Covid-19 offers no lessons for the world, you say? Here are my takeaways

I REFER to the FT commentary by Janan Ganesh headlined "Covid-19 has no grand lesson for the world" (BT, Dec 31, 2020).

There is seeming precious little in the piece that makes non-prejudicial good sense. Almost every suggestion is an aberration in logic or abstruse tortured reasoning, and a travesty to the instruction that Covid-19 has brought the world in the management of crisis wrought of a viral pandemic.

While there is no political system that seems to have done better than others, even within the same broad confines of communist, socialistic or capitalistic, it is indubitable that virtuous leadership is paramount in crisis.

The first great lesson derived from the pandemic then, is to conscientiously choose able leaders in preparation for the next big one. Communist countries may not have democratically elected leaders, but the system as exemplified by China's CCP throws up effective leaders with mettle of steel who have been tested under great adversity for decades.

Meanwhile, foremost democracies have this time around only proffered demagogues with great public charisma, but with nary an inkling on the handling of catastrophes. A side lesson is that even entrenched and enabled civil institutions are paralysed without astute political stewardship.

The second big winning lesson is collectivity. Where leaders have demonstrated the ability to marshall resources, and societies have marched in step for a consistent strategy in containment of the virus, the outcomes have been starkly superior to situations where the feckless emphasis on individualism and civic freedom allowed the unfettered flowering of a hodge podge of asynchronous directives and manoeuvres, some countermanding and undercutting others.

New Zealand with its capitalistic system and China with its more rigid political one achieved the same means through collective efforts which sacrificed the freedoms of the individual for collective benefit. Yet, it is noticeable that Big Government constitutionally involved in all areas of citizen life with encompassing and enmeshing strategies wins out in larger countries, even if New Zealand, notably smaller and with far fewer complex containable factors, deserves exemplary mention.

Of course, purblindly leading without a compass is tantamount to sheer folly, and the third grand lesson, which almost seems too obvious to elucidate, is to follow the science, study the history of past pandemics and not commit to instinctive folly. Countries that declared Covid-19 fake, even long and deep into the pandemic - and this includes countries other than the USA - could not muster any meaningful and organised campaign against the scourge; how can they when charlatans are at the forefront against an enemy whose only fear is a scientific and systemic pursuance of detail into its susceptibility? Asian societies experienced in the rule book after having combated wave after wave of viral infections starting with the Asian flu and latterly ending with the Sars epidemic, instructively knew the broad measures to adopt early in the fight, including the wearing of masks, and just how effective each different kind of mask was, implemented together with social distancing and contact tracing mechanisms.

Even as of now, news media in the West tout the wearing of masks as a transgression of personal freedom and even an unnatural act of nature against God - you peddle snake oil and the grim reaper scythes.

Janan Ganesh claims that as a measure of success and lesson learnt, pandemic aggregate deaths throw up no difference between rich nations and poor, but even here he has missed out on another great lesson - which is that while natural scourges can be ameliorated by entitled countries shovelling spades of money at it (which they have done but ineffectively because of foisted class distrust), esprit de corps, societal adhesiveness, resilience, a sense of common destiny and unbending will triumph where even material resources are scarce.

When all are in it together - the rich are not rich, and neither the poor, poor - and are joint combatants in war mobilised effectively on camaraderie, winners are created.

And on this topic, which Asian cannot feel annoyed with his sceptical and patronising assertion that the success of East and South-east Asia with their low infection, morbidity and mortality rates, as compared to almost all Western societies, is scarcely believable?

That Asians can and often do far better than the occidental countries must surely be fake news and therefore taken incredulously with a jaundiced perspective?

Does Mr Ganesh need to come and personally scrutinise the disciplined societies, accredited hospitals and ICUs of Taiwan, Vietnam, Thailand and Singapore, and experience for himself the embarrassment of riches in viral testing and PPEs, the precision of social tracing, stringency of enforced social distancing, and abundance of ever-ready ICU beds these countries have in their arsenal before he is personally convinced the statistics are fully backed up with substantive evidential armoury?

Finally, Mr Ganesh has missed the ultimate lesson in pandemic management - that life is sacrosanct, and narrative fallacies, tautological absurdities or any other artificial composite ratios of financial benefits vs human loss, are superfluous to us, never assuming any important role in our unrelenting battle against Covid-19.

Asia - teeming with billions of people with standards of living for many abysmal; the purported origin of the pandemic, and first hit the hardest by the virus when so little was known about it - has relatively paltry numbers of Covid deaths, but each is a tragedy to be grieved and lesson garnered from.

We followed the science, acted collectively under sentient governance, saved as many as we should and could, and the objective statistics are such that no one can claim this is forcing a narrative that does not follow the facts. Businesses can always be revivified, but wherein lies its material significance when lineages have been terminated and lives snuffed out?

Dr Yik Keng Yeong