An exploration of the political, social, economic and cultural factors affecting how different global regions initially reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Responses to the early (February-July 2020) COVID-19 pandemic varied widely, globally. Reasons for this are multiple but likely relate to the healthcare and financial resources then available, and the degree of trust in, and economic support provided by, national governments. Cultural factors also affected how different populations reacted to the various pandemic restrictions, like masking, social distancing and self-isolation or self-quarantine. The degree of compliance with these measures depended on how much individuals valued their needs and liberties over those of their society. Thus, several themes may be relevant when comparing pandemic responses across different regions. East and Southeast Asian populations tended to be more collectivist and self-sacrificing, responding quickly to early signs of the pandemic and readily complied with most restrictions to control its spread. Australasian, Eastern European, Scandinavian, some Middle Eastern, African and South American countries also responded promptly by imposing restrictions of varying severity, due to concerns for their wider society, including for some, the fragility of their healthcare systems. Western European and North American countries, with well-resourced healthcare systems, initially reacted more slowly, partly in an effort to maintain their economies but also to delay imposing pandemic restrictions that limited the personal freedoms of their citizens.

Keywords: COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; government; guidance; lockdown; pandemic response.

Figure 1.

Cumulative COVID-19 cases and deaths for the early part of the pandemic (15 February–15 July 2020) for some example populations in the regions discussed in the main text (as extracted from Worldometer: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/). NB: any values below 1.0 (cumulative deaths/million population: Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam) have been normalized to 1.0 for plotting purposes.

Figure 2.

Examples of Hofstede Insights' six-dimensional comparisons of cultural trends across 38 countries arranged in geographical groupings following the order in the main text. Scores on different coloured bars range from 0 to 100. Asterisk indicates some parameters were estimated (https://www.hofstede-insights.com/country-comparison/argentina,brazil,chile,the-usa/) [285].

Figure 3.

Trust in Government comparison (generated from [295]). Definition of ‘trust in government’ was ascertained by a simple survey question: ‘In this country, do you have confidence in … national government?’ Responses indicated on the vertical axis are a percentage of all survey respondents, pooled for the period 2010–2018 to improve the accuracy of the estimates, and designed to be nationally representative of the population aged 15 years and older.