Managing a country is like managing thousands of various kinds of businesses. Good mangers produce good results and bad managers produce bad results.

Since the beginning of 2020, human societies worldwide have been facing a crisis; a communicable disease and its consequences. The novel coronavirus has been spreading in different countries and put the governments in the hard place of battling this virus alongside saving the economy.

When it comes to battling this disease, the involved governments have shown different levels of capability.

Former US President Donald Trump is a classic example of bad management. He did not even believe in wearing a face mask. He called it Konglu, a Chinese made virus. As a result, US has the most Covid 19 cases in the world.    

At the very first stage of facing the pandemic, countries like Canada, France, and Germany have indicated a lower-than-average inefficiency in preventing the spread of COVID-19, but after a while they faced an increase in their efficiency.

While some other countries like Australia and South Korea have managed to improve their performance in preventing the spread of COVID-19. To prevent the spread of coronavirus, various restrictions are applied to daily activities in different countries e.g., school closure, workings from home, and gatherings ban. However, some of these restrictions cause major economic costs. Labour markets in many countries have been influenced, as an overall increase in the unemployment rate is being observed.

The lockdown and other restrictions have also led to a GDP decline which affects all countries, but the developing countries suffer more than the others. So, in addition to the massive biological threat that COVID-19 has caused, it has short term economic consequences and long-term socio-economic impacts. The pandemic particularly makes the countries with lower level of economic development struggle more. These countries are not as prepared as developed countries to face such an economic shock; hence they are less likely to afford restrictions such as social distancing. Nevertheless, all involved countries are dealing with heavy pressure on their economy, the high unemployment rate, GDP reduction, an increase in poverty, and a decrease in manufacturing exports that translate into a recession for many countries.

What the world is dealing with is originally a health crisis, where the influences of it are very much related to the characteristics of each society. The virus is a communicable disease, so population characteristics are shown to play a role in the disease’s mortality rate. The age structure is one of these characteristics since the elderly are at higher risk.

Also, where the population is dense, the risk of spreading the virus is higher. Looking at the virus’s biological and socio-economic consequences indicates the importance of government capability in eliminating the multidimensional damage caused by COVID-19, i.e., government performance. The governments of affected countries and particularly the developing countries need to find out the trade off between saving lives and saving the economy.

Based on these reasons, the question that arises is how efficient the intervention policies of governments in different countries have been to deal with this pandemic?

I cannot comment on the Malaysian Government’s efficiency in managing the Covid 19 pandemic because about 2.5 years ago I wrote that we had the most Civil Servant per capita in the world, our Home Minister Tan Seri Muhyiddin, ordered to arrest me. The police grilled me for 2.5 hours at the Jelapang Police Station.

Currently US has the most Covid 19 cases in the world. It has 33.6 million Covid 19 cases and 597,785 deaths. Fortunately, these 2 figures are reducing due to massive vaccination.

India has 23.3 million Covid 19 cases and 254,000 deaths. Unfortunately, these 2 figures are surging. The number of daily new cases is about 400,000 as show on the chart above. At this rate, very soon India will have the most Covid 19 cases in the world.

Chinese method

All countries must follow the Chinese method of preventing the spread of the virus. China nips the problem at the bud. In January 2020, a few Covid 19 cases were discovered in Wuhan market. The Chinese Government immediately ordered lockdown and examined all the people who were in contact with the victims 2 weeks before and quarantine all of them. As soon as there were more Covid 19 cases, the Chinese Government ordered lockdown the whole region. All the people must stay at home. If anyone has to go out on emergency, he must wear a face mask and practise social distancing. He must wash his hands when he returned home. All the people must drink more water than they really need.

As a result, China has a total of 90,868 Covid 19 cases and 4,636 deaths. The daily new cases can be countered by your figures. It looks like China is the safest place to live in the world.