NEARLY TWO YEARS after vaccine rollout began, COVID-19 has a minor issue on the political agenda.
The “culture of accountability” presented by the Morrison administration, which imposed on Americans a duty to take protective measures against COVID-19 rather than governments implementing a “culture of and mandates,” undermined state measures of public suitability and attention to COVID risks.
The existing Labour government turns out to be cautious about this communication strategy. Although Albanese has a webpage committed to the “Roadmap to Defeat COVID-19” on its private website, very few references to the pandemic and few posts about the 3rd. and fourth doses have been made since his election.
However, the virus has lost momentum or ability to mutate.
Comparing the number of COVID deaths in the winter of 2022 (or summer in the Northern Hemisphere) compared to the same time in 2020 and 2021, we practice that some countries, such as Australia, Italy, and Spain, recorded a higher number of deaths.
This startling evidence can be attributed in part to the point of decline in current restrictions, adherence to fundamental hygiene measures, and the more recent mutation of the virus, which is far more contagious than before and therefore more fatal in absolute terms.
Despite this, politicians in Australia and other Western countries do not seem alarmed. Even vaccination coverage, used last year to claim political victory through top governments, now has a negligible figure in the political debate.
Despite this, booster use in many countries is under a point to protect the most vulnerable groups of the population or to prevent other possible mutations of the virus for which existing vaccines would possibly not be effective.
In Australia, only 72. 2% of the population over 16 years of age gained the booster compared to 95. 8% who finished the first vaccination cycle. The scenario is similar in Spain, where 85. 2% of the total population won the full cycle of vaccination. However, only 55% gained the booster. Italy does relatively better with 73% of the population receiving the booster. However, this would possibly be partly explained by the fact that withdrawal was first and foremost mandatory, this rule has now been removed.
The following graph represents the total number of COVID-19 deaths consistent with 1 million population between June 20 and September 21 in 2020, 2021 and 2022:
So it’s fair to ask why politicians haven’t maintained a high point of alert now that “the end is in sight,” as World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus recently stated.
One motivation is that in such dubious times, political leaders may act opportunistically to increase their popularity among the electorate and gain consensus to be (re)elected.
As we have noticed during the pandemic, crisis control policies have an effect on voting behaviour and this becomes even more applicable when elections are imminent and incumbents are campaigning to keep their seats.
Compared to opposition leaders, incumbents have comparative merit, as they are charged with managing and communicating around this crisis.
However, useless control and/or communication can distort aid even for the maximum popular leader. Indeed, crises and their political reaction affect the population in their (maximum) personal sphere (e. g. individual freedom, behaviour, etc. ), which makes the pool very susceptible to any (not) successful measure.
New South Wales and Victoria will face elections in the next 12 months. Neither government will threaten their consensus with unpopular policies.
In the next section, we talk about the combination of policy responses and political consensus using the example of the pandemic and the experience of three countries that have replaced governments in their control: Australia, Italy and the United Kingdom.
On April 15, 2020, Boris Johnson – who distrusted the legitimacy of the COVID-19 factor – held the highest popular government in decades.
In Italy, Giuseppe Conte made the highest percentage of supporters the first two waves of the pandemic. In the Community of Madrid, the incumbent, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, triumphed again by winning the elections by absolute majority in May 2021.
In the four state elections that were held in Australia due to the pandemic, all the headlines succeeded his rivals at the polls.
But are those electoral effects consistent with the death toll and infection rates?We can expect government competition to only influence electoral effects, however, in Italy, one of the countries with the highest death rates in Europe, Conte has noted his overall approval ratings. they shoot up. Madrid, the region with the highest excess of deaths in all of Europe in 2020, is another example in which the electorate followed the current candidate in the regional elections.
The tension between protective public suitability and civil liberties has been in the eyes of the electorate and the headlines are aware of their myopia. divisions. The political calendar is prioritized, the streets are blank like a whistle and not only fiscal decisions, but also other visual political decisions for citizens are subject to manipulation.
The reaction to the pandemic is also part of the toolbox that governments use to politically leverage their position in electoral periods. The opportunistic behavior of governments and its implications in the control of the pandemic were observed in the rigor of the policies implemented and in the prioritization of policies of the vaccination campaign.
As in other federalist countries, the deployment of vaccines and the adoption of maximum confinement measures in Italy, Spain and Australia are controlled through exclusively regional government agencies.
These subnational governments are guilty of critical aspects of fitness systems, adding drug procurement, emergency management and hospitals. Non-pharmaceutical interventions and vaccines are perceived as the central pillar of the effort to combat the virus and all are subject to the whims of politicians in their implementation.
Italian, Spanish and Australian policies have been characterized by deep regional divisions, and interaction between central and subnational governments has proved particularly difficult.
During the COVID-19 crisis, there was no transparent hierarchy and the central state struggled to impose a unitary line. The struggle of forces between other governments has influenced some of the possible options for the adoption of restrictions. However, the central government’s opposition to certain measures imposed across the regions was probably also motivated by the ideological struggle over the compromise between fitness and the economy.
In Spain, while the right-wing parties that govern some autonomous communities have risen to economic functionality and civil liberties through the opening of the country, the socialist coalition that maintains strength from the central leadership has embraced the union and sustainability of Spain’s national health system.
In Australia, this was noticed when then-Prime Minister Scott Morrison exerted transparent pressure on states to end the closure early, or when former Commonwealth education minister Dan Tehan tried to push for private schools to open, despite state closure orders.
Commonwealth attacks have tended to highlight the impact of restrictions on economic functionality and thus offer the response to COVID-19 as a dilemma between protective public fitness and economic functionality.
These political tensions were very visual election periods. For example, Isabel Ayuso under the slogan of “freedom” while campaigning in Madrid’s regional elections, leaned on her lax COVID restriction strategy to appeal to an electorate tired of the restrictions imposed to fight the pandemic. The strategy worked with the electorate and allowed him to return to govern with 65 seats, compared to 30 in 2019.
On 20 and 21 September 2020, citizens of seven Italian regions were required to vote. However, a month later, on October 25, the Minister of Health, Roberto Speranza, presented a new ministerial decree with new restrictive measures in force until November 24. This resolution may have been motivated mainly by the accumulation of infections that occurred after the summer, but also political fears may have partially triggered the delay in the adoption of new restrictive measures.
In 2020, policy responses to COVID-19 were in place across all Australian states and territories. However, in 2021, significant diversifications in policy responses to COVID-19 emerged in Australian states, as a result of a shift in national consensus.
Two others have emerged between territories and states such as Tasmania and Western Australia with low exposure to COVID-19, which in an election year have followed less strict restrictions.
States most exposed to the coronavirus and without elections in the near future, such as New South Wales and Victoria, have implemented stricter policies, adding stay-at-home orders, remote learning and office closures for extended periods. These methods can be partially implemented through epidemiological factors, but also through the evidence shown of electoral methods.
For example, the Morrison government’s complaint about state responses and partisan Cabinet attacks on state governments during the pandemic ranked third among the 8 reasons the Coalition lost the 2022 election.
The following chart illustrates the values of the Austerity Index of Australia’s states and territories in 2021:
On September 16, 2021, the Italian government’s center-left coalition on rate approved one of the strictest anti-COVID measures in the world, vaccinating all workers.
At that time, fully vaccinated people in Italy represented 65% of the total population, a figure comparable to that of its neighbouring countries, for example, the United Kingdom 65%, France 63% and Germany 62%.
On 3rd and 4th October two weeks after the announcement, elections were held in Italy. Fifteen of the 20 newly elected mayors belonged to the center-left coalition.
The vaccination crusade in Australia, which is the duty of the Commonwealth government, has been described as a “failure of public administration” and the worst failure of national public policy in Australia’s fashionable history, with delays in the vaccine rollout and lack of national leadership.
Poor government procurement decisions and a lack of diversification of investments in vaccine suppliers contributed to Australia coming in last place globally in terms of the proportion of the population vaccinated by mid-2021. The “incompetent management” of the daily jobs of the federal government became known about the pandemic. through the National Secretariat of Labor as the moment of 8 reasons why the Coalition lost the 2022 elections.
The strong political festival has highlighted the mechanisms that have connected political decisions and electoral motivations in the management of the pandemic. However, the way in which the rulers perceived the personal tastes and ideals of voters about the importance of restrictions for society has possibly made it partially clear to us the severity of the containment measures implemented and the differences in the deployment of vaccination.
Finally, one would have to think that the severity and effectiveness of mitigation measures that were of great interest to the electorate might have been subject to fluctuations induced by electoral considerations and be satisfied that medical guidance might not have had the expected result. weight in the equation for decision makers.
There is no doubt that professional advice is regularly invoked during crises, but there is no denying that governments do not follow it.
It’s hard to wait for what comes next. However, governments will want to leverage political inventions to manage current and future global crises and accept that adopting certain interventions will cause some discontent in polls.
Professor Francesco Paolucci is Professor of Health Economics and Policy at the Faculty of Law and Business at Newcastle University and at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Bologna. He can be Professor Paolucci on Twitter @dr_paolucci.
Pablo Arija Prieto is a researcher at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Marcello Antonini is a PhD candidate in Health Economics at Newcastle University. He lately leads the VheP COVID-19 vaccine personal tastes project.
Andrew Greenland is an analyst at the Institute for Regional Futures and a PhD candidate in economics at Newcastle University.
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