World update: March 17 2020 (part 2)

Stories from Ethiopia, Russia, Brazil, and more

Please check out Part 1 first!

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OCEANIA

AUSTRALIA

(456 confirmed cases, 5 reported fatalities)

The Australian government has banned “non-essential” public gatherings of more than 100 people, but it has yet to take more aggressive containment steps like closing schools and shutting down public transportation. It’s asking Australians to practice voluntary social distancing and to avoid traveling overseas.

AFRICA

So far the African continent has largely been spared the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic, whose epicenter has shifted from East Asia to Europe and may shift again to the United States. But having somehow escaped the pandemic so far despite close ties between many African countries and China, it remains to be seen whether an African outbreak can be contained while the virus is rampant in Europe.

Many African governments have begun imposing travel bans, particularly on arrivals from Europe and the US, but they have been slow to implement measures to control large gatherings or to prepare for a rise in COVID-19 cases. That now appears to be changing—Zimbabwe, for example, has already declared a national emergency even though it hasn’t yet had a confirmed case of the virus—but with 30 African nations now reporting confirmed cases of the virus and 12 reporting cases of local transmission, it may only be a matter of time before the pandemic really takes hold. While resource-strapped African nations may struggle to build capacity to manage the epidemic, many of them can fall back on public health lessons learned while dealing with local/regional Ebola outbreaks and apply those principles to the current situation.

ALGERIA

(60 confirmed cases, 4 reported fatalities)

The Algerian government on Tuesday announced a ban on public protests, which is ostensibly a virus containment measure but is also a way to snuff out the ongoing anti-government Hirak movement, which has been demonstrating for wholesale political change for over a year now. Hirak protests usually take place on Fridays so I suppose we’ll see in a few days if this is successful. But the movement has been dwindling anyway so it wouldn’t be surprising if this marked the end of the line.

NIGER

(3 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Nigerien military says its soldiers repelled an attack by Islamist militants on a base in Toumour that began late Saturday and continued overnight into Sunday, killing at least 50 of the attacking fighters. They’re describing this as a Boko Haram attack but it’s unclear from reporting whether that means the original Boko Haram or the Islamic State West Africa Province splinter group.

ETHIOPIA

(5 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

Despite US mediation efforts, the Ethiopian and Egyptian governments are once again apparently stalemated in talks over the construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam and its impact on water flows in the Nile basin, with tensions rising over what both countries consider to be an existential issue. The International Crisis Group suggests that the parties stop trying to negotiate a full agreement and focus instead on an interim accord:

The escalation needs to stop before the parties find themselves at the brink of a disastrous confrontation. Fortunately, there is a potential way forward. Although the current circumstances seem too heated to allow the parties to achieve a comprehensive deal in short order, an interim agreement could be in reach. In that scenario, the parties would agree that Ethiopia fills the dam’s reservoir only to the extent required for testing its turbines, which is a scheduled step in bringing the GERD online. This initial filling will require a total of 18.4bcm of water over the course of two years, creating a shortfall that Egypt could compensate for with releases from its High Aswan Dam, which holds up to 169bcm and is currently near its historical high. During these first two years, Ethiopian negotiators say, the GERD will annually release no less than 31bcm of a yearly average Blue Nile flow of 49bcm – or the entire annual flow in the unlikely event that it is less than 31bcm. The amount of water required for the first year of filling is especially manageable, as only 4.9bcm is needed to test the first two of a total of thirteen turbines.

A piecemeal approach would allow more time to work out a permanent agreement on the GERD’s operations and potentially build some good will that could make it easier to work out such a deal.

CHAD

The Chadian government has reached a deal to repay $100 million in debt to Angola with cattle—75,000 of them in all, to be delivered over the next 10 years. The agreement is a rare win-win in that Chad doesn’t have the cash to repay the debt but does have a lot of cows, while drought-stricken Angola desperately needs cattle to replenish its stock.

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

(1 confirmed case, no reported fatalities)

Anti-Balaka militia fighters killed a United Nations peacekeeper on Sunday when the UN forces stepped in to try to stop the militia’s attack on the homes of several local officials in the city of Grimari. The militia forces then opened fire on the peacekeepers, killing one Burundian soldier.

SOUTH AFRICA

(85 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The South African government has quarantined a cruise ship at Cape Town after one of its crew members showed symptoms of COVID-19. Cruise ships, which for obvious reasons offer a lot of opportunities for the virus to spread, have been a particular focus during the pandemic, but this is the first one to be detained at an African port.

EUROPE

Leaders of the 27 European Union member states met via video conference on Tuesday and decided to close the EU’s external borders and introduce economic stimulus to shepherd the European economy through the pandemic. There’s apparently some hope that these measures will encourage individual member states to keep their own borders open, but some EU members like Spain (see below) and Poland have already closed theirs, with repercussions for states that are now cut off from the rest of the EU. It’s unclear what form any stimulus might take, especially with the austerity-obsessed German government riding herd over the rest of the EU members.

RUSSIA

(114 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

It appears that Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to drop any cutesy work-around to the end of his second and legally final term in 2024 and is just planning to remain president. While Putin has flirted with constitutional changes that would shift executive power away from the presidency and into another office he could presumably occupy after his term ends, on Monday the country’s Constitutional Court ruled that Putin could simply rewrite the constitution to reset his term limit counter, potentially allowing him to serve two more six year terms. Whatever changes are made to the constitution will be subject to a referendum in April that Putin will presumably rig, if that becomes necessary.

REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

(24 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

North Macedonian officials have decided to postpone that country’s April 12 parliamentary election due to the pandemic, but legally they’re trying to find a way to implement that decision.

KOSOVO

(19 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

Pending the outcome of a parliamentary vote, the Kosovan government is about to declare a state of emergency to try to contain the coronavirus. It has already closed just about everything other than grocery stores and healthcare facilities.

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

(26 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Bosnian government on Tuesday imposed a nationwide state of emergency on Tuesday, after its constituent regions (the Bosniak-Croat Federation and Republika Srpska) each separately did so on Monday. The state of emergency should help coordinate containment efforts, though “Bosnia” and “coordinated” aren’t usually mentioned in conjunction with one another. The regional governments have already closed schools and banned public gatherings, and they’re asking businesses to introduce multiple shifts to limit the number of people in the workplace at any given time.

SWEDEN

(1191 confirmed cases, 8 reported fatalities)

The Swedish government is closing its borders to non-European Union travelers for at least 30 days, effective March 19.

GERMANY

(9360 confirmed cases, 26 reported fatalities)

In one of the more depraved things I’ve encountered in my almost a year doing this newsletter and the years before that when I covered this stuff at my previous website, Donald Trump reportedly tried earlier this month to entice a German firm working on a COVID-19 vaccine to shift its operations to the US and, if it produced a vaccine, to make it exclusively available within the United States. As I say, as reported this is utterly depraved, and it’s not even good policy since the longer the pandemic remained active outside the US the greater the chance the virus could mutate and render the vaccine less effective.

Awk-ward (White House photo via Flickr)

The Trump administration denies that there was any discussion of exclusivity but the German government is apparently convinced there was. It’s possible that when Trump (allegedly) told company officials that he wanted a vaccine “only for the United States” he meant in terms of production rather than access. Who knows where Trump is concerned. At any rate, leaders of the G7 nations issued something of a rebuke to Trump in a video conference on Tuesday when they called for any vaccine to be universally available.

ITALY

(31,506 confirmed cases, 2503 reported fatalities)

No country outside of China has been harder hit than Italy, whose healthcare system is being taxed in ways that could augur badly for the United States. Doctors and public health officials are scrambling to add new hospital beds to catch up with the pandemic and accommodate other patients in need, and authorities have decided to forego final exams for some 10,000 medical students in a desperate attempt to expand capacity.

BELGIUM

(1243 confirmed cases, 10 reported fatalities)

Belgian authorities are imposing a lockdown effective Wednesday through at least April 10. Public gatherings have been banned and Belgians will have their travel outside the home severely curtailed.

FRANCE

(7730 confirmed cases, 175 reported fatalities)

French authorities began their nationwide lockdown on Tuesday, restricting people’s movements outside the home to work, grocery stories, medical facilities, and for exercise. France could provide a true test case for a large-scale lockdown in an ostensibly democratic state, as keeping 67 million people confined to their homes is going to be a daunting task without resorting to draconian measures. At present the fine for curfew violations is only 30 euros but authorities plan to increase that to 135 euros and it could eventually go higher still.

SPAIN

(11,826 confirmed cases, 533 reported fatalities)

Spanish authorities have already imposed their own lockdown and have closed the countries borders. Authorities turned cars back at both the French and Portuguese borders on Tuesday in what could become a test of the EU’s free movement principle in the face of this kind of threat. The travel restrictions are not just blocking people from getting into Spain, they’re also blocking Portuguese citizens who need to transit through Spain to get to other parts of Europe.

UNITED KINGDOM

(1950 confirmed cases, 71 reported fatalities)

Boris Johnson’s government is hoping to keep the UK under 20,000 COVID-19 fatalities, which is…kind of chilling, actually. But it’s quite a bit better than the prognosis for Johnson’s initial approach to the pandemic, which was less aggressive and would have basically resigned the UK to mass infection at an early stage. Johnson apparently changed his tune after one projection showed that this course of action could have led to the deaths of upwards of 250,000 people.

AMERICAS

CHILE

(201 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Chilean government is thinking about postponing its April 26 referendum on rewriting the country’s constitution, due of course to COVID-19. The referendum is a response to the anti-government protests that have wracked the country since October, but it remains to be seen how those protesters will react to a postponement. Obviously circumstances have changed a fair bit since the referendum was announced in November.

BOLIVIA

(11 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

The Bolivian government is closing its borders over the next three days through the end of the month. No word on whether the junta is going to try to postpone its scheduled May 3 election though there’s a strong possibility it will at least float the idea if this crisis goes on long enough.

BRAZIL

(329 confirmed cases, 1 reported fatality)

Brazilian authorities announced the country’s first fatality from COVID-19 on Tuesday, while Congress scrapped a planned joint session due to concerns about the coronavirus. President Jair Bolsonaro’s government has decided to ask Congress to declare a state of emergency in response to the pandemic, but on the plus side, for Bolsonaro at least, his second COVID-19 test in less than a week has come back negative. Bolsonaro’s government plans to close its Venezuelan border to prevent refugees from bringing the virus into the country, though the border will remain open for the shipment of goods. And the Brazilian government has also decided to postpone its 2020 census until 2021, citing the risk that census-takers might contract the virus and/or act as vectors for its transmission.

GUATEMALA

(6 confirmed cases, 1 reported fatality)

The Guatemalan government has halted deportation flights from the United States under its “safe third country” agreement with the Trump administration. The suspension is indefinite, but authorities in the US and Guatemala are reportedly working on procedures to ensure that no asylum seekers infected with COVID-19 are sent to Guatemala.

MEXICO

(82 confirmed cases, no reported fatalities)

Mexican courts are suspending their activities starting Wednesday through at least April 19 in response to the pandemic.

CANADA

(592 confirmed cases, 8 reported fatalities)

The Canadian government announced on Monday that it’s closing its borders to anyone who is not a citizen, a permanent resident, or a US citizen, and is requiring that all new entries into the country, including returning citizens, self quarantine for 14 days. Canadian officials may institute additional lockdown measures but so far have just asked people to stay home if they can.

UNITED STATES

(6319 confirmed cases, 105 reported fatalities)

Finally, Paul Pillar compares the COVID-19 response in Singapore, which has successfully contained the virus, and the US, which has not, and argues that the difference isn’t simply a factor of Singapore’s more overt authoritarianism:

Some observers have noted that the whiffs of authoritarianism that Singapore’s founding father Lee Kwan Yew applied to his orderly and otherwise liberal democratic state — and the longtime political dominance of Lee’s People’s Action Party — might make it easier than in the United States to apply stringent measures to fight an epidemic. But as Singapore historian P.J. Thum notes, authoritarianism hasn’t been necessary for success in fighting the coronavirus, given the well-earned public trust in the civil service and the rest of the state. The success has come because, says Thum, “The state was largely transparent and communicative and people understood it was an emergency and cooperated.”

The contrast with the relevant attitudes and political practices in the United States is stark. Denigration of public service preceded the current administration, with politically motivated mantras about how “government is the problem” and later nonsense about a “deep state.” Trump has carried the denigration to extremes with an outright assault on the government he supposedly heads. His most salient attacks to date have focused on the foreign service and the intelligence community, largely because of inconvenient truths these components have told about the offenses for which Trump was impeached or about Russian election interference from which Trump has benefited.

The assaults have been broader than that, however, affecting the work of public servants ranging from agricultural economists to environmental specialists. One theme underlying the entire assault has been a disdain for expertise. Another theme has been the prioritization of political loyalty to Trump over competence and dedication to the public interest.