Last month, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had praised Pakistan's response to the coronavirus, saying the country managed to fight the pandemic while allowing its economy to pick up as the country stabilises
Former US treasury secretary and renowned economist Lawrence
'Larry' Summers is of the opinion that had America handled the coronavirus
pandemic as well as Pakistan, it could have saved in trillions.
He made these comments while talking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria on Sunday. "America’s failure on Covid-19 is almost unimaginable," he said. "Heck, if the US had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighbourhood of $10 trillion."
"The costs of an expanded testing system are trivial compared to the costs of tens of thousands of early deaths. Expanding testing should be a matter of utmost urgency," tweeted Summers.
US President Donald Trump, despite contracting the virus
himself, has continued to cast doubt on the seriousness of the pandemic even as
the US death toll topped 200,000. In what has become an overtly political
gesture, Trump almost never wears a mask in public.
According to the Associated Press, quoting a new poll, more
Americans blame the US government instead of foreign nations for the
coronavirus crisis in the United States, a rebuke to the Trump administration’s
contention that China or other countries are most at fault.
As he faces a rough reelection contest in November, Trump
has steadily ramped up criticism of China for the virus and announced the US
would halt funding for and withdraw from the international health agency over
alleged Chinese interference in its work. Critics, including public health
experts, have said China bears some responsibility but have also harshly
criticised Trump’s response.
Summers on Sunday piled on criticism of the US government's
response, saying: "Interest rates are essentially zero, telling us that
the funds are available and won’t crowd out anything important. Instead it will
push economy forward. All the dangers are on spending too little, not too
much."
"We should be making investments in renewing
infrastructure, supporting state and local govt, and helping the unemployed and
lower income families. It cannot be that the highest priority in the US today
is lending money to credit worthy corporations," Summers tweeted.
Last month, World Health Organisation (WHO) chief Tedros
Adhanom Ghebreyesus had praised Pakistan's response to the coronavirus, saying
the country managed to fight the pandemic while allowing its economy to pick up
as the country stabilises.
In an op-ed in the British online newspaper The Independent,
Tedros noted that Pakistan had deployed the infrastructure built over many
years for polio to combat Covid-19.
"Community health workers who have been trained to go
door-to-door vaccinating children against polio have been redeployed and
utilised for surveillance, contact tracing and care," he wrote.
Pakistan's response reinforces "the lesson that the choice is not between controlling the virus or saving the economy; the two go hand-in-hand", the WHO chief has added.
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