How the World Views the U.S. Virus Response, as told by Bloomberg columnists

How the World Views the U.S. Virus Response
Covid-19 continues to spread at an alarming rate in parts of the world’s biggest economy. Bloomberg Opinion writers from elsewhere chime in.

By Robert Burgess

Robert Burgess is the Executive Editor for Bloomberg Opinion. He is the former global Executive Editor in charge of financial markets for Bloomberg News. As managing editor, he led the company’s news coverage of credit markets during the global financial crisis.

The coronavirus pandemic is showing few signs of abating in the U.S. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert, said that contrary to expectations, the virus isn’t taking a summer break, with cases mounting in warmer states including Florida, Texas and Arizona. Although the government has been lauded for its quick actions to support the economy, it has come under fire for what some say is a haphazard strategy to contain the health crisis. As many as 31 states have R0 figures above 1, according to the Rt.live website, meaning that each person with the virus infects at least one other. New confirmed cases have surged in June, increasing 22.6% last week to 185,821, data compiled by Bloomberg show. And now, the European Union may decide to keep the door shut to Americans even as it eases controls on its external borders.

We asked Bloomberg Opinion columnists and contributors who are based outside the U.S. for their take on how the rest of the world views efforts to contain the coronavirus in America, where even the decision to wear a mask is seen as a political statement.

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Ferdinando Giugliano writes columns on European economics for Bloomberg Opinion from Milan. He is also an economics columnist for La Repubblica and was a member of the editorial board of the Financial Times:

I certainly would not feel safe travelling to the U.S. Italy was one of the early centers of the pandemic, and while its government enforced a lockdown relatively late, it eventually took some draconian steps for two months, including shutting schools and factories. Italy also took a gradual approach to reopening, which occurred over a month. New registered cases are now growing at a daily rate of approximately 0.1%, and they are mostly concentrated in the northern region of Lombardy. Life is slowly returning to normal. In contrast, many U.S. states enforced short and loose lockdowns. The situation appears to only be getting better in those areas that clamped down harder, such as New York.

Also, I do not really trust the U.S. health-care system. America has some of the very best professionals and hospitals in the world, but lacks a centralized structure that gives you confidence that the country as a whole can counter the pandemic effectively. Italy has a regional health-care system, so there have been coordination problems, especially with regard to the collection of data. However, the National Health Institute has offered consistent guidance to the government, both on the lockdown and on possible treatments. I hope that a legacy of the Covid-19 epidemic in the U.S. is a debate over the need to create some form of national health system.

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Mihir Sharma is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist based in New Delhi. He was a columnist for the Indian Express and the Business Standard, and he is the author of “Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy”:

Seen from India, the chaotic and patchwork approach the U.S. has taken to battling the Covid-19 pandemic is both confusing and familiar. Here, we have replaced the world’s most stringent lockdown with a largely uncontrolled reopening. The shutdown did not really manage to bend the curve downwards, as happened in Europe. But, unlike developed countries in Europe, we believe we simply can’t afford to close down the economy for too long. What doesn’t make sense is why the U.S. is doing the same thing. Congress did its job, as many U.S. workers received the aid they need to get by for now. In India, we can’t reach the vast majority of migrant workers, among others, through our welfare system.

What looks familiar is the strange patchwork approach that comes from having powerful state administrations making most decisions. Yet, while some Indian states have been much more careful than others about contact tracing and quarantining, none is being openly careless or dismissive. This, combined with a strange machismo about mask-wearing that seems to be spreading through parts of the U.S., makes the country look like a much more dangerous place to be than Europe or parts of East Asia.

In the end, both of our nations are confronting steadily increasing case numbers and the prospect not of a “second wave,” as such, but an ever-intensifying health crisis. The difference is that we have a leadership that, regardless of political party, has taken the pandemic seriously. We always knew poorer countries would struggle to control their case numbers. What’s appalling and sobering is that the world’s richest economy is doing so badly.

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Tim Culpan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology from Taipei. He previously covered technology for Bloomberg News:

On Jan. 22, just as China was about to shut down the city of Wuhan, I was transiting through a quiet and eerie Hong Kong airport bound for New York. Having covered the SARS breakout 17 years earlier, I knew how bad an epidemic could be. Over the next few weeks, as the outbreak spread through Asia, I figured the U.S. would be safer than Taiwan where I’ve been living for two decades. I delayed my return to Taipei until early February for fear of what awaited back home. Five months later, I’m safely in a place that’s never had a lockdown because it never needed one. Take a look at the data on coronavirus cases in Taiwan and you quickly understand how people here view the crisis both at home and abroad. It's been more than 70 days since there was a local infection.

For decades, the U.S. was seen as a dream destination for study, work and tourism. Now, Taiwanese returnees share tales of their “great escape" from the U.S. back to a place where healthcare is universal, cheap and high quality. They talk with admiration about Taiwan's beloved health minister, Chen Shih-chung, a man little-known before the crisis. These days, America is no longer the place to be but the place to avoid. It beggars belief that U.S. leaders are more focused on point-scoring and playing to their base than making sound public-health decisions. It’s too easy to say that American democracy makes it harder to manage a crisis and dictate how people should act. But Taiwan is a democracy, too, and a rowdy one at that. However, the government’s competence in recognizing the threat and acting quickly gave opposition parties little opportunity to build political capital.

Early yet limited curbs enforced four months ago -- such as social distancing and mandated mask use on public transport -- mean that nightclubs, bars and beaches are crowded today with little risk to public safety. Many Taiwanese wonder whether recent moves to relax border restrictions are wise, and would be happy to keep the gates closed and the masks on if it means preventing Taiwan from becoming like America. As with millions of Taiwanese, I love New York, but there’s no way I’d go back to the U.S. anytime soon.

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Daniel Moss is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Asian economies from Singapore. Previously he was executive editor of Bloomberg News for global economics, and has led teams in Asia, Europe and North America:

Friends in Singapore, where I have lived for 18 months, greet the spike in American infections with a combination of trepidation and amazement: trepidation that the U.S. is on the cusp of a disastrous second wave, with the attendant global economic consequences, and amazement that parts of the country are pressing ahead with reopening regardless. Hovering over all this is incredulity that the U.S., which most here still see as a great nation and important counterweight to China, is engaged in a culture war over something as straightforward as wearing a mask.

Singapore is gradually emerging from a two-month lockdown that has curtailed coronavirus infections. Masks, social distancing, mandatory sign-ins through a tracing app, and handing over identity cards on demand seem like prudent steps in disease containment. In a city-state where a majority of its 5.7 million live in high-rise public housing or condominiums, outbreaks of infectious disease are an existential issue. To be sure, there’s also little choice, as transgressions invite fines or prosecution.

Would I visit the U.S. today? In a heartbeat, provided I felt I could get back to my family in a timely manner. But with many borders still closed, that’s a big “if.” I was born in Australia and became a U.S. citizen a few years ago. My wife and children are American. There’s a sense the U.S. is wasting precious time. I sympathize with these concerns, but I learned from a decade in Washington that America is a tough place to govern even in the best of times.

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Nisha Gopalan is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering deals and banking in Asia from Hong Kong. She previously worked for the Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones as an editor and a reporter:

I’d be in no hurry to travel to the U.S. From Hong Kong. The view of most people is that the U.S. is way too complacent. Sitting on the edge of mainland China, where the Covid pandemic began, Hong Kong has had just 1,161 infections and six fatalities. Small wonder that Hong Kongers look at the multiplying numbers in the U.S. with horror. The first infection in this city of 7.5 million was Jan. 23 and the first death came on Feb. 4. These days, the smattering of new cases are almost all residents who have returned from overseas.

People in Hong Kong find the U.S. ambivalence over masks hard to understand. One friend describes America as “the worst place to visit right now.” Another views the country as “out of control,” with states opening too early. Even with local infections virtually nonexistent at this point, close to 100% of the people in Hong Kong are still wearing masks, with joggers among the rare exceptions. Hand sanitizer is now commonly found on restaurant tables and in the lobbies of office skyscrapers and residential buildings. Office bathrooms have filled with people obsessively washing hands, residents started using keys and toothpicks to press elevator buttons, and the wearing of masks has become socially obligatory outdoors and on subway trains.

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Andreas Kluth is a columnist for Bloomberg Opinion in Berlin. He was previously editor in chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist. He's the author of "Hannibal and Me":

Germans were aghast at the U.S. under President Donald Trump even before Covid-19 and the killing of George Floyd. Now this American triple crisis – Trump, pestilence, racism – regularly tops the evening news here, often displacing even issues much closer to home. In part, that’s because Trump reserves so much of his ire for this country, and for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Just this month, he confirmed that he plans to withdraw about one in four American troops based here.

Merkel looks increasingly like a dramatic foil to Trump: To Germans he appears narcissistic, vain and anti-intellectual, whereas she comes across as understated, wonkish and meticulous. He disdains his own experts and scientists; Merkel, a quantum physicist by training, respects hers. He seeks conflict with U.S. governors and political opponents; she constantly mediates between Germany’s regional leaders to maintain consensus. He divides, she unites. As a result, Germany currently appears to have Covid-19 under control, whereas the U.S. seems to have given up on even trying. Like many people around here, I’m not planning to travel stateside any time soon, but will ride out the pandemic in relative safety here.

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Mac Margolis is a Rio de Janeiro-based writer for Bloomberg Opinion who covers Latin America. He was previously a reporter for Newsweek and is the author of “The Last New World: The Conquest of the Amazon Frontier”:

Like many of their Latin American neighbors, Brazilians have looked to the U.S. with conflicted passions. That’s because the land of Disney, the iPhone SE and sanctuary cities is also the nation of border walls, ICE and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic. President Trump has done little to improve the brand. Well before the onset of the twin global health and economic emergencies, Latin American trust in the U.S. and especially in its leader was already slipping.

Yet even as Brazilian disenchantment with the hegemon up north has conceivably deepened, the parallel shortcomings of their own President Jair Bolsonaro, an unabashed Trumpophile, have helped to keep any neighborly contempt and schadenfreude in check. When George Floyd’s death sparked antiracism protests across the U.S., Brazilians were close behind with their own marches and hashtags. Black and Brown Brazilians comprise 53% of the nation’s 211 million people but 75% of the poorest tenth of the population, two-thirds of the unemployed and up to four times more fatalities than Whites from Covid-19. They also find themselves the victims not just of systemic prejudice and hair trigger policing, but also one of the most pernicious national lullabies: the myth of Brazil as a racial democracy.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Robert Burgess at bburgess@bloomberg.net

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