The COVID-19 success story you never knew about
It has been about a year since the world entered a normal that is no longer new. The novel coronavirus pandemic has upended the globe in so many ways, with terrible impacts not just for public health, but also economic growth and societal interactions. Unemployment has soared, while lockdowns have restricted in-person communications in ways not seen in decades.
It would be easy to focus on the bad news stories that have emerged from the pandemic. Here, I don’t refer only to the millions of people who have caught the virus and the more than 2 million who have perished as a result. I refer also to the pandemic’s unfortunate tendency to polarize, rather than unite. Who could have predicted that in America the decision whether to wear a mask would become so politicized? And who could have predicted that the world, faced with one of its most deadly shared threats in decades, would be unable to mount an effective coordinated response — in great part because of a worsening spat between America and China, the world’s two most powerful players?
This is why it’s instructive to highlight pandemic success stories. In Asia alone, these include New Zealand, Taiwan and Vietnam. The full answer to the basic question of “Why did some countries handle the pandemic better than others” won’t be known for quite some time. But there do appear to be several key factors at play with the COVID-19 success story states: Swift and effective government action, clear and consistent communication from authorities, and public trust in political leaders and government institutions.
This is what makes one of the less-publicized COVID-19 success stories all the more remarkable: The small, poor nation of Bhutan. It has only 337 physicians for a population of 770,000 and it borders two countries — China and India — that were hit hard by the pandemic. And yet Bhutan has only had one pandemic death.
Bhutan’s success can be attributed to the factors of effective policies, good communication and strong trust highlighted above. But there is also a more unique factor at play, according to the few analyses — including a recent detailed report in The Atlantic by science journalist Madeline Drexler — into the Bhutan case: A spirit of compassion and altruism that reflects the country’s Gross National Happiness Index, a concept that considers non-economic components of well-being, including health, as essential to sustainable development. In effect, for the country to succeed, its population must be happy and healthy.
This term, coined nearly 50 years ago by the country’s fourth king, has often been regarded overseas as a cute abstraction. It sounds quirky and appealing, but not necessarily something that will produce tangible and meaningful impacts.
And yet, as documented by Drexler, the degree to which the principles of Gross National Happiness have been deployed to help Bhutan fight the pandemic is remarkable. The king of Bhutan personally launched a $19 million relief campaign targeting thousands of citizens affected by the pandemic. The government has sent care packages, complete with hand sanitizer and vitamins, to the elderly. People joined new corps of volunteers to assist. Parliamentarians gave up their salaries for the relief effort and citizens delivered food to the legislators while they worked through the night. The prime and health ministers slept in their offices for weeks during a lockdown. Hotel owners transformed their facilities into quarantine facilities. Keep in mind that this giving has taken place in a nation with a per capita gross domestic product of $3,400.
To be sure, such magnanimity is seen in communities across the world. There are stories galore of doctors working tirelessly in overstretched hospitals and of entire neighborhoods gathering food and medical supplies for COVID-19 patients and their families.
But for an entire country to mobilize and transform itself into one large charity is highly unusual. It is an especially jarring site in today’s world, where toxic nationalism and hyperpartisanship have often pitted people against each other rather than bring them closer together. But, in Bhutan, it is second nature. “I believe it is this very closeness that has kept us together,” Bhutanese journalist Namgay Zam told Drexler. “I don’t think any other country can say that leaders and ordinary people enjoy such mutual trust. This is the main reason for Bhutan’s success.” Bhutan’s selflessness and togetherness represent the epitome of pandemic resilience. As Rui Paulo de Jesus, a World Health Organization worker in Bhutan, put it to Drexler, it’s not just Bhutan’s health sector that protects health. It’s also “things that we don’t count normally, like your social capital and the willingness of society to come together for the common good.”
Perhaps, if more countries followed Bhutan’s lead and espoused the ideals of Gross National Happiness, the last year wouldn’t have been quite as deadly as it was.
Several aspects of the Feb. 10 Turkish military operation 35 kilometers inside Iraqi territory in the Gara Mountain are still the subject of heated debate. The mission was launched to achieve several goals. One was to uproot the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) from its entrenched position in northeastern Iraq. Another was to gain control of the corridor the PKK uses to transfer its fighters from northern Iraq to northern Syria. The third was to liberate more than a dozen hostages that the PKK was holding as a bargaining chip in an attempt to liberate some of the terrorists held in Turkish prisons.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was so confident of a successful outcome that, a few days before the operation, he publicly declared that he would soon have good news to disclose.
The operation started at 4.55 a.m. on Feb. 10. After heavy bombardment that lasted several hours, the Turkish army was led to the conclusion that the area was safe for a land operation, so it lowered commandos from helicopters into the area around the cave. However, the PKK put up fierce resistance. A captain of the Turkish army, a lieutenant and a sergeant were killed and three soldiers were wounded. Many analysts claimed that the Turkish army should have reassessed the situation at that stage and asked itself the question:
If the hostages are still alive, should we negotiate a deal with the PKK and liberate them unharmed in exchange for a cease-fire? Apparently the government decided not to negotiate with a terrorist organization and the clashes continued until the army was able to penetrate the hideout and discover the bodies of the hostages.
The father of one of the slain hostages said he received calls from Belgium and the Netherlands — apparently from PKK supporters — claiming that his son was not killed by the PKK but died as a result of the bombing by the Turkish army. But he added that he was shown his son’s body and saw that he was in fact shot at close range. A persuasive forensic report on the bodies of all victims has yet to be disclosed by the government.
The entire Turkish nation was left angry over the cold-blooded killing of 13 defenseless hostages. The anger has not yet entirely subsided.
Kurdish terrorism is draining Turkey’s resources. More than 15,000 people are believed to have been killed in the past 35 years as a result of terrorist attacks. And Numan Kurtulmus, deputy chairman of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), estimated the economic cost of PKK terror to Turkey as $2 trillion. This exorbitant figure should perhaps push the Turkish decisionmakers to consider other methods of bringing an end to the Kurdish terrorism issue.
In 2015, Erdogan launched an initiative dubbed the “Kurdish (or Democratic) Opening.” But when the pro-Kurdish People’s Democracy Party won 81 seats in the June 2015 elections and became the third-largest party in parliament, Erdogan stepped back and the “Kurdish Opening” was forgotten for good. If Turkey ultimately decides to genuinely translate into action the democratic and judicial reforms it has started to voice lately, all ethnic groups in the country, including Turks, Kurds and Circassians, will benefit. The social tensions that have been steadily rising may be defused and the country may go back to what it used to be in the early years of AKP rule.