Abstract
When COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, many developing societies tried early on to impose severe social-distancing measures. In some instances, lockdowns were put into effect even before the first COVID-19 deaths had been confirmed.
In many places, authorities have imposed strict rules for just emerging from one’s home: Only to get food or medicine, only for a few hours every day, only females on some days, males on others, with the police patrolling the streets handing out hefty fines for those who dared disobey.
But it has been largely ineffective. In the developing world, more than half of the workforce labors in the informal sector; families need to earn each day to provide for the evening meal. In Latin America, about half of all households do not have a refrigerator. Someone has to go food-shopping every day. To survive in the developing societies, social distancing during the pandemic has been often ignored.
Not every place in the developing world has suffered at the same level from the COVID-19 pandemic. Perhaps island nations imposing complete bans on all incoming travel can hope to escape the grasp of the pandemic. Cuba, with the best public health services in the Western Hemisphere, was perhaps best positioned to ride out the storm, but it has suffered severe economic losses in doing so.
Infectious diseases are prevalent in the developing countries, where 85 percent of the world's population live. Building border walls cannot change this. It is just an ugly and futile gesture.
Our best hope is that we learn from this pandemic that denying reality does not help. Embracing the notion that “truth” does not exist—a fashionable post-modern pose adopted by some—is dangerous and mindless. Americans, Mexicans, and Brazilians especially, have suffered horribly and to a degree, needlessly, due to their leaders’ denialism and skepticism.
We are, all of us, in this together. More pandemics will come; of this we can be certain. We need to be prepared and to do better the next time, which will not be long in coming.