New Delhi: The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate several countries across the world — the latest count is 49,89,061 cases and more than 3,24,962 deaths.
The pandemic is challenging long-held stereotypes about Latin American populists. World Bank warns that over 60 million people across the world could be pushed into extreme poverty due to coronavirus. While, elsewhere, children have started swearing more due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
ThePrint brings you the most important global stories on the coronavirus pandemic and why they matter.
Trump says US topping Covid-19 cases a ‘badge of honour’
After holding his first cabinet meeting since the pandemic struck, US President Donald Trump said that it was a “badge of honour” that US has the highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, reports BBC.
“By the way, you know when you say that we lead in cases, that’s because we have more testing than anybody else,” said Trump in a press briefing.
“So when we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing, I look at that as, in a certain respect, as being a good thing because it means our testing is much better,” he added.
The US currently has nearly 15 lakh cases, which is followed by Russia and Spain with 2.9 and 2.7 lakh cases respectively.
Several experts who have been critical of Trump’s response to the pandemic argue that while testing more is important, the president needs to answer why the virus spread so much in the country.
Moreover, in terms of testing per 1,000 people, the US ranks 16th in the world.
Harvard Global Health Institute director Ashish Jha told a congressional hearing last week: “The US needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again. We are doing about a third of that.
Also read:
Pandemic challenges stereotypes about Latin American populists
For decades, Latin American politics has been considered fertile ground for studying populists leaders, often leading to stereotypes and caricatures. However, the way these leaders are responding to the coronavirus pandemic is challenging some of these stereotypes, notes a column in the Financial Times.
“Latin America’s leftwing populists have a fearsome reputation for spending money. From Juan Perón to Hugo Chávez, a succession of larger-than-life leaders have drained the public coffers in the name of progress. But things are changing. Leftwing leaders are preaching austerity and rightwing governments are running up big deficits,” writes Michael Stott, FT’s Latin America editor.
Mexico’s leftwing leader Lopez Obrador, who usually criticises “neo-liberals”, is now pushing to end lockdown to reopen industries and construction work and challenging the usual ‘Left-of-centre’ orthodoxy by pursuing a balanced budget. Meanwhile, Chile’s conservative leader Sebastián Piñera has sponsored one of the region’s largest fiscal stimulus — around 7 per cent of the country’s GDP.
Virus will push nearly 60 million into extreme poverty: World Bank
World Bank President David Malpass called for more help for the poor, as he announced that the pandemic could potentially push 60 million people across the world into extreme poverty, reports the Financial Times. The bank defines extreme poverty as people who earn less than $1.90 a day.
“The Bank expects world economic output to contract by as much as 5 per cent in 2020, erasing efforts over the past three years to alleviate poverty in the world’s poorest countries,” notes the report.
“The World Bank Group is offering $160bn in grants and low interest loans to help poor countries tackle the crisis over a 15-month period. Mr Malpass said that 100 countries, home to 70 per cent of the world’s population, had already been granted emergency finance,” it adds.
Also read: UN chief Antonio Guterres recommends scaled down annual meeting of world leaders in New York
How one crisis after another forced Germany to break fiscal tradition
There has been a long-held consensus in German politics regarding fiscal conservatism and not using their taxpayers money to bailout other nations of the European Union. Through the Greek debt crisis and rising populism, German Chancellor Angela Merkel held on to that principle.
The pandemic seems to have changed that. Merkel along with her French counterpart Emanuel Macron announced a 500 billion euro bailout package for distressed EU economies.
“Faced with a tarnishing of her own legacy and a deep recession gutting her own country and its main trading partners, Ms. Merkel this week agreed to break with two longstanding taboos in German policy,” notes The New York Times.
“It would allow the transfer of funds from richer countries to those more in need. And it would do so with money borrowed collectively by the European Union as a whole,” it adds.
German farmers airlifting workers creates risks and opportunities
Every year during the harvest season, approximately 3 lakh workers from Eastern Europe make their way to Germany to help in harvesting. However, the border shutdowns due to the pandemic have changed that.
Now, met with a crisis, the German government has allowed farmers to airlift workers from Bulgaria and Romania, reveals the New York Times. This has eased some of the pressure, but not solved the problem as not enough workers were flown in. Furthermore, it has also heightened the risk of new and more infections in the country.
“Images from one of the first flights leaving Romania showed migrant workers moving from packed buses to an airport terminal jammed with hundreds of people, many without masks,” notes the report.
Also read: US-China feud takes over WHO meeting, Syrian refugee aids UK fight, and other Covid news
How China could emerge even stronger after Covid-19
A new report by the magazine Time looks at how China is facing a massive global backlash against its initial handling of the coronavirus pandemic, but it could still emerge from the crisis stronger than before.
“When the coronavirus emerged in December, China acted quickly and forcefully to halt it in its tracks. It ordered a population equivalent to a fifth of humanity to barricade themselves at home, and hoisted up the drawbridge to visitors,” notes the report.
“Those draconian measures cost China an unprecedented 6.8% drop in GDP in the first quarter, but they worked–the country’s official (though disputed) infection count is now below 85,000, compared with 1.3 million in the U.S. In the virus epicenter of Wuhan, final-year students are scheduled to go back to class on May 20. Their parents, like adults across the country, are getting back to work,” it adds.
New Zealand prime minister the most popular in over a century due her effective Covid response
A new poll conducted in New Zealand shows that the country’s Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the most popular leader in 100 years, highlights Forbes. Her popularity comes on the back of her government’s effective response to the coronavirus pandemic, as the country has seen no new cases in the past few days. Moreover, it was one of the first countries that was able to reopen a substantial part of the economy after being struck by the pandemic.
“Ardern, the country’s youngest prime minister, is also the most popular in a century according to a Newshub-Reid Research poll released Monday, with nearly 60% of those surveyed calling her their preferred leader,” notes the report.
“Ardern’s popularity has surged since she ordered the country’s strict lockdown, her approval rate jumping about 20 points since the last poll and as almost 92% of respondents say they support the measures she implemented,” it adds.
Also read: Singapore curbs alcohol sales after expats are found flouting social distancing rules
Children are swearing more during quarantine
Children have begun to swear more since they have been forced to stay at home due to the coronavirus lockdown, The New Yorker is reporting.
“Casual swearing is a great perquisite of adulthood, and one of the first that kids attempt to seize for themselves. Cigarettes and wine coolers make teens feel grown up, but obtaining those takes ingenuity, to say nothing of money,” writes author Rumaan Alam.
“A friend in California jokes, of her daughter, ‘I think she’s hanging out with the wrong crowd—me.’ I ask if she feels she’s being lenient. ‘I’ve been more lenient with myself,’ she said. I feel like parenting is in large part hiding from your children what a monster you actually are. Now that there’s nowhere to hide, I am more often modelling who I really am,” he adds.
While most of this surge in swearing by kids is being attributed to parents becoming more lenient with swearing at home as well, Alam asks, “In the scheme of a global pandemic, do a few inelegant words matter?”
What else we are reading:
Italy’s Great Beautification: Hair Salons Are Back: The New York Times
Thai Airways to be restructured under bankruptcy court: Nikkei Asian Review
How HBO took on the streaming wars: Financial Times
Man sentenced to death in Singapore via Zoom call: Reuters