Russia
For the first months of the crisis, Vladimir Putin was even Trumpier than Trump when it came to claiming to have everything absolutely under control. He didn’t just claim to have “15 cases on their way to near zero”—Putin claimed to have just two cases, both of them recovered. It’s only been a month since Putin admitted that there might be a few more cases in Russia than were previously on the books, even as hospitals were filling up and Muscovites were noting an increase in dead people—an increase great enough to even be notable in Putin’s Russia. In the first two weeks of April, Putin has allowed the numbers to slip upwards toward reality at a rate that makes Russia the top statistical rocket ship. But the amazing thing is that Russia, as of Thursday, has admitted to only 273 coronavirus deaths, giving it a case fatality rate of <1%. Take that, reality! In fact, it appears that COVID-19-related deaths are getting classified as pneumonia—which was up a mysterious 37% by mid-March.
Despite crediting himself with taking fast and firm action that has protected Russia, current rates of growth there remain over 30% a day—meaning that COVID-19 cases are expanding at a rate that matches what would happen in ideal circumstances. Ideal for the virus. Not Russians.
Brazil
If Donald Trump seems like a parody (and he does), Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro seems like a parody of Trump. Can someone be even more hateful toward minorities, more disgusting toward women, even more dismissive of science while stewing in the funk of a massive ego? Yep. It turns out this is possible. Throughout the crisis, Bolsonaro has kept on shaking hands, kept on encouraging his supporters to gather in crowds, and kept on dismissing the novel coronavirus as “the little flu.” And, of course, he has kept undercounting the number of cases and deaths even as Brazil climbs the ranks. On Thursday, Bolsonaro fired his health minister for speaking out in favor of social distancing because too many people were actually listening.
But Bolsonaro’s great innovation in knocking off his citizens wholesale is the simplest of the bunch—don’t test. By testing at the lowest rate of any nation in North or South America (or Europe, or Asia), Bolsonaro has kept his case count down to just 31,000. The experts believe that Brazil actually has over 300,000 cases, making the southern Trump second only to the original.
U.K.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson is the only member of Trump and Friends to have personally been touched by COVID-19 at this point. For a few days there, things were touch and go as Johnson got 24-hour attention from a pair of nurses to bring him back from the ICU and send him home to convalesce. In Boris’ absence, his government seems to be displaying what he must find to be distressing signs of reason. However, all of this follows a period in which Johnson’s response to the crisis was to consider whether he should actually respond at all. Not only did days that were spent puzzling over the possibility of “herd immunity” put the U.K. on a course to where it is now—110,000 cases and the fastest growth rate in Europe—there’s a bonus feature.
Decades of underfunding, and undermining, of the National Health Service by Johnson and other Conservative leaders means that the U.K. is one of the few nations to have genuinely fewer available hospital beds than the United States. That has become a big factor in boosting the U.K.’s case fatality rate to a staggering 13.4%—higher than even beleaguered Italy, despite having an additional month to prepare. The result of Johnson’s reluctance to shut down can be directly tallied not just in deaths, but in the weeks and months that his nation will still be in lockdown after other European countries have begun to ease restrictions.
Hungary
On the surface, Viktor Orban seems like a strange addition to this list. Certainly he’s racist enough, dictatorial enough, and deeply ignorant enough to gain a spot on any panel of Trump-alikes. And he’s one of Trump’s go-to names when pointing out his favorite European leaders. But with just 1,800 cases and 156 deaths, Hungary seems like one of those nations that has so far ridden out the crisis fairly well. There are reasons to believe that Orban is seriously underreporting both statistics, but almost certainly not to the extent of either Putin or Bolsonaro. For example: No satellite has yet logged acres of fresh graves being excavated on the outskirts of Budapest.
So why include Orban? It’s not because he’s murdered people. Well, it’s not just because he’s murdered people. It’s because Orban has used the crisis to stage a “coronavirus coup,” turning himself into a dictator for life, and turning Hungary into a nation that is governed entirely by authoritarian fiat.
As Foreign Policy reports, Orban’s supporters in parliment pushed through a bill at the end of March that suspends future elections indefinitely, provides Orban with unlimited power, and removes any lingering traces of free speech from both the public and the press. Immediately on the passage of this bill, once the novel coronavirus had been used as the reason for crowning Orban the first king of Hungary since that pesky World War I, Orban promptly declared that the coronavirus crisis was over. But in case there is any doubt, he didn’t hand back so much as a crumb of his new powers.
Hungary is no longer operating as even a sham democracy. It’s an openly authoritarian dictatorship. And in response the European Union and NATO have done … not a damn thing about it. The other members of the He-Man Women Hater’s Club may be following Trump’s lead when it comes to dismissing COVID-19. But Orban is leading the way toward the future of absolute power, close the Congress, order the governors that Trump really feels that he should have. The failure of the rest of the world to react to Orban’s power-grab only makes it much, much more likely that other members of Team Authoritarian will take similar advantage of this moment.
There are plenty of other disastrous responses to the crisis. In Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko is on his way to creating a second Chernobyl as he tells citizens to ignore the deaths around them. In Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu is discovering what any epidemiologist could have told him—closing the borders then expecting things to get better is never going to work, despite a swirl of rumors and false reports. Turkish President Recep Tayyip isn’t missing the chance to use COVID-19 as an excuse to punish political opponents, while at the same time placing the economy ahead of lives. And in Sweden, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven has famously told his nation to put the old folks in the closet then go on about their business, an experiment that is proving to be a disaster. By a complete noncoincidence, Löfven assumed special powers on Thursday that allow him to make changes to the nation’s policy without having to deal with parliament.
Because the second victim of bad leadership in a crisis is democracy. The first is human lives.
Source: http://feeds.dailykosmedia.com/~r/dailykosofficial/~3/oVz0ulIWpHQ/-Trump-is-the-king-of-disaster-but-the-world-s-other-tough-guy-leaders-are-right-behind-him