Poland’s coronavirus response is being labeled as one of the most successful in the world and ranks at the top with Germany and Japan, according to Luis Huete, a leading world economist and expert in international management.
His report in Spanish has sent the Polish internet abuzz due to a graph which ranks Poland as one of the best countries in terms of managing the epidemiological and economic crisis compared to other European states.
Huete is highly respected and routinely gives lectures in many of the world’s top universities, including Harvard Business School.
He prepared his chart using economic forecasts released by the European Commission and the COVID-19 death toll per million citizens. Poland has one of the lowest death tolls per million in the entire EU.
The Spanish economist’s graph served in part as an accusation against the Spanish socialist government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, but also a general source of information for Europeans to compare how their governments have fared during the crisis.
Poland has found itself among the countries which most successfully have protected lives as well as the economy, with the graph putting it on par with countries such as Japan, Malta, Denmark, Austria, Germany, and Slovakia.
Spain is at the opposite side of the graph and has the highest death toll at 572 deaths per million citizens and the highest forecasted economic crisis, which foresees a 9.4 percent decrease in GDP decrease.
Italy, which was also harshly affected by the pandemic, has 508 deaths per million and an expected 9.5 percent GDP drop. Other countries in this worst-performing group include the United States, France, Ireland, and Belgium.
Poland is expected to see the lowest drop in GDP in all of Europe this year due to the coronavirus crisis, according to a report from Bloomberg.
Such graphs are raising skepticism over the depiction of Poland in the West as a country of eternal backwardness and the “regime of a far right government,” writes Huete.
Title image: Poland’s main ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, left, wearing a mask for protection against the coronavirus and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, May 2020, AP.
