What does the COVID 19 data tell us about socioeconomic development?

 

If the number of COVID deaths per million is any indication of which countries are the least developed socioeconomically, and it is, the US ranks 21^st out of 220 countries, followed by the UK, with 1,896/m and 1,886/m respectively. If we are going to parse out the “socio” from the “economic” in our metric we will have a better understanding of why countries rank as they do. Do the US and UK rank so low because they can't afford to vaccinate their populations or provide adequate treatment to COVID victims? Let's look at where countries of interest rank in terms of GDP per capita and find out:

Here we see that with the exception of Norway, the country with the largest social safety net, the two countries with the lowest GDP/capita have experienced far less COVID deaths/capita than the two countries with the highest GDP/capita. The USA, with a per capita GDP that is roughly 3.5 and 25 times that of the countries with the lowest per capita GDP is experiencing 311 and 8 times the number of deaths per capita. We can conclude that the poor socioeconomic ranking of the USA and UK cannot be attributed to a lack of economic resources. Therefore it must be because of how they are using available resources; the countries with the most economic resources are clearly lagging far behind the others in terms of social development. This should be particularly concerning to all of us, because it is also these two countries are the worst in terms of politically interfering in the affairs of other countries. To borrow a Gunther Frank phrase, they are largely responsible for “the development of underdevelopment”, not only at home, but also in the rest of the world. Ironically these two countries produce their own vaccines, and largely responsible for the abysmal global roll-out of vaccines. (The above statistics were obtained from Worldometer date on July 25 and 26, 2021)

In addition to being among the least developed socially, countries topping the list also suffer from moral depravity. Rather than donating surplus vaccines to countries who desperately need them, they are being allowed to expire. This is as true of Canada as of the USA. The UK is donating some 9 million vaccines to COVAX, most of which are due to expire in September –a time frame far too short for most recipient countries, whose healthcare systems are completely overwhelmed, to distribute them. Meanwhile Pfizer, one of the primary manufactures and distributors of vaccines, is strongly recommending that countries who cannot convince many of their citizens to get even a first dose, nevertheless purchase additional vaccines and offer them as a booster to citizens who have already received 2 doses. Beyond the pale is a campaign circulating on FaceBook that encourages anti-vaxers to book appointments regardless in order to further deplete the supply of available vaccines.