The world is effectively conducting a huge
natural experiment in pandemic containment strategies. The UK’s is perhaps the most controversial - I don’t have expertise to add, but I will point you
here,
here,
here and
here for some of the smarter analyses (though it looks like
they’re pulling back). It’s an interesting question whether it’s also a broader test of competing ideologies. Bruno Maçães says yes, in this provocative piece on “
Coronavirus and the clash of civilisations”.
Maçães’ core argument is that there is a distinctive “Confucian cosmopolis” response to the outbreak (in which he includes China, South Korea, Singapore and Vietnam) that may be more effective than anything the US can pull off (more
here). I’m not sure I buy the argument (“
China and Italy are discovering, perhaps to their surprise, a shared cultural substratum” seems self-refuting), but it’s interesting - and one we’ll hear more of in future.
I’m more persuaded by Tanner Greer’s idea of distinctive national ”
social scripts” - that is, that Asian societies have more societal practice from SARS and MERS. The question of how to develop effective social scripts
in advance of likely risks is an important one. It’s also true that governments’ responses are shaped by their political system at a quite granular level. Polarisation may play a role: coronavirus, remarkably, is
a partisan issue in the US (but
not in the UK, yet). And then there’s the question of international coordination, where
no one is covering themselves in glory to put it mildly.
