SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
jacinda ardern
US and UK Press Mock New Zealand's Incredibly Successful Covid Response
New Zealand's "absurd" Covid strategy (London Times, 10/4/21) resulted in a pandemic death toll 330 times smaller than Britain's--while avoiding Britain's 2020 economic crash.
The London Daily Mail (10/4/21) reported on New Zealand's transition in more triumphalist terms, stating:
New Zealand has finally acknowledged what most other countries realized long ago, that it cannot completely eradicate Covid.
Jacinda Ardern is abandoning her draconian "Zero Covid" strategy after admitting she cannot stop the spread of the Delta variant with harsh lockdown measures and aggressive contact tracing.
AP (10/4/21) acknowledged, "While other nations faced rising death tolls and disrupted lives, New Zealanders went back to workplaces, school yards and sports stadiums safe from any community spread."
The Associated Press's "New Zealand Admits It Can No Longer Get Rid of Coronavirus" (10/4/21) similarly framed New Zealand's previous zero-Covid strategy as an unusual deviation that would inevitably fail, although it acknowledged that the elimination strategy worked "remarkably well":
New Zealand's government acknowledged Monday what most other countries did long ago: It can no longer completely get rid of the coronavirus.
Since early in the pandemic, New Zealand had pursued an unusual zero-tolerance approach to the virus through strict lockdowns and aggressive contact tracing.
CNBC (10/5/21) reported that New Zealand has "become the latest country to abandon a zero-Covid strategy" and has been "notoriously strict in its tackling of Covid," citing the time Ardern put the country in a strict lockdown after one coronavirus case was detected (the first caused by the Delta variant) in August.
"Notorious" is an interesting way to describe New Zealand's performance, considering how frequently it featured on numerous lists of countries credited for handling the pandemic the best compared to the rest of the world prior to the outbreak of the Delta variant (Newshub, 1/28/21; New Zealand Herald, 9/29/21; Guardian, 10/8/20).
CNBC made it seem as if New Zealand was trying to maintain zero-Covid forever, and cites experts claiming that the highly infectious Delta variant makes such approaches "futile," even though Ardern explained that New Zealand's elimination strategy was always intended to be temporary. China--with far fewer geographic and population advantages compared to New Zealand--has managed to sustain a zero-Covid approach, with less than 5,000 total deaths from the virus throughout the pandemic, in a population of 1.4 billion, with nationwide cases fading to zero in August.
Mockery and disdain
However, it is erroneous to present the shift as a failure of New Zealand's pandemic response, or to falsely caricature their initial approach as being motivated by a naive belief they could sustain it indefinitely. Rather, countries only need to pursue these measures until a sufficient number of their population are fully vaccinated. Singapore transitioned out of its zero-Covid strategy in phases after targeting an 80% vaccination rate, with the vast majority of their new cases not falling seriously ill due to being vaccinated.
Ardern explained her shift by citing the increased availability of vaccines, and stated that the decision to transition away from New Zealand's zero-Covid approach was inevitable. She said that her policy had shifted due to the greater transmissibility of the Delta variant, which makes it harder to bring cases down to zero, and announced that New Zealand will be ending national lockdowns when it reaches a 90% vaccination rate (Wired, 10/8/21).
"Poetic justice is beautiful," declared Matthew Lesh in the London Telegraph (8/19/21).
The mockery and disdain for New Zealand's pandemic response was nowhere more apparent than when it was widely reported that the country initiated a level 4 lockdown (the highest level in New Zealand) after detecting a single Delta variant case with the Delta variant on August 17 in Auckland (New Zealand's most populous city).
The London Telegraph (8/19/21) scorned New Zealand as a "once-welcoming nation" turned into a "isolated dystopia, where liberties are taken away in a heartbeat and outsiders are shunned." The paper claimed a fetishization of "zero risk" gave the state "limitless justification to interfere in our lives in the most extreme of ways." Ardern's right-wing predecessor, former Prime Minister John Key, wrote a widely shared op-ed (Stuff, 9/26/21) declaring that "the aim should no longer be to exist in a smug hermit kingdom," and not to "continue the North Korea option."
Libertarian pundit Glenn Greenwald continued this line of thought by tweeting that Australian and New Zealand officials seem "demented, oblivious to the costs of sustained isolation" because of the lockdown.
More or less normal
Morgan Godfrey warned in the Guardian (10/5/21) that shifting from a zero-Covid policy to a reliance on vaccination risks Covid-19 "becoming a disease for brown people," as vaccination rates trail among Maori and Pacific people in New Zealand.
However, what critics like Greenwald omitted was that the lockdown was initially supposed to last only three days, and that New Zealanders have not been under "sustained isolation" since their zero-Covid approach quickly stamped out the virus in previous outbreaks. In fact, plenty of people living there have pointed out that it's hard for people outside the country to grasp how normal life has been there for most of the pandemic (Guardian, 10/5/21):
For 18 months, New Zealanders were living life as if there were no pandemic. We were gathering outdoors and indoors in the thousands, mask mandates were literally a foreign concept, and business and public services were operating more or less as normal. We were watching governments that let the virus rip with a good dose of horror and, if we're honest, a modest dose of smugness.
This is not a mere anecdote. When one looks at the Covid-19 Stringency Index provided by the University of Oxford, which measures how restrictive policies are for countries by tracking various metrics like school and workplace closures, as well as travel bans, it's clear that New Zealanders have enjoyed more freedoms throughout most of the pandemic than Americans or Brazilians (where Greenwald is based). Right before the latest lockdown measures in August, New Zealanders had been living normally with not a single Covid case for six months, demonstrating that powerful measures for a brief period of time actually grant citizens more freedom, and are more effective than sustained half-measures that predominate in the US and UK.
Also omitted is that the vast majority of New Zealanders were supportive of their zero-Covid policy, as numerous polls and the Labour Party's landslide 2020 reelection confirm (ABC, 10/8/21; Otago Daily Times, 9/2/21). While economic activity is not a perfect proxy for normal living, it's worth noting that New Zealand's economy grew 1.0% in 2020, while the US's dropped 3.5% and Britain's plunged 9.8%.
Throughout most of the pandemic, New Zealand's Covid rules have been much less stringent than either the US's, Britain's or Brazil's. (Chart: Our World in Data)
Caricatured as 'Covid prison'
Fox News (10/28/20) depicted people arriving in New Zealand being required to take a Covid test before they could enter the country ass the "end of personal freedom."
Yet these facts don't stop outside commentators from condemning and caricaturing New Zealand's policy as throwing away "personal freedoms" for quarantine "camps," or falsely portraying New Zealanders as if they are languishing in a "Covid prison" (Fox News, 10/28/20; London Times, 8/22/21).
As it happens, New Zealand's decision to initiate a swift lockdown after detecting a single case is similar to how other countries adopting a zero-Covid approach, like China, handle things. And that decision was later vindicated by the discovery of even more previously undetected cases, as one detected case on August 17 turned into 63 new cases by August 25, due to the more transmissible Delta variant, along with not being able to detect more cases without additional testing (Gizmodo, 8/25/21). Since officials are supposed to revise their approach upon gaining additional information in real time, it's not a surprise or a sign of incompetence that the initial three-day lockdown was repeatedly extended upon learning of more Covid cases throughout the lockdown.
This is not to say that a zero-Covid strategy is easily replicable. Many people living in countries that pursue virus elimination strategies, like New Zealand and China, have pointed out that they both depend on "social license," or trust in their government's public health response. The general public complies with public health measures because they feel like they are working together to contain the pandemic, in addition to government action having clear rationales (Time, 10/14/21). Even if the US government possessed the technical capabilities of New Zealand and China, that doesn't mean the US would be capable of replicating their success with widespread compliance, since Americans have consistently displayed low trust and satisfaction in their government compared to New Zealand and China (Pew, 5/17/21).
Nor is it to say that New Zealanders have no criticisms of their pandemic response. Critics have charged that the Labour Party's sudden transition from an elimination to a containment strategy took place too quickly, given New Zealand's slow vaccine rollout. With children and the indigenous Maori population not having the same vaccination rates as adults and white people, this risks Covid-19 "becoming a disease for brown people" (Guardian, 10/5/21; RNZ, 8/24/21). Numerous experts have argued that herd immunity and virus eradication (which differs from virus elimination by seeking to entirely wipe out Covid-19 from the planet like smallpox) may be unrealistic goals, as Covid-19 is most likely going to be endemic like influenza, in part because other countries have not pursued New Zealand's elimination strategy (Nature, 3/18/21; Vox, 10/22/21; MedPage Today, 4/11/21).
One gets the sense that corporate media outlets in countries like the US and Britain mocking or criticizing New Zealand's pandemic response are following a "misery loves company" ethos (FAIR.org, 9/17/21). But one can simply compare New Zealand's 6.9 Covid deaths per million with the US and the UK's 2,313 and 2,131 deaths per million, respectively, to see if New Zealand should listen to the US/UK media's spiteful coverage, and to assess which governments have failed their populations by putting profits before people (BMJ, 2/4/21).
'Autocrats Deliver?' US Joins Brazil and Hungary as Only Countries Where Quality of Life Is Getting Worse, Social Progress Index Finds
"Autocrats deliver?" tweeted Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch.
At number 28 on the list, the U.S. is also alone among other wealthy countries in the G7 where people's personal safety, access to basic healthcare, personal rights and freedoms, and other measures of quality of life are on the decline.
"The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action," Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told Nicholas Kristof at the New York Times. "It's like we're a developing country."
The index ranks countries according to their performance in three key areas: basic human needs, foundation of wellbeing, and opprtunity--breaking those categories down into sub-categories including:
- nutrition and basic medical care,
- personal safety,
- health and wellness,
- environmental quality,
- personal rights, and
- inclusiveness.
Tier One on the index is populated by countries whose wealth is comparable to that of the United States. Norway was ranked as number one, followed by Denmark and Finland. New Zealand, which this year has won international praise for Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, also ranked high, as well as Japan, Iceland, Canada, and Sweden.
A number of countries with GDPs lower than that of the U.S.--including Greece, Estonia, and Cyprus--rank ahead of the country in the bottom half of Tier Two.
"GDP is not destiny," emphasizes the report, displaying a chart that shows the U.S. has lagged in "turning its economic growth into social progress."
With a lower GDP per capita than the U.S., the chart shows, New Zealand's government funds a universal healthcare program, spends a greater percentage of its GDP on education than any other country in the world, and was able to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus by allowing residents to stay at home with a major relief package, offering subsidies to businesses to continue paying employees and covering the wages of employees that had to self-isolate.
The U.S. government has so far offered a one-time, means-tested direct payment of $1,200 to some American households--as the crisis stretches into its sixth month--and allowed its enhanced unemployment benefit to expire in July even as more than 10% of workers were jobless.
Well before the pandemic, the index shows, quality of life was rapidly declining in a number of areas in the U.S. In 2011, when the country was in 19th place on the list, the U.S. earned 93.25 points for meeting basic human needs such as healthcare and personal safety.
The uninsured rate is lower than it was in 2011, but has steadily climbed since 2016 and skyrocketed in a matter of weeks when the coronavirus pandemic hit, forcing an estimated 12 million Americans off their employer-based health coverage.
Gun violence has also increased in the U.S. over the past six years, according to Giffords Law Center.
The United States' starkest decline since 2011 has been in the area of opportunity; in terms of inclusiveness, access to education, and personal rights, the U.S. was given 81.89 points this year, contrasting with its score of 85.17 in 2011.
Kristof noted that while the U.S. is fully capable of delivering high-quality healthcare and education to everyone in the country, the federal government keeps many Americans from accessing necessities--operating as a nation with far fewer resources in terms of its approach to the wellbeing of the public, while lavishing the wealthiest Americans and corporations with tax breaks.
"The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education," Kristof wrote. "The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality healthcare. The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan, and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. "
The index, tweeted John Kostyack of the National Whistleblower Center, offered a "reality check against the drumbeat of U.S. triumphalism."
James Tierney, an economics professor at Penn State University, planned to use the index to teach his students about the limits of measuring a country's success by its GDP or economic growth.
"The hope is to [help] students understand there are other measures outside of the value of production to determine the well-being of a country," Tierney tweeted.
Media Downplay Global South Leadership on Covid-19
Despite its obvious geographical and economic advantages, New Zealand certainly deserves praise. But less deserving have been the European countries corporate media consistently highlight as outstanding performers. With over 185,000 cases and 8,763 deaths, Germany has one of the highest per capita fatality rates in the world. Yet Chancellor Angela Merkel has drawn effusive praise as somebody who "embraces science" (Atlantic, 4/19/20; Guardian, 4/16/20; Financial Times, 4/3/20). CNN (5/7/20) proclaimed her a "global leader on coronavirus"; Vox (5/21/20) said she'd been "praised for her clear and effective communication with her country -- and the world."
In its editorial on crisis leadership, the New York Times editorial board (4/30/20) also praised Merkel (while attacking China for supposedly covering up the outbreak). They highlighted and applauded the leadership of several other countries, including Denmark, Norway and Finland. Amazingly, the editorial also singled out and commended Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose inept response has led to Italy having the third-highest number of deaths in the world at the time of its publication.
There was far less praise for leaders in the Global South. Indeed, the only one mentioned by name was Taiwan's Tsai Ing-wen, and this was primarily because she "sent millions of face masks to the United States and Europe"--although with 443 total cases and only seven deaths, Taiwan has had a far more enviable record on Covid-19 than most of the countries featured in the editorial. True Asian leadership, according to the Times editorial board, is helping white people, apparently.
The New York Times (5/15/20) also published an article praising Sweden's "more measured approach" to the virus, which essentially involved keeping most businesses open and carrying on more or less as normal. Maud Cordenius wrote that the "aggressive bombast" other countries have used "would not resonate" in Sweden. "Time will tell if my country's coronavirus plan was wise," she concluded. That time was five days; on May 20, Sweden became the country with the highest Covid-19 death rate per capita in the world, 50% worse than even the US (FAIR.org, 4/30/20, 5/27/20).
The problem with much of the reporting focusing on rich, developed countries where media have foreign correspondents is that it ignores often superior responses to the virus from much of the Global South, countries that have nothing like the resources of advanced Western states. Cuba has successfully bent its curve downwards, and has sent medical staff to dozens of countries around the world (FAIR.org, 4/14/20, 5/31/20), including to crisis-struck Italy, held up as a model of leadership.
The Indian state of Kerala, extremely poor by international standards, recorded its first coronavirus case a month before New Zealand. Yet an impressive feat of organization from local authorities has limited the outbreak to just 1,588 cases and 14 deaths.
Vietnam was hit by COVID-19 even earlier than Kerala, yet the entire country mobilized against the threat in a manner oft-compared to the struggle against the US military during the war. Whole towns were quarantined after a single confirmed case. Citizens have their temperature constantly checked in public buildings and transit hubs like bus stations. Food is provided to anyone self-isolating to make sure nobody needs to endanger themselves or others by leaving their homes. They have also created and mass-produced test kits, all costing less than $25 each, and giving results in 90 minutes, exporting them around the world. To date, Vietnam has still to record a single death.
But when commenting on Vietnam at all, media tend to brush off the country's success as not down to leadership or the nationwide determination to stop the pandemic, but to its authoritarian government (e.g. NPR, 4/16/20; BBC, 5/15/20). Foreign Policy (5/12/20), for instance, published an article called "Vietnam's Success Is Built on Repression," which informed readers that Vietnamese authorities digitally track citizens. Wow--imagine living in a country where security services surveil your phone and social media! (For more on Vietnam, see FAIR.org, 5/15/20.)
The problem, for corporate media, is the orientation of these governments; Vietnam, Cuba and Kerala are all overtly Communist. A system media has been insisting cannot work (FAIR.org, 2/8/19, 2/3/20, 3/6/20) cannot easily be praised, so it is ignored or denigrated. Don't expect to see any fawning articles declaring Raul Castro a saint, or wishing the "inspirational" Nguyen Phu Trong were president of the United States any time soon.
Perhaps the only country that moved quicker than Vietnam was Mongolia, which shut down schools, universities and other public buildings and restricted border crossings in January, before any cases had even been found. Throughout February, the country was doing what we now wish we had done: stockpiling PPE, procuring test kits and cancelling public events. To date, it has still yet to record a single in-country transmission, the only cases detected coming internationally. Yet corporate media ignore these examples in favor of praising white Western leaders with palatable political backgrounds.
One Asian country that has received praise is South Korea, a close US ally (Time, 4/30/20; Business Insider, 5/2/20; Guardian, 5/20/20). The country was hit badly at first, but through strict surveillance and contact tracing has managed to limit the outbreak to 11,668 cases and 273 deaths, far more than Kerala, Vietnam or Mongolia. Despite this, the Atlantic (5/6/20) described their response as "exceptional"--something, in an Asian context at least, it clearly was not. Indeed, per capita, South Korea lost considerably more people to the virus than China, much less Taiwan, Vietnam or Mongolia.
The cold, hard fact is that, in comparison to many countries in the Global South, the West's response has been atrocious. Even New Zealand's performance is surpassed by a number of nations, particularly in Asia. Unfortunately, New Zealand's response should have been the benchmark for rich, developed countries, not the exception.
However, for political reasons, many of the world's best performers are ignored in favor of Ardern, or even far less deserving figures in Europe. A toxic mix of political expediency, ignorance and the general assumption that Western countries must know better has infected our media, leading to a pandemic of biblical proportions.
Most Popular