There’s a strange, sad, and grim truth that needs to be told right about now: Western governments have, by and large, badly bungled the response to Coronavirus. And if they can’t handle the relatively small shock of a pandemic — how are they going to be able to deal with far harsher ones, like climate change, mass extinction, worldwide economic stagnation, social fracture, inequality, and ecological collapse? It’s not a good omen.

The sentiment that “our governments have bungled the Coronavirus response” is one you’d probably agree with. But what does it really mean? I mean it in three precise ways, and before I explain them, let me also note that when I say “the West has notably and dramatically failed at responding to Coronavirus in terms of governance”, that’s not a slight against brave doctors and nurses. Nor does this apply to New Zealand, which is the lone (and shining) exception.

Meanwhile the East, by contrast, has done a remarkably good job, whether Malaysia or Singapore or South Korea. All that is how Coronavirus came to rip through the West like a sudden, great fire.

The first way that Western governments bungled Coronavirus response is that they simply ignored the possibility of a global pandemic, and…let it spread. In America, Trump was warned in January…and simply ignored, having disassembled the pandemic response group not long before that. Britain’s leaders did something even more apocalyptically stupid: they wanted everyone to fall ill, subscribing to a crackpot theory of “herd immunity”, which they quickly backtracked on…but only once people started…dying.

Now, some Western countries did better than others in this regard. Germany is the notable exception. It managed to slow the pandemic, and respond to it fairly well. But not nearly as well, even, as say a South Korea. Why did Germany manage where nearly everyone else failed? Because of a little known fact: Germany has the highest number of hospital beds per capita, around 8 if I recall correctly. That spare capacity did just what it was supposed to: save lives in a time of crisis. But many other Western healthcare systems, slashed to the bone, simply couldn’t cope. A notable example is Italy, where despite the bravery and commitment of doctors and nurses, the system was simply swamped. It’s fair to say that the West gets middling grades on this dimension — with America and Britain flunking, Germany passing, and most other nations somewhere in between. But none truly excelled, and many flunked.

The second way that Western nations bungled the Coronavirus response is that they failed to respond to it socially. Distancing measures weren’t put in place nearly fast enough. America still doesn’t have distancing at a national level. Britain, meanwhile, thanks to it’s crackpot “herd immunity” approach, distanced far too late, and is now suffering disproportionately. Sweden chose not to shut down — and is now racing to catch up, panicked, it’s scientists and doctors looking at it’s government in disbelief. Most Western countries distanced far too late to slow the spread of the disease effectively, and when they did, their policies were often muddled, confused, and tepid. Hence, the stunning spread of Coronavirus through the West at a lightning pace.

The third way is the biggie. The West has bungled it’s economic response to Coronavirus so badly that it’s fair to say there barely is one at this point. America passed a stimulus package that supports the economy and households for…one week. Britain, again too late, pledged to do “whatever it takes”…but nobody quite knows what that is. In Europe, governments did better. Italy suspended mortgages, along with many other European countries, which began to guarantee incomes and freeze debt in different ways. And yet Europe, too, failed to agree on a stimulus package — the rich North refusing to effectively help the poorer South. It’s a catastrophic and colossal failure.

This larger economic failure of the West is going to have lasting consequences — fast. There is now going to be a Coronavirus Depression. It’s going to hit America and Britain hardest — like a sledgehammer shattering glass. How could it not? Waves of businesses are laying people off and going bankrupt, because they suddenly have no customers — and not nearly enough support from governments, either. Meanwhile, households are dipping into savings and going broke — because they don’t have enough support, either. In Europe, where mortgages are frozen, sure, you don’t have to pay bills. But how are you going to afford to feed your family, without a job — and even if the government is guaranteeing your income, what happens when you suddenly…don’t have any?

Hence, a Coronavirus Depression is on the way, that’s going to wrack the West. No nation will escape it. America and Britain will be devastated by it — but they are devastated anyways, and their people, used to going without by now, will probably normalize it, as they’ve done other catastrophes, from Brexit to America’s lack of healthcare. Europe is poised to suffer greatly. It’s going to see the greatest economic contraction since the last World War.

What do economic contractions give birth to? The devil. They bring with them fresh poverty, and poverty produces rage and despair and misery, and those turn people towards strongmen demagogues, fascism, authoritarianism. The world’s acceleration into the fascist abyss is likely to be steeply accelerated not just by Coronavirus — but by the West’s bungled response to it.

In Europe, rising hard-right parties are likely to gain ground as a result of it’s bungled Coronavirus response. Not just because they can point a finger and say — “They betrayed you! Those bureaucrats in Brussels!!” But in darker ways, too. By saying: “Those dirty, filthy people are the cause of these problems. Are they even human at all?”

In America and Britain, the hardest of the hard right is already in power — and it’s likely to solidify its gains. Sure, today we’re all waxing sentimental about togetherness. What happens tomorrow, when people who’ve grown poorer are promised both lower taxes and greater belonging by demagogues, who lionize them as the pure and true? You should never think of sentimentalism as politics. Politics cuts deeper: it is about what people need most desperately, and why.

What a bungled Coronavirus response means is that people are going to need money most desperately, and feelings of safety and security, second — and it’s demagogues who will promise both to them, just as Trump, Farage, and the rest did and do.

Now let’s distill a few larger lessons, outside the realm of the obvious.

The West’s struggle to deal with Coronavirus is largely ideological. Why didn’t the West distance? Stimulate? Rescue? Guarantee? Nearly as much as it could and should have? These are not poor societies: they are the richest ones in human history, ever, period.

What stopped them from acting swiftly, assuredly, expansively? Ideology did.

Over the last few decades — as you probably know — neoliberalism captured Western elites wholesale. But what does neoliberalism really say? That everyone must “pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.” That there should be no public goods — because everything is better done in markets. There must be no collective action — only individual action, because otherwise, we shackle the hands of lone geniuses. A society is only really a jungle, an arena, where the strong survive, and the weak perish, and it’s everyone against everyone else, in a bitter, bruising, perpetual fight to the death, re-enacted every single day.

But what happens when that kind of Neo-Darwinian ideology meets…a pandemic?

What happens is this: disaster is added to catastrophe. No society in human history will ever be able to respond to a pandemic — or any catastrophe — without public goods, in this case, hospital beds, masks, or ventilators. No society can respond to any catastrophe through individual action, precisely because catastrophes are things which affect us all. No society in human history can use markets and capitalism to allocate resources well after a catastrophe — they will simply be hoarded by the richest. And no society in human history whose fundamental outlook is Darwinian will even have a reason to respond to a catastrophe, in any other way than to see it as a mortal instrument which does the desired job of separating the weak from the strong.

Think of Britain’s “herd immunity” strategy, and how it actually cheered on the virus. What on earth? Is it any surprise Brits are disproportionately sick today? But when a society subscribes to Darwinian, neoliberal ideology — is it any surprise that it will choose to let a pandemic rage?

You can see that relationship in precise proportion: those societies that are more capitalist, more neoliberal, did far, far worse in terms of Coronavirus response. Social democratic Germany and France and Spain did pretty well. Italy nobly at least tried, despite being swamped. But the EU as a whole, now a subscriber to neoliberalism and austerity as well, failed to act for member states.

And America and Britain, by contrast, the birthplaces of the neoliberal ideal — and it’s last strongholds — couldn’t have bungled it worse. How much worse is there to bungle a pandemic response than to…actually…cheer on the virus? Do you see what I mean by trying.…versus not even trying? But what kind of jaw-dropping idiocy is it that prevents a society from responding to a literal pandemic?

That’s what the East thinks, by the way. It’s looking at the West, equals parts unsurprised, amazed, and gleeful. What on earth are these foolish Westerners thinking? Are they really so individualistic and materialistic and amoral that they can’t pull together in a time of literal catastrophe? How can a nation as small as Korea outdo every single Western one by a very long way? That’s not a slight on Korea — a nation I greatly admire. It is a question about the West, whose resources exceed it vastly in every possibly way. Perhaps, then, the Eastern nations are concluding, we really do have a superior way of social, cultural, and economic organization. Perhaps, to a degree, they are right.

Coronavirus should teach us something, but it probably won’t. We are in an age now where we are too foolish, beaten, and weary to learn much. What are the Kardashians doing in lockdown? Nevertheless, let me try to distill the lesson.

The West had ample resources to fight Coronavirus. It had ample warning. It even had plenty of time. And yet it failed. What can we distill from that? the West seems to lack is will, insight, courage. A kind of hubris, arrogance, and carelessness has set in, a kind of fatal indifference. It’s nice to clap for doctors — but it’s wise not to have to.

The West was paralyzed, in my estimation, because decades of neoliberalism had three fatal consequences.

One, neoliberalism bled it dry of the spare resources and idle capacity necessary to respond to a catastrophe. When your healthcare system cares most about “efficiency”, why bother having extra hospital beds? Good luck, then, saving lives when the pandemic hits. All that matters is profit to neoliberalism — not having idle resources for an emergency.

Two, neoliberalism’s ongoing failures produced a series of demagogues who literally couldn’t care less. Johnson cheered on the virus in Britain, to the world’s astonishment, while Trump denied it was a threat. What on earth? But both these men were only elected in the wake of austerity’s failures, as a kind of populist backlash by a white working class, who was told they were the true and pure. Neoliberalism’s backlash produced demagogues — and demagogues are hardly likely to fight a pandemic, versus use it for power, gain, and profit.

Three, decades of neoliberalism sapped the will and intellect of society. Here, again, there are fundamental differences. In Spain and Italy and France, a strong spirit of social cohesion emerged — less neoliberal countries. But in more neoliberal ones, like America and Britain, while people raged on Twitter, and clapped dutifully for their doctors, there seemed to be no real fight, no real pushback, against, for example, a Prime Minister who wanted the nation to get infected, or a President who grinned at and gloated over the prospect of catastrophe. There was no real sense of urgency across the West, I think it’s fair to say, especially so in America and Britain, that this could be a life-altering event, which would bring society to a standstill. Western society is a demoralized thing, weary after decades of austerity, broken by political systems which seem indifferent, captured and looted by elites for profit. Why bother caring about anything, the sentiment seems to go, when my leaders don’t?

One of Coronavirus’s great lessons is that of Western decline, maybe even impotence, certainly of a lack of will and courage and foresight. To me, that is a great tragedy. Not just because I’m Western — I’m not, really, never having been regarded as a “real” person in either America or Britain — but for the simple reason that the West choosing to let a pandemic ravage it is a moment of great sadness. Why would the history’s most powerful and richest societies have let themselves be ripped through like a fire by a disease…they could and should have seen coming? Why would they have gone on bungling it while that disease ripped through them? Such are the strange mistakes of history. And so, too, are the dark omens of the future.

Like I said: if the West can’t respond adequately to a pandemic, what about climate change, mass extinction, or economic stagnation, which are like meteor strikes compared to finger snaps? That’s not a rhetorical question. It’s one that needs a much, much better answer than the one we’ve seen in the last three months. Or else.

Umair

April 2020