Abstract:
This paper critically discusses the use and merits of global indices, in
particular, the Global Health Security Index or GHSI (Cameron et 2019) in times
of an imminent crisis, like the current pandemic. The index ranked 195
countries according to their expected preparedness in case of a pandemic or
other biological threat. The Covid-19 pandemic provides the background to
compare each country's predicted performance from the GHSI with the actual
performance. In general, there is an inverted relation between predicted versus
actual performance, i.e. the predicted top performers are among those that are
the worst hit. Obviously, this reflects poorly on the potential policy uses of
the index in imminent crisis management. The paper also uses two different data
sets, one from the Worldmeter on the spread of the Covid-19 pandemics, and the
other one from the INGSA policy tracker, to make comparisons between the actual
introduction of pandemic response policies and the corresponding death rate in
29 selected countries.
