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Robert Pollin, the world-renowned progressive economist said the US should have taken Vietnam as an exemplary mirror in the COVID-19 fight (Photo: Captured)

Pollin, also known as the Director of the Research Institute of Political Economy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, had commented on how the US was dealing with the current COVID-19 pandemic in the interview.

According to the economist, as of August 17, the US had about 170,000 deaths related to the novel coronavirus and there’s no evidence that the death rate will be declining significantly anytime soon.

The level of US deaths from COVID-19 amounts to 514 per 1 million people. By comparison, Canada’s death rate is less than half that of the U.S., at around 239 deaths per million, even while Canada itself is also a relatively poor performer. Germany’s death rate, at 110 per million, is 80 percent lower than the U.S., but Germany is still only a middling performer. Among the strong performers, the death rates are 15 per million in Australia, 9 per million in Japan, 6 per million in South Korea, and 3 per million in China, even though the virus first emerged in China.

Referring to Vietnam, the Truthout newspaper said: “Vietnam is the most extraordinary case”, citing that the country has “experienced a total of 22 deaths in a country of 95 million people, which amounts to a death rate of 0.25 per million” (the death toll was recorded on August 22, the day the article was published. As of August 24, Vietnam has recorded 27 fatalities in total).

“This is for a country in which the average per capita income is about 3 percent of that in the US”, Pollin commented. “If the U.S. had handled COVID at Vietnam’s level of competence over the past eight months, then fewer than 100 U.S. residents in total would be dead today from the pandemic”, he added.

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