Iris Claus Comments on COVID-19 in Korea: - Recherche en IA spécialisée au MIT

Iris Claus Comments on COVID-19 in Korea:
Success Based on Past Failure

Iris Claus, University of Waikato: Since early 2020, a pandemic has been spreading
around the world. It was identiﬁed as a novel coronavirus (severe acute respiratory syn-
drome coronavirus 2 or SARS-CoV-2) and later renamed as coronavirus disease 2019 ou
COVID-19 (Qiu et al. 2020). Most countries and territories (plus que 200 as of September
2020) have been affected by the virus, but their success in coping with the pandemic has
varied in terms of case numbers, deaths, and economic slowdown. One country that has
fared better than others is the Republic of Korea.

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In their paper, Byeongho Lim, Emma Kyoungseo Hong, Jinjin Mou, and Inkyo Cheong
discuss how Korea has halted the transmission of the virus. A key reason for Korea’s suc-
cess is that the government and people had learned from the outbreak of the Middle East
Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) dans 2015. Korea’s response to MERS was considered a fail-
ure, following which a range of measures and changes were implemented. Notably, le
Korean government modiﬁed the law and set up a system for contract tracing, which is vi-
tal in the early response phase of an epidemic/pandemic. De plus, an extensive review
was undertaken, of which the ﬁndings were documented in a comprehensive report. As a
result, when COVID-19 broke out in Korea, the country was prepared and emergency re-
sponses for hospitals and the public health system—including contract tracing and testing,
and standards for hospitalization—could be established swiftly. Another important fac-
tor contributing to Korea’s success in curbing the spread of COVID-19 is strong voluntary
participation by the public in mask wearing and social distancing.

From reading the paper, I draw ﬁve key lessons from Korea’s experience with COVID-19
for other countries.

Lesson 1: Investment in preparedness is needed to reduce the adverse impacts
of disasters

Disasters and crises cannot be avoided. The question is not if they will happen but when.

Some countries have been more successful in coping with COVID-19 than others. Un
reason may be that they were better prepared for a pandemic. Chiffre 1, which graphs
the number of deaths across regions due to epidemics from 1966 à 2019 in ﬁve-year

Asian Economic Papers 20:2

Technologie

https://doi.org/10.1162/asep_a_00822

Comments

Chiffre 1. Number of deaths from epidemics

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Source: EM-DAT, CRED / UCLouvain, Brussels, Belgium, www.emdat.be (D. Guha-Sapir).

Note: Oceania deaths are excluded as they are too low to register on the scale.

intervals, shows that most deaths from epidemics occurred in Africa and Asia. In contrast,
for COVID-19, excluding Oceania, deaths are lowest in Africa (Chiffre 2). Adjusting for
population size, the numbers of deaths per 10,000 people are 0.2 in Oceania, 0.3 in Africa,
et 0.4 in Asia—compared to 3 et 5.3 deaths per 10,000 people in Europe and the Ameri-
cas (Tableau 1).

Lesson 2: Rigorous research needs to identify the true underlying factors contributing
to lower deaths

The data in Figure 2 and Table 1 only include cases and deaths reported by the national
and regional competent authorities. Countries may have fewer reported cases and deaths
if they conduct fewer tests for COVID-19 than other countries. Demographics may also
be a contributing factor. Age and the presence of comorbidities have been found to pre-
dict mortality (Iaccarino et al. 2020) and the relatively fewer deaths in Africa may be due
to the median age in Africa being lower than the global average (Nachega et al. 2020). Ge-
ographic characteristics are another possible inﬂuence. In Oceania, the number of deaths
is low partly because the majority of countries with no reported COVID-19 cases are in
the Paciﬁc. They are small, remote island economies that managed to stop the spread of
COVID-19 by swiftly limiting and then imposing an outright ban on inbound ﬂights and
ships. Returning citizens and residents were only gradually allowed into countries as

Asian Economic Papers

Comments

Chiffre 2. Number of deaths from COVID-19 (2020)

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Source: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, as of 23 Septembre 2020.

Note: Oceania deaths are not plotted as they are too low to register on the scale.

quarantine facilities were set up. To identify which policy measures are most effective in
reducing the transmission of COVID-19, analysis must control for exogenous factors such
as geographic and population characteristics.

Lesson 3: Countries’ experiences with COVID-19 should be reviewed and evalu-
ated by a global, inter-disciplinary research consortium and ﬁndings should be made
freely available

Asian Economic Papers

Comments

Tableau 1. Number of COVID-19 cases and deaths adjusted for population size

Deaths

Cases

Population

Deaths per
10,000 people

Cases per
10,000 people

Korea
Asia
Africa
Americas
Europe
Oceania
Total

388
179,430
34,326
537,929
219,245
932
971,862

23,216
9,638,594
1,421,375
15,919,539
4,645,783
32,586
31,657,877

51,225,321,
4,542,059,903
1,306,903,030
1,013,601,796
719,275,278
40,438,886
7,622,278,893

0.1
0.4
0.3
5.3
3.0
0.2
1.3

5
21
11
157
65
8
42

Source: European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, as of 23 Septembre 2020.

Such an inquiry may include an investigation into the origins of COVID-19 but it should
not be the main focus. Preparedness for the next disaster is the objective.

The review and evaluation should be an international, interdisciplinary collaboration in-
cluding economists, epidemiologists, public health experts, and social and behavioral
scientists because countries’ management of a pandemic has externalities in a globalized
monde. The virus spread because of international migration and travel. Countries that have
managed to contain community transmission of COVID-19, like Korea, still remain vul-
nerable because of the risks of cases entering the country from abroad. A reduction in a
country’s COVID-19 infections beneﬁts that country as well as all the countries its residents
travel to. De plus, fewer production shutdowns in a country not only beneﬁt that coun-
try but all its trading partners. Some collaborations are already occurring. Par exemple, le
European Commission is coordinating a European response to the COVID-19 outbreak to
reinforce public health sectors and mitigate the socioeconomic impacts of the pandemic in
the European Union. Gavi is a vaccine alliance to help vaccinate children around the world.
It is leading COVAX, which is “a global risk-sharing mechanism for pooled procurement
and equitable distribution of eventual COVID-19 vaccines” (www.gavi.org/). Interna-
tional collaborations are needed because governments do not fully consider the positive (ou
negative) spillovers to the rest of the world when designing policies and actions for their
countries and as a result, measures to cope with COVID-19 are not socially optimal from a
global perspective.

Lesson 4: Governments need transparent and credible policies and clear and open com-
munications of what they seek to achieve

Transparency and credibility enhance policy efﬁcacy; c'est, outcomes can be achieved
faster and with lower costs. De plus, transparency and clear and open communication
increase accountability and public trust because they allow citizens to hold governments to
account. Public trust in governments is particularly vital during times of crisis or disaster
because measures that require or rely on behavioral responses by the public often need to
be implemented.

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Comments

Lesson 5: Economic policy responses to shocks need reconsideration

The aim of economic policy is to improve living standards that can be achieved through
four channels, par:

• stabilizing economic ﬂuctuations;
• increasing economic efﬁciency;
• distributing resources, wealth, and income according to what people consider fair; et
• providing a safety net, minimum protection, and security.

Following the outbreak of the pandemic, governments around the world have correctly
responded with increased public spending to limit the spread of COVID-19, such as pro-
viding medical equipment and funding (research for) treatments and vaccines. Public ex-
penditure on health improves economic efﬁciency, hence increases living standards and
welfare because of the externalities discussed earlier—people do not consider the ben-
eﬁts (frais) to other people of them being healthy (ill). During epidemics/pandemics,
additional public funding is warranted because the risks of people getting infected and
spreading the disease increase. De plus, governments need to invest in the development
of treatments and vaccines because private companies invest less in research and devel-
opment than what is socially optimal, as products can be copied and produced by other
companies at a lower cost.

Countries have also responded to COVID-19 with expansionary ﬁscal and monetary policy
to support jobs and businesses. Forecasts by the IMF of key economic variables pre- et
post-onset of COVID-19 are plotted in Figure 3. They show the devastating impact that the
pandemic is expected to have on countries’ economies. The downturn in Korea is antici-
pated to be less severe than in other advanced economies because Korea has managed to
slow the spread of COVID-19 without prolonged production shutdowns.

Countries implement economic tightening or stimulus measures to stabilize the macroe-
conomy, c'est, to reduce booms and busts. Countercyclical ﬁscal and monetary policy
is expansionary when domestic demand is anticipated to be slowing and contractionary
when the economy is at risk of overheating. But COVID-19 is not a “normal” demand
shock and evidence is emerging that macroeconomic stabilization in response to COVID-19
may be less effective than anticipated (par exemple., Chetty et al. 2020). En fait, it may be reducing
economic efﬁciency by directing resources to unviable ﬁrms (Banerjee and Hofmann 2020).
Economic activity has declined because of national lockdowns, supply chain disruptions,
and because of uncertainty—we do not know how long the pandemic will last and how it
will change the structure of economies. The extent to which ﬁscal and monetary policy can
and should be used to stabilize the economy in response to a global pandemic requires fur-
ther investigation. A more appropriate and more effective policy response may be greater

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Comments

Chiffre 3. Economic forecasts pre- and post-outbreak of COVID-19

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Source: World Economic Outlook (WEO), IMF.

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focus on providing a safety net and minimum protection, such as a universal income, to en-
sure no one falls into poverty and to help ease transition to the new post-COVID economy.

Greater consideration also needs to be given to the impact of policies on intergenerational
inequity. School closures are exacerbating existing inequalities because they have larger
adverse social and health consequences for children living in lower income households
than for children with higher income parents (Van Lancker and Parolin 2020). School clo-
sures also more adversely affect single working parents.

By borrowing to ﬁnance public expenditure, governments are shifting the costs of COVID-
19 to future generations. This may be appropriate if future generations are expected to be
better off than current generations. Cependant, given the magnitude of the shock, this may
not be the case. Millennials who entered working age years during the recession that fol-
lowed the 2008–09 global ﬁnancial crisis have been found to be “less well off than members
of earlier generations when they were young, with lower earnings, fewer assets, and less
wealth” (Kurz et al. 2019).

Les références

Banerjee, Ryan, and Boris Hofmann. 2020. Corporate Zombies: Anatomy and Life Cycle. BIS Working
Papers No. 882. Suisse: Bank for International Settlements.

Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren, Michael Stepner, and the Opportunity Insights
Team. 2020. How Did COVID-19 and Stabilization Policies Affect Spending and Employment? UN
New Real-Time Economic Tracker Based on Private Sector Data. NBER Working Paper No. 27431.
Washington, CC: National Bureau of Economic Research.

Iaccarino, Guido, Guido Grassi, Claudio Borghi, Claudio Ferri, Massimo Salvetti, Massimo Volpe,
and the SARS-RAS Investigators. 2020. Age and Multimorbidity Predict Death Among COVID-19 Pa-
patients, Results of the SARS-RAS Study of the Italian Society of Hypertension. Hypertension 76(2):366–
372.

Kurz, Christopher J., Geng Li, and Daniel J. Vine. 2019. Are Millennials Different? In Handbook of US
Consumer Economics, edited by Andrew Haughwout, Benjamin Mandel, pp. 193–232. Cambridge, MA:
Academic Press.

Nachega, Jean, Moussa Seydi, and Alimuddin Zumla. 2020. The Late Arrival of Coronavirus Disease
2019 (COVID-19) in Africa: Mitigating Pan-continental Spread. Clinical Infectious Diseases 71(15):875–
878.

Qiu, Yun, Xi Chen, and Wei Shi. 2020. Impacts of Social and Economic Factors on the Transmission
of Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) in China. MedRxiv, 2020.03.13.20035238. https://www.medrxiv.
org/content/10.1101/2020.03.13.20035238v1.

Van Lancker, Wim, and Zachary Parolin. 2020. COVID-19, School Closures, and Child Poverty: UN
Social Crisis in the Making. Lancet Public Health 5(5):E243–E244.

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