This is a guest post from Eric Van Rythoven (PhD) who teaches International Relations and Foreign Policy at Carleton University, Canada.  His work has been published in Security Dialogue, European Journal of International Relations, and Journal of Global Security Studies, among others.  He is the editor (with Mira Sucharov) of Methodology and Emotion in International Politics: Parsing the Passions (Routledge, 2019).   

As governments around the world grapple with the Covid-19 crisis several are reaching for the metaphor of war to convey the urgency and gravity surrounding the pandemic. 

There are obvious advantages to this strategy.  Historically, the language of war has functioned as a powerful mechanism for collective mobilization and emergency action.  It can suspend partisanship, free government agencies of burdensome rules, and activate extraordinary powers on behalf of the executive.  Even more, it can revive memories of shared sacrifice—as in World War 2—which can serve as inspiration and even comfort in uncertain times.

At the same time the war metaphor comes with a number of risks.  One problem is that it risks positioning militaries as the leading responders to the Covid-19 crisis.  As academics studying the securitization of AIDS/HIV have noted, this can lead to limited resources being diverted from public health systems and towards the military. 

This is a guest post from Ben Bellows, PhD (UC Berkeley, epidemiology), currently a researcher at the Population Council in Washington DC and a co-founder and the Chief Business Officer at Nivi Inc., a digital health company empowering consumers in emerging markets. Nivi is supporting the COVID-19 response here.  

Background: the problem

Disease outbreaks are as much a social phenomenon as a biological one. Rumor, innuendo, and public sentiment drive disease transmission dynamics. Covid-19 is no different; the fact checking website, Snopes.com, has a dedicated “covid-19” tag to run the equivalent of public health containment and mitigation on misinformation.

As the World Health Organization reported 2nd February, this pandemic, similar to past epidemics like SARS in 2003 when the term was coined, risks spawning an “infodemic” that exacerbates disease control and treatment efforts (e.g. there is no high quality evidence that hydroxychloroquine leads to significant improvements in COVID-19 outcomes, drinking hot water will not kill the virus, and this video does not show mass COVID-19 graves in Italy).

Drawing lessons from the 2013-16 West Africa Ebola epidemic, we already see health authorities trying to balance centralized mechanisms to promote consistent and high quality messaging with decentralized programmatic communication that is flexible and adaptable to local needs, as Gillespie and colleagues recommended post-Ebola.

As a part of the global response, on March 20th, the WHO and Facebook launched a WhatsApp chat bot and resource page to improve information quality, allowing anyone with access to WhatsApp to learn more about coronavirus and receive updates. This proactive strengthening of health authority messaging pairs well with effective efforts to weaken transmission of misinformation on social media platforms (e.g. YouTube has a 24-hour incident-response team to remove misinformation and Facebook partnered with the International Fact Checking Network awarding grants to fact check Coronavirus misinformation).

National governments and corporate partners have also launched digital messaging services including in India, Kenya, and South Africa. These messaging services, and similar web platforms the US CDC Coronavirus Self-Checker, convey consistent and vetted health information intended to inform citizens and empower healthy decisions.

Next phase in pandemic response

Anticipating the next step in the COVID-19 response, digital health companies are launching consumer-facing COVID-19 messaging for specific populations. One company that I co-founded in 2016, Nivi, began to develop messaging after noticing an uptick of in-bound questions from its users.

This is a guest post from Peter Verovšek, a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics/International Relations at the University of Sheffield

The Coronavirus has turned us all into amateur epidemiologists. This desire for greater understanding makes sense in the face of a threat as novel and as dangerous as COVID-19. The shutdown of massive sections of the economy and state-mandated orders to engage in social – or, more accurately, physical – distancing has left the majority of us stuck at home, wondering when things will go back to normal and worrying that they never will.

As a result of this uncertainty, we are all breathlessly reading scientific reports on pandemics, such as the paper from Imperial College London, which serves as the scientific basis for government policy in the UK. Previously obscure experts on viral pandemics, such as Neil M. Ferguson and Nicholas A. Christakis, have built massive followings on Twitter almost overnight.

Clearly experts have an important role to play in combatting the novel Coronavirus by advising governments, informing citizens, and conducting the basic scientific research necessary to address the crisis in real time. In the words of Michel Foucault, these “specific intellectuals” are supposed “to pose problems, to make them active, to display them in such a complexity that they can silence the prophets and lawgivers” by making the severity of the crisis clear.

However, in addition epidemiologists and scholars of public health, many other researchers – including many political scientists and philosophers – have also sought to cope with the current situation by putting their thoughts down on paper (myself obviously included). In and of itself this is not a bad thing.

This is a guest post from Karen A. Grépin, Associate Professor, School of Public Health, University of Hong Kong

As cases of COVID-19 soar globally, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan have garnered accolades from the international community for having kept their epidemics relatively under control through mid-March – despite the incredible threat they all faced earlier in the year of imported cases from China. With all of the praise flowing to Hong Kong, one might expect citizens to also have good things to say about their government’s handling of the outbreak – but you would be wrong.

In fact, according to data from a recent public opinion poll (20 March 2020) conducted by the independent Hong Kong Public Opinion Research Institute (HKPORI) only a quarter of Hong Kongers are satisfied with the way that government has handled COVID-19.  While this represents an improvement in support since an earlier poll (14 February 2020) found that only 7% of survey respondents supported the government – an all-time low – it is clear that people here are not enthusiastic about the way government is handling the outbreak.

So, why are Hong Kongers so dissatisfied?  One thing that is clear, the seven months of violent protests that ravaged this city in the lead up to the outbreak undermined overall support of the government. But this is unlikely to explain all of the dissatisfaction: support for the government actually declined in February relative to January, even after the protests had largely quieted down.

This is a guest post from Yongjin Choi, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany. His research focusses on evidence-based policy, Medicaid, and citizen participation. Before entering the doctoral program, he worked as a researcher at the Korea Institute of Ocean Science and Technology (KIOST) for several years. He is currently working as a research assistant at the Center for Technology in Government (CTG). Follow him at @TheYongjinChoi

While the COVID-19 outbreak in Korea, which as of March 16th reached 8,236 confirmed cases, appears to have turned the corner on new infections, it has also served to highlight ongoing socio-political tensions in the country between the government and religious groups that have grown increasingly politically influential.

The coronavirus began to spread nationwide in February, following community spread from a large-scale service of a doomsday “cult,” the Sincheonji church of Jesus, in Daegu (now the most affected region of the country), drawing attention to the risk posed by large, in-person religious services. In spite of the churches’ known role in the continued spread of the virus, the central government has been reluctant to issue anything more than voluntary guidelines urging churches, in particular, Christian megachurches, to move their services online and stop meeting in person demonstrating the growing political clout of these religious groups in Korean society. Below I review the Christian churches’ role in the spread of COVID-19 in Korea, the government’s response and provide some context to understand the growing political influence of megachurches in Korean society.

This is a guest post from Heeun Kim, a PhD Candidate in the Department of Public Administration at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy, University at Albany. Her research focusses on access to healthcare, disparities in health, and universal health coverage. Her current research projects include sexually transmitted diseases prevention in New York State, disparities in access to care under the Affordable Care Act in the US.

As the US struggles to ramp up its COVID-19 response amid what appears to be widespread community transmission, countries that appear to have turned the corner on new infections can offer lessons.

South Korea has been battling COVID-19 since the number of confirmed cases began skyrocketing in late February reaching nearly 8,000 confirmed cases with 67 patients deceased as of March 13. While Korea had, up until recently, the second largest number of confirmed cases after China, the number of newly confirmed cases has been declining for the last few days in the epicenter of the city of Daegu and adjacent regions (however, the number of community-level cluster transmissions has been gradually increasing in other cities). Moreover, its recorded case fatality rate is closer to 0.87%, rather than the 2-3% range reported elsewhere, which is likely to be more accurate than in other countries, due to widespread testing, but also possibly reflecting a more effective response or other underlying factors.

Notably, South Korea appears to have brought the outbreak under control in spite of an initially tepid political response, by adopting strategies that maximized transparency and access to testing, while managing to avoid draconian measures such as strong forms of social distancing and quarantine. It might be too early for an optimistic forecast, but these are some lessons from the South Korean case.

This is a guest post from Brendan Skip Mark, an assistant professor in the political science department at the University of Rhode Island (URI). His work focuses on International Organizations and human rights. He is a co-director of the CIRIGHTS human rights dataproject. 

The official definition of a “recession” is a fall in real GDP for two consecutive quarters. It usually takes a while for the data to show this, yet it is already clear that production is falling globally and will continue to fall. We are in a global recession. It is still too early to tell how bad this crisis will be, and its severity will depend on how governments and international actors behave.

While the worst effects of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) are still to come, we are already seeing massive economic disruption. The Coronavirus has been declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization (WHO) and government efforts to contain it appear to be failing; German Chancellor Angela Merkel said 70% of the country may eventually be infected, and infections in China, the US, Canada, Italy, Iran and many other countries are proving a formidable challenge.

This is a guest post from Sofia Fenner, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Bryn Mawr College. Her research explores co-optation under authoritarianism, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa.

Much like the fall of the Soviet Union or the onset of the Arab Spring, the global coronavirus pandemic offers us intriguing variation: as diverse polities confront similar shocks, we see striking differences in how (and how well) different countries respond.

Though we are only a few months into the outbreak, we have already seen success stories in some countries—mitigated or even contained outbreaks—and horrifying failures in others: health systems overwhelmed, death tolls spiking, drastic measures seeming to fall short.

What explains this variation? Initial accounts have focused overwhelmingly on regime type, asking how democratic and authoritarian systems differ in their responses to a novel disease outbreak. But regime type is just one of several fundamental comparative politics variables that might determine the success of a pandemic response. I offer a preliminary exploration of how several key variables—regime type, yes, but also state capacity, leadership response, and societal buy-in—map onto the responses we have seen to date. 

This is a guest post Jonathan Powell, an Associate Professor in the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida (Twitter: @prof_powell) and Christopher Faulkner, a Visiting Assistant Professor in the International Studies program at Centre College (Twitter: @C_Faulkner_UCF)

The general narrative is that preventative measures such as hand-washing and social distancing can slow the transmission rate of COVID-19. The importance of such efforts cannot be understated, but the reasons are often poorly understood.

For example, USA Today reports that slowing the epidemic can “help buy time to develop a vaccine and prevents the healthcare system from getting overwhelmed all at once.” And this is important as “flattening the curve” has become the global motto for addressing the ongoing crisis. Moreover this recommendation was a key feature in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) 2017 updated guidelines for addressing a potential influenza pandemic.

A discussion of the curve on CNN leads with the header that “It’s not about you; it’s about the people you will infect.” Though important, this misses two larger points. First, flattening the curve does not necessarily reduce the number of infections or death in the duration of the epidemic. Second, a potentially larger point that strains introduced by COVID-19 could dramatically worsen other health outcomes, perhaps to degrees worse than the direct impact of COVID-19 itself.

This is a guest post from Gabriel Cardona-Fox who lives in Bologna, Italy with his wife Patricia and two daughters.  He is an Associate Fellow at the Bologna Institute for Policy Research at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) – Europe. He received a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin, an MA from Johns Hopkins SAIS and a BA from Princeton University.  His research revolves around internal forced migration and humanitarian affairs.  

This week, Italy put in place some of the most draconian restrictions on freedoms and movement of any western society since the end of World War II, in an effort to contain the COVID-19 virus. Together with 60 million other people in the country, my family has been having to adapt to this new strange reality. For the past two and a half years, we have been living in the beautiful medieval city of Bologna, where I have a research fellowship at Johns Hopkins’ School of Advanced International Studies.

With over 15,000 confirmed cases, Italy is home to the largest outbreak outside of China. As the number of infected has grown exponentially over the past two weeks, Italy’s hospitals, particularly in the northern region of  Lombardy, are quickly becoming overwhelmed – sometimes operating at 200%  capacity.  There are some frightening reports of triaging and a lack of respirators.

The tightened nation-wide quarantine measures announced two nights ago by Premier Conte include the closure of all shops, bars, pubs and restaurants. Only food stores, pharmacies, and essential service providers like opticians and computer technicians are allowed to remain open. Home delivery is still permitted but people are strongly encouraged to stay at home and visit grocery stores sparingly, one family member at a time.

People who do not live under the same roof are to maintain a distance of a meter or more from each other in public. Banks, post offices and other essential services will continue to operate.  Schools and universities are to remain closed until April 3. A few schools are conducting online education but most are not. This means that an entire generation of children and adolescents are idling at home.