According to a new ‘scorecard’ called the Global Health Security Index, published on 24th October 2019, the UK and US were the two best prepared countries to deal with a pandemic. The scorecard ranked countries on how prepared they were to tackle a serious outbreak, scoring based on a range of measures including their healthcare system, efficiency in responding and treatment of staff and “the sick”. Out of 195 nations, the US and the UK secured a ranking of first and second respectively. However, as June approached, the two best prepared countries to tackle Covid-19 turned out to be two of the world’s biggest failures. So why did the scorecard get it so wrong? There’s a simple reason for that: It did not account for the political context of the nations.
Both President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Boris Johnson believed their nations were invulnerable, rejected science and turned away from multilateralism, paving the path for many of their citizens to the grave.
A matter of days before Trump’s inauguration, the Obama administration urged its replacement team to get ready for a pandemic, which they claimed could have been the worst since the 1918 influenza catastrophe. The Trump team reportedly dismissed the advice.
In 2016, Britain ran a simulation exercise which revealed that the country would face significant ventilator and PPE shortages if a pandemic struck. However, addressing these shortcomings was “put on hold” for two years while contingency planning was diverted to deal with a possible no-deal Brexit.
Despite a myriad of warnings from multiple organisations including the WHO, both the US and UK failed to recognise the risk to their nations, believing that their own exceptionalism would pull them through.
Written by Chahak Saraogi
Artwork by Zara Masood
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