms. Yoo’s, began to sell out of KF-94 face masks, the equivalent of the American N95. So did corner stores and large retail chains like E-Mart.…  Seguir leyendo »

En México, desde un principio, la estrategia de las autoridades para contener la velocidad de expansión del coronavirus COVID-19 apostó a una sola cosa: el aislamiento social, a pesar de que hacerlo amenaza a una economía ya de por sí debilitada, en un país sumamente desigual.

Las pocas pruebas realizadas para detectar el virus y las decisiones subsecuentes señalan que, pese a la recomendación de la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) para países como México, las autoridades decidieron tomar otro camino. “Las medidas agresivas para encontrar, aislar, tratar y rastrear (los contagios por coronavirus) no solo son la mejor y más rápida alternativa a las restricciones sociales y económicas extremas, sino que también son la mejor forma de prevenirlas”, dijo el director general de la OMS el 25 de marzo.…  Seguir leyendo »

Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has become an international symbol of ridicule in the middle of the pandemic. As he continues to flaunt his disregard for prudence — just this weekend he visited and shook hands with the elderly mother of convicted drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzmán — the number of cases of the novel coronavirus has kept rising in Mexico. The government mulishly delayed the adoption of social distancing and other measures, and now the country is ill-prepared for what comes next, scrambling to persuade citizens to stay indoors.

It wouldn’t take a worst-case scenario to overstretch Mexico’s limited health-care resources.…  Seguir leyendo »

In Turkey, a video of a truck driver went viral this week, as he voiced the feelings of millions of working-class Turkish citizens too poor to observe the government’s stay-home advice.

“Now you are telling me to self-quarantine at home. Man, how can I?” he asked. “I don’t have a pension. Am not a state employee. Am not rich. I am a worker, a truck driver. If I don’t work, I have no bread. I cannot pay the rent, the electricity or water bill. That’s worse than dying. Before you ask us to stay home … stop making a fool of yourself.…  Seguir leyendo »

People look at a chalkboard in Monrovia, Liberia, giving updates on the coronavirus on Monday. (Ahmed Jallanzo/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock)

Covid-19 is about to overload health-care systems in Italy, France, Spain, Britain and the United States. But what if you don’t have a health-care system to overload?

Liberia, in West Africa, has a population equivalent to Louisiana. But according to one expert, there are just three ventilators for the entire country. Beyond the lucky three who get them, all Liberian coronavirus patients who need a ventilator to live will die.

In the coming months, the coronavirus death tolls will be horrific. Yet, astonishing as it may seem to all of us living in lockdown, we are the lucky ones. In rich countries, it is likely that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, will die in the coming months.…  Seguir leyendo »

En l’espace de quelques semaines, nombre de repères de la vie personnelle et de la vie sociale ont été bouleversés. Le plus étonnant sans doute est la facilité avec laquelle le confinement, après un week-end ensoleillé d’hésitation, est entré dans les faits. Nous obéissons, convaincus, acceptons d’abandonner nos libertés anciennes, présentons nos ausweis aux contrôles de police. Comme dans un jeu de rôles, avec la vague impression de vivre dans un film. Impression trompeuse, car nous sommes de plain-pied dans une nouvelle réalité, qui laissera durablement des traces.

Les petits mondes inventifs

Parmi les raisons qui expliquent cette soumission soudaine (outre l’angoisse collective et le désir de solidarité avec les plus fragiles), il y a le fait que le confinement puisse apparaître comme une expérience ni totalement désagréable ni dénuée d’intérêt.…  Seguir leyendo »