New Delhi: The novel coronavirus pandemic continues to devastate countries across the world — the latest count is over 2.20 crore cases and more than 7.77 lakh deaths.
On the US Democratic National Convention’s opening day, the focus was on sitting President Donald Trump’s failed pandemic record. Canada’s finance minister resigns in the middle of a pandemic, leaving the government’s economic response headless. Companies are reorienting their supply chains, leaving China out. Meanwhile, Italy and France are grappling with a second wave of infections.
ThePrint brings you the most important global stories on the coronavirus pandemic and why they matter.
Focus on Trump’s pandemic failings at Democratic Convention’s opening night
In several major speeches by party leaders at the US Democratic Party’s National Convention, the focus was unequivocally on the US President Donald Trump’s botched response to the pandemic, reports The Washington Post.
“Democrats kicked off their virtual nominating convention Monday with a focused denunciation of President Trump, showcasing dozens of testimonials that culminated in lancing criticism, from former first lady Michelle Obama, who cast Trump as incapable of meeting America’s needs and said Joe Biden would usher in racial justice and ease the coronavirus pandemic,” says the report.
It added that Michelle Obama chided Trump for remarking, “It is what it is” with respect to the country’s Covid death toll. She added, “Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country.”
Amid pandemic, world’s largest military drill reflects US allies
The Rim of the Pacific international maritime exercise or RIMPAC 2020 — led by the US — started on Monday, with China visibly absent from the guest list, reports the Nikki Asian Review.
“The biennial drill — the biggest ocean exercise in the world — runs to the end of August in the seas near Hawaii. With 10 countries, 22 ships, one submarine and 5,300 personnel participating in offshore-only activities this time, it is greatly reduced in size from the 2018 edition, where 25 countries took part,” notes the report. “Not only has Beijing clearly been excluded again this year, but RIMPAC 2020 itself seems to be a stage for the Pacific navies to simulate their China scenarios.”
This comes as China-US tensions have been flaring up throughout the pandemic.
Also read: Smoke-filled rooms to public events — growth & importance of US Presidential poll conventions
Canadian finance minister resigns during the pandemic
As the pandemic has fuelled massive unemployment and ballooning government deficit in Canada, the country’s finance minister, Bill Morneau, resigned amid a charity probe and clashes with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, reports the BBC.
The finance minister resigned after an ethics probe was initiated into a charity group, WE Charity, that has links with both Morneau and Trudeau.
“Morneau’s resignation follows weeks of speculation about his future and a flurry of news reports about disagreements between him and Trudeau over environmental programs and the government’s roughly $180 billion in pandemic relief spending,” notes a report in The Washington Post.
China’s two-speed pandemic economic recovery
A long read in the Financial Times looks at how the economic recovery in China is vastly different for those from lower-income households vis-a-vis the wealthy.
“The uneven recovery in consumer spending has raised questions from low-income workers to economists and analysts about the way the Chinese government has responded to the pandemic. While many countries have tried to directly transfer cash to consumers to protect businesses, Beijing has focused much of its effort on stimulating investment and construction. And, say critics, when it has adopted consumer-led measures — including approvals for new duty-free shops — they have benefited the well-off, rather than average, households,” says the report.
Companies reorient supply chains, cut China out
The pandemic has exacerbated the move by multinational firms to reduce their reliance on China for manufacturing, reports the Financial Times.
“China’s share of global exports has been hit by its trade dispute with the US which — together with the pandemic, corporate governance demands and the rise of artificial intelligence — is pushing multinational companies to reduce their dependency on the Asian powerhouse,” explains the report.
“Last year Chinese exports of 1,200 products accounted for 22 per cent of the world’s exports, 3 percentage points down on the previous year, according to a new study by Baker McKenzie,” adds the report. Its authors believe that the pandemic would have further accelerated this trend.
Also read: US announces new curbs on Huawei, stops it from accessing American tech
Virus’ second wave takes a foothold in France
France managed to beat the virus once, but given a rise in infections, especially among young adults, the country’s health officials are charting out plans to beat the pandemic yet again, reports The New York Times.
“The signs of a new wave of infection emerged over the summer as people began resuming much of their pre-coronavirus lives, traveling across France and socializing in cafes, restaurants and parks. Many, especially the young, have visibly relaxed their vigilance and have not followed rules on mask wearing or social distancing,” notes the report.
Over the past few days, the country has recorded nearly 3,000 daily infections, prompting health officials to urge citizens to shed complacency and take all precautions.
Italy mandates compulsory masks, closes nightclubs
As the number of coronavirus cases rise in Rome, the government has extended restrictions for the first time since the country has come out of the lockdown, reports The Washington Post. Italy saw 320 new cases on Monday.
“The new measures come as Italy faces its most precarious moment of the summer. School is due to start in less than a month, Italians are moving en masse for their August holidays, and tourists are coming in from other European countries that have seen even greater increases,” says the report.
“Although the Italian restrictions are modest, they amount to a test of whether a country can keep the virus at bay without resorting to the blunt-force lockdown strategy used earlier in the pandemic. Italy’s government is specifically targeting nightclubs and evening socializing as cases are increasingly detected among the young,” it adds.
Will the pandemic permanently change our habits?
Many argue that the pandemic is going to transform politics, education and travel in the years to come. But whether it will also change human behaviour, much like the Great Depression did, is the question asked in a report in The Atlantic.
“For one thing, we’ll better understand the importance of washing our hands. When I interviewed roughly 20 people from across the country about their pandemic-era habits, most of them planned to keep aspects of their new hygiene regimen long into the future, even after the threat of the coronavirus passes,” says the report.
Then again, many of these habits might not persist for as long. The report quotes Katy Milkman, a behavioural scientist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, who said that “habits are more likely to stick if they are accompanied by ‘repeated rewards’. If the threat of the virus is neutralized, she said, ‘the reward for scrubbing your hands won’t endure, and I think the average person will go back to a simpler routine,’” adds the report.
What else we are reading:
Australia’s coronavirus infections set to hit one-month low: Straits Times
Assault on the rainforest continues in the shadow of the pandemic: Der Spiegel
Also read: Russia’s Sputnik launch raises risks in the rush for Covid vaccine