2020-03-16_Bloomberg_Businessweek_Asia_Edition

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○ As the new coronavirus spread around the
sickening tens of thousands of people, Pre
Donald Trump suggested that warm weather w
kill the virus and said the number of U.S. ca
Covid-19 was “going very substantially down
up.” He predicted the imminent availabilit
vaccine and blamed the Obama administrati
the slow rollout of test kits. 
With the number of cases in the U.S. now i
figures, public-health experts have harsh crit
for how the White House has responded. “T
an unmitigated disaster that the administratio
brought upon the population, and I don’t sa
lightly,” says Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard
Health Institute. “We have had a much worse res
than Iran, than Italy, than China and South K
Financial executives are just as concerned: “W
is the U.S. leadership, which was one of the de
features of the crisis in 2008?” BlackRock Inc
Chairman Philipp Hildebrand said on Bloombe
on March 10.

○ Why didn’t the


U.S. move faster?


The federal government’s role in the crisis be
earnest on Jan. 31, when Trump forbade most fo
nationals from entering the U.S. if they had re
traveled to China. “I give Trump credit for the
restrictions—and he has taken that credit,” sa
Bremmer, president of Eurasia Group, a po
risk consulting firm.
But the few weeks of time the U.S. bough
the travel restriction were frittered away, exper
What other countries have done, and what th
didn’t do, is immediate and widespread testi
the virus, which Jha says is the single most imp
step in containing the spread of disease. The a
istration decided against a test already in use b

Xi Jinping,
China
After his government
initiallysuppressed
warnings about the
outbreak’s severity, Xi
claimed credit for lock-
ing downHubeiprov-
ince andreplaced local
leaders.Hissuccess
will depend largely on
whether there’s a sec-
ond wave of infections.

Hassan
Rouhani,Iran
At the outbreak’s start,
Iranian authorities
made ashow ofsolidar-
itywith China and were
slowto restrictinter-
nationaland domestic
travel. Religious author-
ities in Qom, a pilgrim-
age site that was the
epicenterof the Iranian
outbreak,declined
to restrict access to
shrines. Iran’s missteps
are reflectedin the
high number of govern-
ment officialswho have
been infected, including
about one-tenth of the
nation’s 290-member
parliament.

Moon Jae-in,
South Korea
The government’s
refusal to completely
bar Chinese visitors
sparked anger. Moon
recovered by declaring
“war” on the virus and
instituting an aggres-
sive and effective test-
ing campaign. Some
210 ,000 tests (as of
March11)have left
the country with
one of the largest
case totals—but
also one of the low-
est fatality rates. 

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 When the going gets
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