GOVERNMENT REGULATION AS A FACTOR IN COUNTERACTING COVID-19

Abstract

The most successful fight against COVID-19 is demonstrated by countries with effective state institutions, which have become absolutely critical when confronting SARS-CoV-2: from quarantine restrictions, equipping hospitals and providing financial assistance packages to national economies to developing COVID vaccines, deployment of their production and mass vaccination of the population until the formation of collective immunity. These countries are not only centers of highly adaptable business, but also of first-class research centers and leading pharmaceutical companies that have offered the world effective COVID developments and their mass production. However, the rapid application of this creative potential would be impossible without effective government regulation. After all, the price of a purely market response to SARS-CoV-2 is prohibitively high due to the inevitable loss of time and human lives in the formation of private funds sufficient to begin the development of COVID vaccines, their production, mass vaccination and the emergence of collective immunity. Thus, government regulation has become a key factor in transforming COVID vaccines into the public good. However, due to the different quality of such regulation in different countries, this benefit has signs of “nationality”: the first to receive it are wealthy countries, developers of COVID vaccines and their closest partners, which have a high level of governance. Countries deprived of such institutional advantages have found themselves trapped by COVID-19 in the already narrow corridor of their financial capabilities. Moreover, the way out of this trap is often associated with political demands, the nature of which quite often does not apply to SARS-CoV-2 or national conditions for overcoming it.