This is going to be a newsletter about the global stories that are often not reported in great depth in the US press and worthy of more discussion and public debate. It will also explore why it is important to discuss and learn from stories with global import. Our first report concerns the health care catastrophe currently affecting India. As NPR reports, India’s health service is breaking down. All hospital beds are full and the epidemic is spiraling out of control,
“Confirmed deaths from the coronavirus also broke an Indian record Thursday, with 2,104 fatalities recorded in the previous 24 hours. But deaths too may be drastically undercounted, because many of the people dying outside hospitals never got tested. Bodies are piling up in morgues. Crematoriums can't work fast enough.”
Law and order is breaking down and oxygen is in short supply.
“Social media are full of desperate pleas from Indians seeking hospital beds, oxygen, anti-viral drugs, vaccines. One longtime journalist live-tweeted his declining oxygen levels until he died.”
Yes there was mismangement as NPR documents (outdoor superspreader rallies led by Prime minister Modi did not help, as well as millions of people bathing in the Ganges etc) this is not the time to blame anyone—we are dealing with a true humanitarian crisis. A smiliar situation as The Conversation reports is faced in Brazil with another right wing leader like Modi wanting to deny Covid’s severity and like Trump mismanaging the crisis to the point of bringing his country to its knees. The question is what is the world going to do apart from cutting off travel to India? Amid vaccine shortages, “the CEO of India's largest manufacturer, the Serum Institute of India, tweeted a plea last week to President Biden, asking him to lift an export ban on raw materials While Serum's vaccines are made in India, it imports sterile materials from the U.S. to do so.”
As Business Today reports, the EU, Russia, China and even Pakistan, India’s sworn enemy, helps in the global effort we should be convening a special session to assist India’s health workers to get vaccinated. As The Guardian points out it is now in countries self interest to “ look beyond their own health crises to see that the pandemic could still get much worse without intervention. Experts have repeatedly warned that allowing the virus to circulate unchecked increases the risk that dangerous new strains will emerge and prolong the pandemic.”
This will require us to look at models including George W Bush’s initiative to fight Aids in Africa under the president’s Emergency plan for Aids relief and the 2014 global response to Ebola in West Africa.
We will have no time to lose but it is time to reflect some more on the importance of global cooperation.
With a global pandemic the globe has to respond as one if only for the simple imperative of 'enlightened self interest', until we're all safe no one is safe.
Whether this creates a new enlightened mindset for other existential threats the world faces (global warming, nuclear, AI) I doubt it.