The coming collapse of the developing world
by Joel Kotkin and Hugo Kruger, spiked:
In Europe, North America, Oceania and East Asia, the Covid-19 pandemic has been a tragic, wrenching experience, creating more depressed and divided societies. Yet, as we have been gazing obsessively at our own problems, a spectre infinitely worse is emerging in the most populous, fastest growing and least resilient parts of the world.
Covid has caused a deep crisis in the already suffering developing world, which contains nearly half of all humanity. And this will have serious implications for the future of the world economy and political order.
Initially, Covid was something of a rich country’s disease. It started in industrial China and spread to places like the United States, Italy and the United Kingdom. But now none of the wealthiest countries falls within the top 10 worst-hit countries in terms of Covid deaths per capita. In the US, Covid has gone from the leading cause of death to seventh place in just over a year.
According to Bloomberg, the countries now most resilient to Covid and its variants are all among the richest – the United States, New Zealand, Israel, France, the UK and Spain, along with some wealthier East Asian countries, including China. In contrast, the pandemic rages on in Latin America and the backwaters of Eastern Europe. Impoverished Peru has been particularly hard hit, recording a Covid fatality rate twice that of any other country.
At the bottom of the list, according to Bloomberg, lies Argentina, the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Colombia and Pakistan, where on average just five per cent of the population have been vaccinated. We may be seeing the fruits of what the Nation describes as ‘a gargantuan north-south vaccination gap’.
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