#BTEditorial – Biden-Harris victory allows the world to breathe

The collective, cathartic response from around the world to last weekend’s declaration that Joseph Biden Jr. and his running mate Kamala Harris were successful in securing the presidency of the United States of America, was the greatest signal that the world was eager to return to some sense of normalcy.

It has been a tumultuous four years as we clung to our seats awaiting the next dramatic tweet from the leader of the free world. With one statement he had the capacity to launch a world war or upend global trade, and we were nervous.

Each day we wondered and waited. Who among the top ranking Cabinet officials was going to be fired? Which international agreement was going to be untethered? Which investigation would be launched or political opponent would face an attack and threatened with prosecution? It never ended.

Yes. The majority of American voters declared they had had enough of the chaos, the contempt for rules and tradition. They demonstrated their desire for change at the polls. And with the new mandate, millions of people around the globe would breathe a sigh of relief along with the majority of American voters.

Having placed their hopes in a 78-year-old politician and his White House neophyte, Americans will have great expectations of the two, given the litany of economic, social and health issues confronting the world’s super power.

For the rest of us, we await a well thought out, mature, and effective plan of action to attack the COVID-19 pandemic. We are more than convinced that the lack of strong leadership from the United States on this global health challenge, not only undermined efforts to control the illness on American soil but resulted in an ad hoc, loosely coordinated global response to the disease that did not go far enough in combatting its spread.

The inability to launch a strong, global attack on COVID-19 has resulted in attendant economic and social malaise from which we are not expected to extricate ourselves until late 2021 or early 2022.

The global community, including us in the Caribbean, will be looking to the Biden-Harris team to immediately address job No. 1 and that is the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the early statements from the Biden camp, it is clear the pandemic is on the front burner of their overall prescription for the American economy and society.

The latest International Monetary Fund (IMF) regional update for Latin America and the Caribbean highlights the enormity of the problems this region faces that are directly linked to the impact of the pandemic.

As the IMF noted: “The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the economies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) and elsewhere. Year-on-year growth in 2020 [second quarter] was well below previous quarters and the variation in growth rates among countries has increased notably . . . . The early and stringent lockdowns in LAC were initially successful in that they helped reduce mobility sharply and prevent the rapid explosion of infections at the onset, which would have overwhelmed weak medical capacity in the region.

“However, the lockdowns were not fully effective in containing the spread of the pandemic and the total death toll. The lockdowns only slowed the pandemic but did not stop it and over time the effectiveness of lockdowns declined as mobility started to pick up when new cases and deaths were still on the rise.

This resulted in a “slow burn” . . . . Structural factors, not fully effective government policies as well as lockdown fatigue, likely due to the necessity of low-income households to engage in economic activity have likely contributed to the ineffectiveness of the lockdowns.”

We cannot assume what might have occurred had there been a different president in the Oval Office. What we can point to are the examples provided by the previous holder of the office when the world faced the horrifying, deadly threat of an Ebola outbreak. The American Government led from in front, with an expertly executed all-country response that also involved global coordination.

As a result, what could have been a disaster of cataclysmic proportion was snuffed out before it got a chance to envelope our nations. Here in Barbados, we invested in a multimillion dollar isolation facility in preparation for an Ebola outbreak.

It was a public investment that we are happy to assign to the category of white elephant.