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The Coronavirus Will Devastate Developing Nations
The worst effects of the coronavirus pandemic have, so far, mostly been confined to richer nations. Countries like China, Italy, Spain, France, the UK, and the United States have struggled immensely in the task of getting the pandemic under control and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. It appears likely that in some rich countries not everybody who needs urgent medical treatment will receive it and, as a result, avoidable deaths will occur. This has already been witnessed in Italy and Spain, where doctors now make life or death decisions about who receives life-saving treatment and who does not.
The economic fallout has also been immense, with the slowdown of business activity and the implementation of lockdowns seeing unemployment rising to levels not seen since the Great Depression. The full extent of the financial resources of the developed nations are being deployed in a desperate attempt to avoid a complete meltdown of the economy. How successful such measures will be remains to be seen.
If the rich world is under such strain, what lies in store for the world’s poorer nations? The pandemic has not yet fully unleashed its force upon such countries, but many are now experiencing a similar trajectory to that experienced by more developed regions. An outbreak such as we have seen in Europe may not be far off in the…
