In his latest Washington Post column Fareed Zakaria warns about “stage two” of the pandemic—the expansion of SARS-CoV-2 into the global south:
In much of the developed world, the coronavirus curve is slowly flattening, but this obscures a tragic reality — the second phase of the crisis has begun as the novel virus spreads to the developing world. Ten of the top 12 countries with the largest number of new confirmed infections are now from the ranks of emerging economies, led by Brazil, Russia, India, Peru and Chile. The resulting devastation would likely reverse years, if not decades, of economic progress.
I found this part of his analysis reasonable:
Nursing homes, which have accounted for a large share of deaths in wealthy countries, are uncommon in the developing world, so the elderly are not clustered together. Heat may have some effect in reducing the spread of the virus. Some medical experts privately speculate that the populations in these countries have stronger immune systems because they have been exposed to many more diseases over their lifetimes.
There is another possibility. The developing world was spared the disease in the early months because it was less connected, by travel and trade, to the initial hot spots (China and Europe). In the past few weeks, however, the coronavirus has moved slowly but steadily across South Asia and Latin America. Brazil now has about 1,000 recorded deaths a day — and cases are rising exponentially. Africa has not had a large spike in confirmed cases — so far — but anecdotal evidence suggests the disease is spreading there as well. The Wall Street Journal reports that in the northern Nigerian city of Kano, gravediggers are running out of space and have resorted to burying corpses between existing graves or putting multiple bodies in a single grave.
However, he fails to mention the reasons for optimism. The prevalence and morbidity of COVID-19 throughout the developing world and in the global south in particular remain extremely low. He mentioned Nigeria. The deaths/1M due to COVID-19 there are 1; the cases/1M are 43. That’s as good or better than the best European countries or U. S. states.
The reason might be as simple as sunshine. Demographics are definitely on their side. The average age in Nigeria, for example, is 17.9 compared with the average age in Italy of 46.5. There just aren’t as many old people. The comorbidities most frequently associated with bad outcomes in COVID-19—COPD, diabetes, and so on—are diseases of wealth.
Nonetheless you will recall I have been warning of the potential for truly disastrous outcomes in the developing world for months now.
Mr. Zakaria provides no suggestions for what we can do to improve the situation in the developing world. The single most important thing we could do is get the U. S. economy back on its feet again. We are among the biggest customers for the goods of most of the countries of the developing world. China is only a major trading partner for most of them because it sells to them not that it buys. A U. S. consumer able and willing to buy the goods produced by the countries of the global south will keep them from losing all of that economic ground about which Mr. Zakaria is so concerned.
Do you know what the second most important thing we could do is? Reduce the subsidies paid to our own agricultural sector.
