I think people in the UK perhaps should be aware of how far the UK is from the rest of the world, at least parts of it.
Firstly:
A lot of people in the UK seem to think the USA is the stupidest country on earth. This just isn't the case. Yes, there are a lot of crazy people there. But at a minimum a substantial proportion of the population is well-educated.
In developing countries a lot of the country has not graduated secondary school. Most people don't understand basic food hygiene concepts, let alone hope to curb a virus.
Secondly, officially ALL the population is religious (at least that's the case here, in Indonesia). By law. Not everyone practices of course. But religion is more important in society than reason or science. Far more important. Shutting down mosques is seen by many millions as an act of Satan's minions. Many people believe that mass prayer (i.e.: thousands of people gathering in one place) PREVENTS covid-19.
Thirdly: the official death and infection figures are utter bollocks. Under Islamic law a body is buried within 24 hours. Doctors aren't involved with this process unless the death took place in a hospital, which it probably didn't. Christians are a minority but it's not that different except that a nurse or midwife will come along to shoot the corpse up with formaldehyde prior to burial.
I've seen the UK stats and on a MSOA level (around 5,000) people there are hundreds of tests being done per week, so there's a good chance you know whether there is a local outbreak.
Here entire provinces of MILLIONS of people have positive test rates over 40%, but that's because they've only completed 3000 tests for several million people. The rest of the tests are pending often for weeks, and the total number of tests is totally inadequate to get an idea of what is going on.
Sometimes the government goes round places like markets and run antibody tests, which tend to turn up about 15% positive. But they aren't counted as positive tests officially. That needs a swab test. The antibody tests cost about £10, which is over a day's wages. The antibody tests are widely used but antibodies don't show up till after you have had symptoms for a few days. Swab tests cost about £120, which is a lot of money, and there is a small fraction of the swab tests.
The government shut things down for several months, which did slow things a bit, but except for a very few areas mosques were never closed and the virus slow burned for several months. Now everything is open again, and the virus is probably everywhere, but who knows!? Because if they don't test on a local level, there are no official death stats available there's just no way of telling.
But people are travelling all over the place en masse, doing things like karaoke in pubs, going on land train things (a few trucks shackled together with shiny lights and about 100 adults + children inside).
The economy of Bali (specifically) depends on tourism, and they want to open the doors for international tourists in September.
Oh and the healthcare system is horrific:
firstly there are some of the lowest number of hospital beds in Asia
then there are some of the fewest ICU places
there are very few ventilators
a lot of people are terrified of being diagnosed with covid because it means:
- you get sent off to a covid hospital far away where your family might not see you again
- the hospitals are mostly private and run for fat profits by evil cheating money-grabbing commission-driven scumbags (yes, the US has much bigger medical bills, but unless you've dealt with completely uncontrolled capitalism in a developing country you won't understand the extent to which the people running hospitals will happily say 'you pay us NOW or we will not treat you and you will die', and this happens frequently).
- the government has tried to bring a national health system in the past few years, which is a start, BUT the (mostly privately owned) hospitals are NOT happy because they can't pump you full of useless patent drugs on fat commissions. So they seek opportunities to chuck you out. That has come with covid. Patients coming in will be told to pay for a private test (even though they have national insurance) or leave. The test is actually an antibody test, but the proportion of people that understand the significance of that is tiny, because the hospital just wants to chuck them out on the street
The antibody test tests for two different antibodies, one which is a short-lasting and one which is a longer-lasting antibody. If the first antibody is absent this might indicate that the patient had covid but do not any longer.
But the hospital doesn't care. They tell you to fuck off home and isolate, or be sent to a commandeered covid hospital. Once in the covid hospital you will be given a swab test. Except if you ask for the results from the lab rather than just relying on their statement that it's positive, you are told "it's a state secret" [actual quote]. So your relative might be locked up in hospital far away from your home for several weeks (at central government expense), on an assurance that they are positive.
And then after this happens your family is supposed to be tested, except this might or might not happen, and if it does happen it will happen several days later. In the mean time you might have isolated at home, except why the fuck would you because you need to earn a living and the government's certainly not giving any hand outs.
Of course there are rules to stop the spread. Some places say to wear masks. Bearing in mind that MOST 13 year olds drive to school on motor bikes, and without helmets, what do you think the chances of people following these rules are? That's right: none whatsoever.
I'm sure there are developing countries that are much more disciplined generally. But when you consider mid/low GDP, low tax base, a population who routinely believes in ghosts and spirits, massive corruption, childhood malnutrition, etc. etc., anyone who thinks that there's a chance to bring an out-of-control pandemic under control after several months of weak measures which have now been largely stopped failed to do that, is simply dreaming.
So when a goodly proportion of the population can't afford to stop working, a goodly and very politically influential (and backed by street paramilitaries) proportion thinks that going to the mosque is more important than stopping the virus, a goodly proportion is used to ignoring inconvenient rules , a goodly proportion doesn't have a clue how or why the virus is spread. And then you have a government and administrative infrastructure that generally is best known for its ingenuity at corruption and theft, and not at all for its administrative prowess. And that government is not known for transparency and likely lacks both wherewithal and intent to try and work out what is really going on.
I'm sure some developing countries have done better, but this is the reality here....