Politicization of Covid-19.

Politicization of Covid-19.

The Covid-19 pandemic is a global concern that affected various sectors of the economy. It also created ramifying challenges in the public health and political space throughout many countries in the world. For instance, the pandemic led to a significant increase in public spending; hundreds of thousands of people lost their livelihoods and many people lost their lives. However, some of the responses to the pandemic have often been politically biased. There has been misinformation on Covid-19 from some of the media outlets. Most of the information on Covid-19 contains exaggerated statistics and unproven treatments and safety equipment for speed vaccine development.

The Covid-19 pandemic was saturated with politics from its very outset. For instance, in the United States, there were varied viewpoints from the Democrats and Republicans regarding Covid-19. During the early stages of the pandemic, Trump and his administration downplayed the crisis to gain political advantage. They turned the pandemic into a partisan battle and thus, most of the statistics of Covid-19 reported were inaccurate because it was being used for political mileage. In the spring of 2020, when Covid-19 was in its early stages, Trump and his administration started fights with governors so they could be the target of public anger.

In sum, it has become difficult to trust the stats of Covid-19 we are seeing because they are being misused. Most of this information is leveraged across the ideological spectrum for socio-economic and political objectives. On one end, the pandemic is being used as an opportunity to advance causes where we share our plight in issues such as climate change mitigation, non-capitalist economic models and universal healthcare. On another end, the pandemic is being weaponized to combat multilateralism, democracy and immigration. Therefore, it’s hard to trust some information and various statistics about Covid-19. This can be incorrect as they are being used for different reasons.