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posted by Fnord666 on Monday May 18 2020, @10:08AM   Printer-friendly

COVID-19 Has Blown Away the Myth About 'First' and 'Third' World Competence:

One of the planet's – and Africa's – deepest prejudices is being demolished by the way countries handle COVID-19.

For as long as any of us remember, everyone "knew" that "First World" countries – in effect, Western Europe and North America – were much better at providing their citizens with a good life than the poor and incapable states of the "Third World". "First World" has become shorthand for competence, sophistication and the highest political and economic standards.

[...] So we should have expected the state-of-the-art health systems of the "First World", spurred on by their aware and empowered citizens, to handle COVID-19 with relative ease, leaving the rest of the planet to endure the horror of buckling health systems and mass graves.

We have seen precisely the opposite.

[...] [Britain and the US] have ignored the threat. When they were forced to act, they sent mixed signals to citizens which encouraged many to act in ways which spread the infection. Neither did anything like the testing needed to control the virus. Both failed to equip their hospitals and health workers with the equipment they needed, triggering many avoidable deaths.

The failure was political. The US is the only rich country with no national health system. An attempt by former president Barack Obama to extend affordable care was watered down by right-wing resistance, then further gutted by the current president and his party. Britain's much-loved National Health Service has been weakened by spending cuts. Both governments failed to fight the virus in time because they had other priorities.

And yet, in Britain, the government's popularity ratings are sky high and it is expected to win the next election comfortably. The US president is behind in the polls but the contest is close enough to make his re-election a real possibility. Can there be anything more typically "Third World" than citizens supporting a government whose actions cost thousands of lives?


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  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday May 18 2020, @02:29PM

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Monday May 18 2020, @02:29PM (#995792)

    Possibly, as I said, I'm an ignorant rube when it comes to that part of the world. I do know that Granddad was there for the fall of Faisal II (which is probably the source of my confusion with the language named Farsi - and do I feel ignorant about that, sure do... but not half as ignorant as most of my countrymen.) Granddad just spoke some of "the local language" whatever it was, didn't share a lot of that detail with me - though I think the concrete plant he worked on may have been near the Iranian border, if that makes a difference. Now, ask any random non-military related US citizen to pick out Iran and Iraq on a globe... I believe you've got a better chance of dying from COVID-19 than you do of them getting that question right on the first try.

    And, of course, you're right - the immediate post 9-11 concern was Afghanistan - so Farsi, spoken by over 100 million people (1.4% of World pop), was the language of interest at the time, but of our ~35,000 FBI agents apparently only 6 (0.017%) had any functional ability to help work the intelligence streams. Apparently they had intercepted and interpreted enough chatter to know that something was "going down" on a flight to San Francisco, so that's where they sent him.... oops.

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