China

Britain has a population 21 times smaller than China, yet it has seen 20 times as many cases of Covid-19 and almost 13 times as many deaths.

The World Health Organisation called China’s efforts “perhaps the most ambitious, agile and aggressive disease containment effort in history.” Strict lockdowns and social media apps restricted people’s movements, thousands of military doctors and nurses were sent to the Wuhan epicentre, medical supplies, food and fuel were delivered on a massive scale.

“The speed of China’s response was the crucial factor,” explains Gregory Poland, director of the Vaccine Research Group at the Mayo Clinic, Minnesota. “Other countries… delayed their response and that meant they lost control.”
 

Vietnam

The country has a population of 97 million and at the time of writing has recorded around 35 deaths. With fewer than 1,000 ICU beds for its more than 97 million people, Vietnam simply had to act.

The military was mobilised and their bases converted to mandatory quarantine sites. The largest manufacturing companies were converted to producing PPE and test kits, which they are now exporting to the US. A mobile app was created locate Covid-19 hot spots.

Matt Moore, the US Centre for Disease Control’s representative in Hanoi, says: “The public here in Vietnam has really bought into this. They really feel shared ownership... and I think, again, it’s because of those early successes (with strong measures that might be considered draconian). But they were really effective.”

It wasn’t just about “authoritarianism.” There was complexity behind the government messaging that accompanied the strict lockdown and tracing measures. According to The Diplomat on October 19 2020, “Vietnam’s government, in fact, crafted narratives rooted in the intricate history and recent cultural memory of the country in order to encourage solidarity and collective action.”

The government employed a widespread information campaign, much of the messaging evoking Vietnam’s past military conflicts; that connected with many Vietnamese proud of their ability to stand together in a crisis.

“Vietnam is one of the few countries in the world currently experiencing positive GDP growth. The supposed trade-off between the economy and public health, which countries around the world are negotiating, looks to be something of a false choice,” writes Tran Le Thuy, director of Centre for the Media and Development Initiatives in Hanoi.

Cuba

The Caribbean island has recorded 136 deaths at the time of writing against a population of 11.3 million — Britain’s death rate is about 76 times worse.

Cuba’s universal healthcare system has allowed the government to direct a unified rather than a fragmented strategy with tracing and isolation made possible by human resources.

Cuba has the highest doctor-to-patient ratio in the world and the island spends a higher proportion of its GDP on healthcare than any other country in the region. While 30 per cent of the 630 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean have “no access to healthcare for financial reasons” according to the Pan American Health Organisation, everybody in Cuba is covered.

Cuba has also made an extraordinary and well-documented effort in extending aid to other countries in their fight against the virus which has led to calls for the country to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Kerala

The south Indian state, whose Communist-led Left Front government was re-elected this month, was considered ripe for the spread of the virus with its dense population and high levels of regular immigration. But despite a recent surge in cases, now under control, it has succeeded in maintaining a death rate of 0.37 per cent, far less than the Indian national average of 1.37 per cent.

Primary healthcare services and active community participation have been paramount. Local self-governance is a form of democratic decentralisation and transfers power to those that can make a difference.

“Kudumbashree units,” women’s self-help groups under local leadership, form one of the largest women-empowering projects in Kerala; they reach the family through women and the larger community through these families. These groups and others were crucial in furthering the thrust of the campaign on community education and basic prevention.

The British Medical Journal summed up Kerala’s efforts as “…a proactive and timely approach within the basics of quarantine, infection prevention and control with the highest political and administrative commitment. The strong public health system… and the empowered and literate community has helped the state to combat the pandemic as a joint effort.

“Interdepartmental coordination from the highest administrative levels to the village level was visible… The lessons from Kerala underline the importance of a strong public health system with active community participation.”

Common factors behind the success of the socialists

The states covered above have performed much better than the developed West. Although eastern capitalist nations performed better than the west, Vietnam’s death rate is 50 times less than Japan’s and 30 times less than that of South Korea and China’s is six times less and three times less respectively. Cuba also compares well to both these countries despite being significantly poorer.

Nye Bevan believed “the language of priorities is the religion of socialism” — and Covid-19 quickly became the number one priority, with no delays to action nor equivocation over the appropriate measures due to concern over the potential loss of income to corporates or the property sector. This swift and decisive action actually allowed a quicker and less lethal return to normality and regular economic activity than has been the case in most capitalist countries.

A mass, popular mobilisation of resources and people to fight the virus with an appeal to a sense of collective responsibility has contrasted with a developed world in which a selfish individualist ethos has coloured both public and private responses. The public in many developed countries have resisted the wearing of masks in public and other precautions; many workplaces have not adapted to the needs of the situation and have become centres for the spread of the disease, eg construction sites and meat-packing factories.

All experience in Britain and overseas shows that local test and trace works better. While, according to the latest government figures, the centralised system currently reaches just 63 per cent of contacts, local authorities are reaching 97 per cent of contacts.

This is despite the fact that they have been denied access to government data and were given just £300m in contrast with the £12bn for national test and trace. Centralisation’s only advantage lies in the fact that it makes it easier to award lucrative contracts to multinational corporations.

A public-sector-led response with public priorities is paramount. Good healthcare infrastructure is important but so is management, political responsibility and public will. The US’s expenditure on healthcare is significantly greater by any measure than that of the socialist countries but its response to the virus has not been governed by the same priorities and the resultant outcomes have been disastrous.

In the socialist countries the virus response has not been about increasing the profitability of the government’s network of private-sector contacts. Britain government’s commitment to a private-sector led solution has led to money that could have saved lives and fed hungry children being diverted into corporate profits, inexperienced consultants, executives being appointed over the heads of qualified public servants and the creation of a centralised unaccountable bureaucracy.

Maybe some of the restrictions and controls imposed by the four states would have been difficult to enforce in the West — but their overall response has been characterised by much more than authoritarian fiat. It can be summarised as the collective harnessing of resources in a coherent manner aimed at achieving outcomes that maximised the common good with the priority of protecting the most vulnerable, in short: socialism.

A longer version of this article with further sources and research is available here.