Plagues put a mirror to the societies they afflict. A pandemic will expose the failures of a government that does not invest in the health of its constituents or address the collective risks that arise when vulnerable groups lack health protections. For such a society, taking those lessons and applying them to reduce the risks of future contagion is surely the better of two possible outcomes.
Throughout history, pandemics have led to an expansion of the power of the state. As the Black Death spread across Europe in 1348, the authorities in Venice closed the city’s port to vessels coming from plague-infested areas and forced all travelers into 30 days of isolation, which eventually became 40 days; hence the word quarantine.
Trump has time on his side, with the coronavirus spreading early in the election cycle. This week, the Republican president adopted a more somber tone, and some Democrats are beginning to worry that he could mould the narrative to his benefit. A massive stimulus, including direct payments to Americans, could help him in November.
Bangladesh today is one of South Asia’s development success stories, with sustained growth of more than eight per cent and social indicators that are beginning to outstrip the rest of the region. It is also a country where more so than anywhere else in the region the independent press and opposition parties have withered away into near irrelevance.
A series of grim economic numbers from China have given the world a glimpse of what might lie ahead, as countries embark on draconian coronavirus containment measures. The Chinese economy went into free fall over the first two months of the year, data released on Monday showed, with industry, retail and investment all shrinking for the first time in history, each by double-digits.
At the urging of President Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s lower house of Parliament passed legislation Tuesday allowing him to run for a fifth term as president. Putin, who is 67 years old and was first elected in 2000, noted that the legislation would still have to be approved by Russia’s Constitutional Court and in a nationwide plebiscite in April.
Read Here – The New York Times
Hailing “victory to Wuhan” and saluting its people as heroes, Chinese President Xi Jinping used his first trip to the
He has the same thing in common with Hillary as every other Democrat does: his party affiliation. To be sure, that is one thing that distinguishes him from Sanders and many of Sanders’ voters.
If there is any lesson to be learned from three decades of American interventions, it is that the politics of foreign lands are far too complicated for an outside superpower to intervene and not produce costly unintended consequences.
In the post-Mao era, the Chinese people and Communist Party leaders have adhered to an implicit social contract: the people tolerate the party’s political monopoly, as long as the party delivers economic progress and adequate governance. The party’s poor handling of the COVID-19 outbreak has threatened this tacit pact.
