Florida’s COVID-19 Record and Closing the Global Oxygen Gap

Editor's Note

The 2020 U.S. presidential race was the pandemic election. More than two hundred thousand Americans were confirmed dead from COVID-19 by election day and major newspapers devoted front-page coverage to their names. A campaign video famously featured vacant wooden chairs in empty city streets, representing the societal disruption and lives lost under U.S. leadership.

In the early days of the 2024 presidential election, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is the only major U.S. presidential prospect still campaigning on COVID-19, and his message is largely devoted to all the measures his state did not take in the pandemic. With signs this week that other candidates could be joining the fray, we give Florida's COVID-19 record the renewed attention it deserves and that future pandemic preparedness requires of all elected officials.

"International cooperation is in retreat," Kristalina Georgieva recently wrote, as the worldwide "rise of fragmentation . . . makes it nearly impossible to manage tremendous global challenges." This week, David Fidler reviews a summer of geopolitical fragmentation and its implications, from the expansion of the BRICS and NATO to the failure of the so-called Group of Two to achieve a global health détente.

Ramanan Laxminarayan and Leith Greenslade close out the week by highlighting the blind eye that world leaders have turned to the lack of access to medical oxygen globally, which studies have found to be as cost-effective as childhood vaccination. The authors argue against the shameful omission of that cause from the various high-level meetings occurring at this month's UN General Assembly.

As always, thank you for reading.—Thomas J. Bollyky, Editor