Trump is part of the problem, for sure, but it seems to me that a world that is strongly divided into nation-states is just not able to effectively tackle pan-national threats.
Even at an individual level we're so used to thinking in terms of 'our country vs. the rest' that our ability to empathize with people from 'far-away' is impeded.
But it makes sense to think that way. The ones who know the local situation best are the locals, not bureaucrats thousands of miles away. And when it comes to empathy, then those bureaucrats tend to have little of it towards the people affected by essentially any problem that doesn't affect where they are.
I don't get why coordination is equated by many people with centralization. You can agree on a set of measures that should be taken by everybody under certain circumstances and then let individual countries apply those measures.
Any "pan-national" effort implies massive transportation of goods/specialists.
All this will let the virus thrive.
Moreover such pan-national tackling will let the apparently most adequate response be adopted, therefore if it fails too badly we may be all wiped out because it will fail everywhere.
Such a major pandemic is only possible thanks to our current population densities, massive transportation of persons/goods. Our central administrations were, as usual, patently totally unable to cope and even in some cases their very actions amplify the threat (cops in Wuhan silencing the local doc who early understood the threat, grotesque CDC actions in the US...), and are always pushing towards more densely populated huge territories for them to 'administer'.
... and further transportation of persons/goods and centralization of control should be in order?
In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets. They've done such a good job of providing robust and affordable healthcare in the US, markets can surely handle an international viral outbreak simply by maximising efficiency and ROI.
>In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation" of either goods or specialists at a scale that would make a significant difference to viral spread.
Because of economies of scale and specialization? It's often cheaper for one place to produce a lot of a narrow list of goods and trade that for the goods they're lacking rather than every place making everything they use. This means that a lot of goods need to be moved around and a lot of people too.
>Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive.
Like what? Shut down international travel? Test every person coming into a country for a new disease? Both of these are very expensive, especially the former.
> In developed countries, I see no reason why there would be any need for "massive transportation"
Mirioron answered.
> Even if it were necessary, mitigation measures are neither difficult nor expensive
The very reason why the virus spreads like it does February is because it is difficult and expensive.
> Perhaps we could just leave it to the markets.
The current state of affairs in the US, as in most countries, is crony capitalism, which has nothing to do with 'leaving it to the markets'.
Isn't 'maximising efficiency' the very raison d'être of the 'pan-national effort' you proposed?
Isn't it also the reason why huge amounts of humans live in giant and dense cities, with strong central government powers? From an organizational standpoint those are the main causes of the present crisis: total failure at detecting it early (the Chinese doc was censored), then at devising and implementing adequate measures (the faulty CDC coronavirus test is a prominent case, there are many others), and now at managing a major crisis (in most European countries the reality is that nearly no new potential case can be tested). And just wait for such a Supa Dupa Central Mega Pan-National Gov decision, applied everywhere, which will prove to be an error...
Centralization and transport are sure ways to enforce the pandemics. We may be reckoning that high population density and centralized power not only aren't usefully efficient because the efficiency gain they induce is mainly used to produce nearly-useless (at best) products, and that they are extremely dangerous. We may, instead, appeal to moar of all this.
Even at an individual level we're so used to thinking in terms of 'our country vs. the rest' that our ability to empathize with people from 'far-away' is impeded.