Giannis Kyriopoulos: Why the West is not succeeding in dealing with Covid-19

Τhe scientific and political debate over dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic control and management policies is a popular topic in global political controversy. Because it is linked on the one hand to the values ​​produced by business skills and the use of biomedical and pharmaceutical technology and on the other hand to the acquisition of high prestige in the competitive and globalized context that characterizes the current situation.

The crucial question is: who manages, and how, the right policies and the necessary tools of sovereignty in the raging waves of the pandemic, that could worsen. The answer to this question is at the same time a first assessment that can be approached by analyzing the data and evaluating the performance in different countries.

The number of cases, diagnostic test,s and traces is an indication of the performance of public health services. The indicators of critically ill patients and deaths are a function of the behavior of the virus and other currently unexplained factors related to the patients’ temperament. The outcome of the incidents and the mortality depends in part on the contribution of the available medical means.

Greece, in the first phase of the pandemic followed a partial version of the public health approach, which in combination with the political courage to take appropriate measures and the compliance of the citizens offered the country one of the best places, in terms of dealing with the pandemic, in the western world.

Subsequently, the lifting of restrictive measures and their non-replacement with equivalent functional public health measures did not lead to adequate capitalization in terms of health, economy, and political value. Mainly because it clashed with the European model of rapid and stressful return to economic and social normality. The non-mobilization and reconstruction of a single state cross-sectoral public health service based on a well-trained body of interdisciplinary public health workers also contributed to this. With the main aims being the community approach and the communication purity of the whole project.

Three approaches: Asians are “winners”

Nevertheless, the country still has a good position below the European average in Covid-19 mortality rates, case density, excessive mortality and the number of suicides or suicide attempts, phenomena that require additional scientific investigation. Roughly, the analysis and evaluation of available data, on a global scale, leads to the conclusion that three different approaches have been developed to address the pandemic.

The first, the Atlantic approach, includes the United Kingdom, the United States, Brazil, and other Latin American countries, which have tried to pursue a relaxed approach and, at times, some of them bring about negative outcomes in both targets, health and the economy.

The second includes the countries of Central and Western Europe and has adopted a policy of swinging between taking half-hearted public health measures and maintaining an almost complete functioning of the economy, which has led to the failure to successfully control the pandemic and the economic downturn.

Third, the Asian approach of the countries of Southeast Asia, the Far East, and Oceania has been different and has relied on classic public health measures, such as epidemiological surveillance, extensive laboratory testing, tracking, strict personal hygiene and on the other hand is related to the peculiar social norms of these countries. Therefore, it had positive effects on the management of Covid-19 and the prevention of financial collapse.

The West and the relevant dilemma

In this context, the political competition on the occasion of the Covid-19 pandemic took on global proportions with the World Health Organization but also the necessary cooperation at the international level becoming its victims.

Hence the dilemma: health versus economy proved to be relevant only in cases of prioritization of public health. Experience has shown that public health policies in the case of health care and Keynesian interventions to support the economy offered relatively quick, loss-free control, as the Asian approach has shown.

The results in the Western world are well known and perhaps dramatic in some cases, to the extent that any attempt at benchmarking is silenced or attributed in a one-dimensional way to local culture issues, with the aim of downplaying these policies as folklore and obscuring real differences in policies followed.

The pandemic was a rebuke to the promoted model of globalization and clashed with the phenomena of the rapid formation of large cities by mixing the problems of coexistence of humans, animals, and the environment. This development has allowed the emergence of new communicable diseases which in connection with the major issues of climate change, food crisis, and population movement are the basis for the deregulation of health security and development prospects around the world.

The failure of the European model

It is obvious that the developments, as shown by the data, show a worse position of the western world in health protection compared to countries that a few decades ago were in a state of dependence and / or colonial dependence from the capitalist metropolises.

These phenomena are due to the gradual abandonment of the public health component in the exercise of public policies which coincides with the liberation of metropolises from the colonies and dependent countries which have maintained nuggets of this approach with the support of the World Health Organization.

It is no coincidence that the Organization’s major strategies such as the Alma Ata Declaration (1978) and the Astana Declaration (2018) have not been the subject of discussion and integration into health policy in the metropolises of the western world. The shrinking of public health services is also related to the fetishization of high technology in the health sector that shifts public health in terms of political priority and resource allocation.

In this context, the suddenness, confusion, and contradiction in decision-making that is observed reflects the failure of the European model and the answer to the ambiguity and the absence of a political guide is the total return to public health.