The COVID-19 outbreak in the USA may seem like a chaotic situation. But COVID-19 abroad has been better handled with loss less casualties. The little island of Malta is a good example. Malta for most of the pandemic did a great job of ordering and enforcing lockdown-in-place and unifying the political parties in order to help its citizens and tackle the disease. A larger and more complex country like Germany also did an outstanding job of unifying and implementing the nationwide lockdown. Germany also had a contact tracing system in place even before coronavirus, therefore they just had to make small changes rather than create or enable a whole new system. Unfortunately, as of September 2, 2020 Germany’s cases have spiked with the COVID-19 case numbers being 247,391. Mostly due to Germans returning from their vacation occasionally bringing along COVID-19 with them says Monisha Choudhury, a teacher in near Frankfurt. Yet Germany has still managed to test about 1/5 of the population. But Malta has also had a very similar reaction. The Government of Malta eased lockdown orders early to allow tourism. This is one of the reasons of their spike, says Giselle Bennie, a citizen of Malta. She believes that the Government made that decision due the fact that Malta earns most of its revenue from tourists and not having that function can be fatal to the economy, although she disagrees with the government’s decision she does acknowledge the fact that the government is attempting to gain control once again although Malta will still have to battle the current COVID cases. But it is noteworthy that the Maltese Government did not actually make the recall decision, the medical association did. The medical association threatened to strike in late July and forced the government to once again order lockdown and quarantine. But even with the cases going up, as of 9/2/20 Malta’s death rate is a remarkable 13. That, Giselle says is mostly because the people getting the virus are usually younger and this means that they are not in the vulnerable age and therefore have a higher chance of fighting the disease and winning.
Germany and Malta have both had remarkable responses to this virus. Both countries immediately united in politics and fought COVID together rather than the USA’s first response, which was underplay the seriousness of COVID-19. And then after the virus just stormed through the country, political parties got into a race for blaming each other. President Donald J. Trump refusing to wear a mask or protective face covering and leading the way for Republicans to deny the fact that COVID was real. This meant that many republicans refused to wear a mask or protective face covering. And now the USA has the most cases globally, more than China the country where the virus originated. China has also done particularly well. In Wuhan, the origin of COVID-19, COVID has been controlled so well that now festivals, clubs, and pool parties have been allowed and masks, are not required. News in early pandemic used to be all centered around Wuhan, now it’s centered around President Trump, and the USA.
As we progress through 2020, the Moderna Vaccine is in its last stage and hopefully that or something similar will decide the fate of the coronavirus pandemic.