Ma Liang: The first epidemic prevention and control in the United States? Leaderboards how not to make a splash

WEN Shu MA Liang (Researcher, National Academy of Development and Strategic Studies, Chinese Min University, Professor, School of Public Administration)

The COVID-19 pandemic is still raging around the world and shows no signs of completely fading. Where the epidemic prevention policies of various countries and regions go, how to evaluate the epidemic prevention effect and development trend, have also attracted people's attention and hot discussion. At the end of June, Bloomberg released its latest monthly COVID-19 resilience rankings, and the United States unexpectedly jumped to the first place in the world's epidemic prevention capacity, with a score of 76 points.

It was followed by New Zealand, Switzerland, Israel and France, with Spain, Australia, China, the United Kingdom and South Korea ranking 6th to 10th respectively. Given the U.S. government's flawless epidemic prevention policies, as well as the country's huge number of confirmed cases and deaths, this ranking immediately caused widespread controversy.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian teased at a regular press conference held on the afternoon of July 12 that they suspect that Bloomberg's global anti-epidemic ranking of the United States as number one is "wrong", and that Bloomberg, which has always been authoritative, should not commit this kind of "pediatrics". He noted that Bloomberg's rankings were black and white and "neither in line with the facts, nor respect for science, nor respect for life." ”

We have previously introduced the resilience index for epidemic prevention and control developed by Bloomberg, which includes 10 indicators such as the diagnosis rate, mortality rate, cumulative mortality rate, positive test rate, vaccine supply, resident mobility, economic growth rate, health insurance coverage, and human development index developed by Bloomberg, ranking the 53 largest economies in the world every month since its launch in November 2020.

The global pandemic of COVID-19 has had a profound impact on population health, economic and social development and political stability in all corners of the world. A number of research institutions and think tanks have issued assessments and rankings on epidemic prevention and control, measuring and comparing the policies and effects of epidemic prevention and control in various countries and regions, including the COVID-19 database developed by Johns Hopkins University, the policy rigor index developed by Oxford University, and the results of polls released by some survey institutions.

The epidemic has touched people's hearts, and the evaluation of epidemic prevention and control is equally attractive. It should be said that Bloomberg's epidemic prevention ranking has its merits, which can be comprehensively evaluated from the basic conditions, epidemic prevention policies, and epidemic prevention effects of a country and region. The typical feature of COVID-19 is cunning and fickle, so epidemic prevention policies also need to change with needs. With the dynamics of epidemic prevention and control, the evaluation of epidemic prevention policies also needs to be adjusted, and in turn guide the government and the public to take more appropriate epidemic prevention measures.

Considering the dynamic and changeable nature of the epidemic, Bloomberg has constantly adjusted the evaluation indicators and weights, which has its inherent rationality. That's why it added two indicators, flight capacity recovery and vaccinated travel routes, to its June rankings, weakening the weight of indicators such as confirmed cases and deaths, and arguing that policies such as lockdowns and entry-exit controls are not conducive to normalizing epidemic prevention and control. The adjustment of the evaluation index system in these aspects is obviously conducive to the ranking of the United States, and makes it replace New Zealand, Israel, Singapore and other countries and regions, becoming the world's first in terms of epidemic prevention capabilities.

How do you lead the world leaderboards?

Behind the rankings and rankings are values and ideologies, and behind the bloomberg ranking changes, it is also related to the "normalization" evaluation standards it adheres to. Compared with last year's epidemic prevention and control focus on how to control the epidemic, reduce the number of infections and reduce mortality, Bloomberg believes that this year and the future should emphasize how to return to normalcy and avoid the impact and interference caused by epidemic prevention policies on economic and social activities.

Under such a guiding ideology, indicators such as vaccination rates, restarting national borders, unblocking and immunization journeys have been elevated to a more important position by Bloomberg, and have also boosted the ranking of epidemic prevention capabilities in developed countries such as the United States and maintained a high level. Relatively speaking, Asian countries and regions that still emphasize tough policies such as zero infection, lockdown measures, and border closures have performed poorly in this round of rankings.

In view of the difficulty of effective prevention and control of new crown pneumonia, some countries and regions have begun to regard it as an epidemic like influenza, and pessimistically believe that human beings will have to "coexist peacefully" with new crown pneumonia for a long time. Under the influence of such an understanding, the policy adopted by the government is no longer how to reduce the infection rate, but to reduce the mortality rate as much as possible. At the same time, the government is hoping to establish a "firewall" through full vaccination and restore economic and social normalization as soon as possible to avoid the economy being dragged down by the epidemic.

Relatively speaking, the Chinese government regards the life, health and safety of the people as the first priority, and "dynamically clears zero" at all costs to ensure that the health and safety of the people are fully guaranteed. In the absence of a guarantee of people's health and safety, the Chinese government will not easily reopen the country and normalize cross-border population movements. Therefore, the epidemic prevention policy adopted by the Chinese government is quite different from the epidemic prevention philosophy advocated by Bloomberg, which is why China's ranking cannot be fully affirmed by it.

Assessments and rankings can play a positive role as a reference for governments and people to diagnose problems, identify gaps, and improve performance. However, we must be wary of the ideological color behind the ranking and avoid bias and even misleading caused by the "colored glasses" of the ranking.

World rankings will greatly affect the policy choices of countries, and will also affect the perception and evaluation of a country by other countries. As a result, many developed countries and international organizations see the rankings as a powerful tool for intervening and influencing the policies of other countries, and once the policies of these countries are not satisfactory, they can wield the stick of the rankings, downgrade or blacklist them. For example, in many aspects such as human rights protection, anti-corruption, democracy, trade freedom, etc., in recent years, there has been a phenomenon of global rankings "hijacking" countries, and the credibility of these rankings has deteriorated.

In the face of the "bullying" of some global rankings, in addition to being "led by the nose" and "angry" by the rankings released by other countries and international organizations, it is more important to develop and promote the Chinese version of the ranking list, and make it a weather vane, data billboard and barometer to lead global attention and action. Although China was the first country to be hit by the COVID-19 epidemic and the first to effectively control the epidemic, it did not produce a ranking with global influence in evaluating and analyzing the epidemic prevention and control policies of various countries.

As China's global influence and leadership grow, voices from China are also receiving more attention and expectations. Strengthening the capacity building of Chinese philosophy and social science research, developing more rankings and rankings with global leadership and world appeal, and objectively, neutrally, scientifically and impartially assessing the epidemic prevention policies of various countries and other aspects are the biggest enlightenment brought to us by this Bloomberg ranking event.

(The article represents the views of the author only.) Editor-in-charge email: [email protected]. ）

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