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Authors: Raluca Bejan, Assistant Professor, Social Work, Dalhousie University and Kristina Nikolova, Research Assistant Professor, Social Work, University of Windsor
Two years ago, we looked at how Canada ranked compared to similar countries in terms of COVID-19 rates. This component of a broader examination that looked at COVID-19 infections based on a country’s welfare system: liberal, social democratic, or conservative/corporatist.
Social coverage systems use sources of income redistribution, sickness benefits, pensions, maternity leave, unemployment assistance and social assistance to address inequalities in society.
Social liberal, social democratic or conservative/corporatist regimes do not reflect electoral politics. Liberal democracies can elect conservative governments, for example—of their citizens.
Strong well-being, citizens?
The liberal states that come with Canada, the United States, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have modest social coverage systems. They depend on minimal state intervention.
Social democracies in countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, and the Netherlands place a strong emphasis on government benefits. They also provide universal fitness coverage.
The conservative/corporatist states that come with Italy, Greece, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Belgium offer income/measure-based benefits. Its social benefits have a low effect on reducing social inequalities.
Social epidemiology, which is particularly interested in the effect of social factors on fitness, has long used welfare state variables to analyze differences in the fitness of populations. Strong social coverage arrangements have sometimes been linked to lower death rates.
COVID-19 and Eastern Bloc democracies
The theory of the social welfare system, however, has paid little to Eastern European countries.
Before the fall of communism in 1989 in Eastern Europe, the absence of a market made the state the main agent of resource distribution. However, after 1989, Eastern Europe switched to capitalism.
For our research, we expanded our pattern to incorporate the former communist states. We have divided them into 3 groups.
The first organization of the republics of the former Soviet Union of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine.
The organization at the time the countries of Central and Eastern Europe Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and Slovakia.
The 3rd organization the countries of South-Eastern Europe of the former Yugoslavia: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia and Slovenia. To this we have added Albania.
We assumed that the former communist and socialist states built on their old state-centered approaches to physical and social care, and that this would result in a decrease in COVID-19 infections and death rates. But, contrary to our expectations, the Eastern European states have done well. worse than Western democracies when it comes to the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths.
Measures
We analyzed COVID-19 cases and deaths for an additional 100,000 people in the first three waves of the pandemic.
Excess deaths consistent with 100,000 were also included. Excess deaths are the difference between the number of deaths reported in a country for all reasons and the number of deaths that would have been expected if there had been a pandemic.
Health care variables included the number of doctors, nurses, and hospital beds, as fitness policy-like variables: COVID-19 vaccination rates, testing, and universal provision of fitness care.
Political variables included public acceptance as true in government, the rigor of government blockades, and the source of revenue relief.
We decided that liberal, social democratic, and conservative/corporatist Western states had fewer COVID-19 infections than countries in Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe and former Soviet nations.
This is the case even when considering differences between countries in testing, reporting, physical care resources, pandemic policies and economic factors.
Situation bothered by COVID-19 waves
All countries began the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic with statistically similar cases, deaths and excess deaths.
In the current wave, Eastern European countries recorded a significant increase in cases and deaths in liberal and social democratic states. Countries in southeastern Europe, formerly part of Yugoslavia, had the most cases of any group.
In the third wave, Central and Eastern European states had more than 4 times more cases than liberal states and 10 times more deaths from COVID-19 than social democratic states. than those of the West.
Why ?
Our research indicates that Western liberal states spend the maximum on physical care, about 10% of their GDP. The southeastern European states spend at most 8% of their GDP, while their neighbouring countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet states spend even less, at most 7 cents and 6 cents respectively.
However, despite declining spending on fitness, Central and Eastern European countries have noticed fewer COVID-19 cases and excess deaths than countries in southeastern Europe and former Soviet states.
This can be explained simply as a side effect of capitalism. Albania and Kosovo have experienced what some refer to as catastrophic out-of-pocket fitness costs – the term used when fitness bills exceed 40% of disposable household income.
When it comes to COVID-19 deaths consistent with millions of inhabitants, southeastern Europe recorded the highest figures, even taking into account GDP spent on health. Southeastern European countries also have the lowest number of hospital beds for other groups, and the lowest number of nurses and doctors consistent with 10,000 inhabitants.
Is privatized care to blame?
The inadequate number of hospital beds is a symptom of the region’s overstretched health formula, a serious problem in countries emerging from the dissolution of Yugoslavia.
Most states in the former Yugoslavia introduced physical care reforms that shifted the provision of public physical care to the flexible market. This was inspired by the technique of competing hospitals in the UK under former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
The financing of physical care in the countries of the former Yugoslavia followed a style of insurance subsidized through salaries and state contributions. It was much more decentralized than in the former Soviet states, which relied mainly on government investment when they were part of the Soviet Union.
Throughout the 1990s, several conflicts in the former Yugoslavia also contributed to the deterioration of the prestige of the physical condition of the population. These conflicts have also hampered governments’ ability to build and their systems for delivering and caring for fitness.
Some have argued that the fall of communism, the liberalization of industry, and the privatization of physical care have pushed former Eastern bloc countries into Western-style welfare systems.
Our knowledge shows, however, that the erosion of their fitness systems through the personal marketplace puts those states in a position in terms of managing COVID-19 infections and death rates. The fall of communism was, in fact, negative for the physical and well-being of Eastern Europeans.
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The authors paint for, consult, own stocks, or obtain investments from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed any applicable affiliations beyond their educational designation.
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This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Disclosure data is located on the source site. Read the original article:
https://theconversation. com/despues-de-la-guerra-fria-por-que-covid-19-infectio https://theconversation. com/despues-de-la-guerra-fria-por-que-covi
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