Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises.

• Date: 01 August 2022
• Author: Tayeb, Azmil

Public Health in Asia during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Global Health, Migrant Labour, and International Health Crises. Edited by Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider and Catherine Yukping Lo. Amsterdam, The Netherlands: Amsterdam University Press, 2022. Hardcover: 272pp.

During the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian countries were praised for their quick and decisive measures to curb the fast-spreading virus. Though tough and highly restrictive, these measures were necessary to see countries through the unprecedented public health crisis. Many attributed the early success of Asian countries' pandemic policies to their "national culture", which tends to be more "collective" and "consensus-based", as reflected in their high degrees of power inequality and uncertainty avoidance in the indexes established by social psychologist Geert Hofstede. The suggestion here, in other words, is that countries in Asia were effective in containing the spread of COVID-19 because their populations are compliant and risk-averse, have a strong respect for authorities and value consensus-building over individualism.

This volume, edited by Anoma P. van der Veere, Florian Schneider and Catherine Yuk-ping Lo, sets out to debunk...