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Soal SBMPTN - B. INGGRIS
Soal SBMPTN - B. INGGRIS
Like the fall of the Berlin Wall, the coronavirus pandemic as a world-shattering event that has disrupted markets and
exposed the competence or lack of governments will lead to possibilities of shifts in political and economic power.
Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs, has predicted the pandemic will reinforce
nationalism. The shift in power and influence from West to East will also accelerate. South Korea and Singapore
have responded best, and China has reacted well after its early mistakes. The response in Europe and America has
been slow and haphazard by comparison, further tarnishing the aura of the Western “brand.” What won’t change is
the fundamentally conflictive nature of world politics. Previous plagues did not end great-power rivalry. Neither
will COVID-19. We will see a further retreat from hyperglobalization.
A British specialist in international relations Robin Niblett believes the pandemic could be the straw that breaks
the camel’s back of economic globalization. China’s growing economic and military power had already provoked a
bipartisan determination in the United States to decouple China from U.S.-sourced high technology and intellectual
property and try to force allies to follow suit. Increasing public and political pressure to meet carbon emissions reduction
targets had already called into question many companies’ reliance on long-distance supply chains. Now, COVID-19 is
forcing governments, companies, and societies to strengthen their capacity to cope with extended periods of economic
self-isolation. It seems highly unlikely that the world will return to the idea of globalization.
Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean academic, sees the pandemic will only accelerate a change that had
already begun: a move away from U.S.-centric globalization to a more China-centric globalization. The U.S. has
two choices. If its goal is to maintain global primacy, it will have to engage in a zero-sum geopolitical contest,
politically and economically, with China. However, if the goal is to improve the well-being of the American
people, it should cooperate with China.
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One hundred years ago, a world recovering from a global war that had killed some 20 million people suddenly had
to contend with something even more deadly: the Spanish flu outbreak. It is thought to have begun in cramped and
crowded army training camps on the Western Front. The unsanitary conditions helped it incubate and then spread.
The war ended in November 1918, but as the soldiers returned home, bringing the virus with them, an even greater
loss of life was just around the corner; between 50 million and 100 million people are thought to have died.
Now, as the world reacts to the outbreak of Covid-19, caused by a new coronavirus, we can look back to
Spanish Flu to see what we learned from one of the most devastating diseases in recent history.
Pneumonia is often the killer. Many of the people dying from Covid-19 are succumbing to a form of
pneumonia, which takes hold as the immune system is weakened from fighting the virus. This is something that it
shares with Spanish flu, though it must be said that the death rate from Covid-19 is many times lower than that of
Spanish flu.
Air travel was in its infancy when Spanish flu struck. But there were few places on Earth that escaped its
horrific effects. Their passages across the world were slower, carried by railway and passenger steamer rather by
airliners. Some places held out for months, or even years, before the flu arrived. In Alaska, one community on
Bristol Bay escaped the flu almost unscathed. They closed public places and shut off access to the village from the
main road. It was a low-tech version of the travel restrictions that have been used in some areas today in an effort to
stop the coronavirus spreading.
Doctors have described the Spanish flu as the “greatest medical holocaust in history”. It was not just the
fact it killed so many, it was that so many of its victims were young and healthy. The flu struck so quickly that it
overwhelmed the immune system, causing a massive over-reaction known as a cytokine storm, flooding the lungs
with fluid which became the perfect reservoir for secondary infections. Older people, interestingly, were not as
susceptible, perhaps because they had survived a very similar strain of flu which had started to spread through
human populations in the 1830s. On the contrary, with the new coronavirus, the elderly and people with pre-
existing illnesses are considered to be most at risk.
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