When COVID-19 first broke out in China and countries in Asia, Western media focused on highlighting how Asian democracies like Japan and Singapore were able to keep infection levels low without resorting to the draconian lockdowns implemented by China. Implicitly, it was the democracy vs communism story, to show that democracies are "better" than the authoritarian communist China.
But COVID-19 does not choose its victims based on ideology.
So when infections rose in Europe and the U.S., and death tolls started to exceeded even China, Western media needed to play a different tune.
And so you see the Western media recently to portray Singapore as failing after its initial success. About how Abe mismanaged the handling of COVID-19. The implicit message is that the failures of Western democracies in handling COVID-19 are not exclusive to the West; we see such cases all over the world. The second message carried by Western media was about how China must be manipulating its numbers; how could it be so much lower than what we are experiencing elsewhere?
My gut feeling tells me that China's numbers are off. But I have no proof of that; it is a feeling, not a fact. The fact, though, is that China is slowly opening up, and we have no reports of mass graves that would definitely have leaked if China's fatalities are being grossly underreported. So most probably, China's numbers are slightly underreported, but those numbers still differ from the U.S. by a factor of 10. A factor of 10. In a country with 4 times the population, China has 10 times less fatalities.
Singapore would need to have fatalities of around 1,000 in order to be on par with the U.S. at the per capita level. Instead, as of now, Singapore has less than 20.
So what went wrong? Instead of trying to portray other countries as "failing" and "liars", the Western media should be focusing on what their own governments are doing to keep their own people safe. A free press is essential to keep the government on its toes. When the free press fails to take up that important role, and instead falls into propaganda to implicitly defend its own government, it is then just as guilty as a government that fails in responding to COVID-19 properly.
You don't need to waste time trying to find others to blame, trying to find examples outside to justify your failures. You should be spending all that energy on making sure you are doing the right things.
But COVID-19 does not choose its victims based on ideology.
So when infections rose in Europe and the U.S., and death tolls started to exceeded even China, Western media needed to play a different tune.
And so you see the Western media recently to portray Singapore as failing after its initial success. About how Abe mismanaged the handling of COVID-19. The implicit message is that the failures of Western democracies in handling COVID-19 are not exclusive to the West; we see such cases all over the world. The second message carried by Western media was about how China must be manipulating its numbers; how could it be so much lower than what we are experiencing elsewhere?
My gut feeling tells me that China's numbers are off. But I have no proof of that; it is a feeling, not a fact. The fact, though, is that China is slowly opening up, and we have no reports of mass graves that would definitely have leaked if China's fatalities are being grossly underreported. So most probably, China's numbers are slightly underreported, but those numbers still differ from the U.S. by a factor of 10. A factor of 10. In a country with 4 times the population, China has 10 times less fatalities.
Singapore would need to have fatalities of around 1,000 in order to be on par with the U.S. at the per capita level. Instead, as of now, Singapore has less than 20.
So what went wrong? Instead of trying to portray other countries as "failing" and "liars", the Western media should be focusing on what their own governments are doing to keep their own people safe. A free press is essential to keep the government on its toes. When the free press fails to take up that important role, and instead falls into propaganda to implicitly defend its own government, it is then just as guilty as a government that fails in responding to COVID-19 properly.
You don't need to waste time trying to find others to blame, trying to find examples outside to justify your failures. You should be spending all that energy on making sure you are doing the right things.
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