State fragility and the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic:an ecologic analysis of data from 146 countries

Background:Global spread and impact of the coronavirus disease 2019(COVID-19)pandemic are determined to a large extent,by resistance to the pandemic and public response of all countries in the world;while a country's resistance and response are in turn determined by its political and socio economic conditions.To inform future disease prevention and control,we analyzed global data to exam the relationship between state vulnerabilities and COVID-19 incidences and deaths.Methods:Vulnerability was measured using the Fragile States Index(FSI).FSI is created by the Fund for Peace to assess levels of fragility for individual countries.Total FSI score and scores for 12 specific indicators were used as the predictor variables.Outcome variables were national cumulative COVID-19 cases and deaths up to September 16,2020,derived from the World Health Organization.Cumulative incidence rates were computed using 2019 National population derived from the World Bank,and case fatality rates were computed as the ratio of deaths/COVID-19 cases.Countries with incomplete data were excluded,yielding a final sample of 146 countries.Multivariate regression was used to examine the association between the predictor and the outcome measures.Results:There were dramatic cross-country variations in both FSI and COVID-19 epidemiological measurements.FSI total scores were negatively associated with both COVID-19 cumulative incidence rates(β=-0.0135,P<0.001)and case fatality rates(β=-0.0147,P<0.05).Of the 12 FSI indicators,three negatively associated with COVID-19 incidences were E1(Economic Decline and Poverty),E3(Human Flight and Brain Drain),and S2(Refugees and Internally Displaced Persons);two positively associated were P1(State Legitimacy)and X1(External Intervention).With regard to association with case fatality rates,C1(Security Apparatus)was positive,and P3(Human Rights and Rule of Law)and X1 was negative.Conclusion:With FSI measures by the Fund of Peace,overall,more fragile countries are less likely to be affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,and even if affected,death rates were lower.However,poor in state legitimacy and lack of external intervention are risk for COVID-19 infection and lack of security apparatus is risky for COVID-19 death.Implications of the study findings are discussed and additional studies are needed to examine the mechanisms underpinning these relationships.

The Impact of Climate Change on Country’s Fragility Assessment

The damage costs of climate change have the potential to cause the breakdown of governmental structures. The paper focuses on how climate change impacts the state’s fragility and how the government should intervene. The paper chooses temperature and rainfall as climate change indicators and establishes a comprehensive evaluating model. The weighting method of the model is determined by combining coefficient of variation method and improved entropy method. The model will output the objective comprehensive evaluation of state’s fragility. The state’s fragilities are quantitatively divided into three levels consisting of the fragile, the vulnerable and the stable in the model. For validation, this paper selects six representative countries and analyzes the degree and the approach of climate change’s impacts on state’s fragility. The fragile values by the model are consistent with the situation in these countries. The state’s fragilities are also predicted by back propagation (BP) neural network. This paper analyzes the impacts of human interventions on improving state’s fragility. The results indicate that the paper could provide reasonable suggestions for the government in the aspects of when and how to take what kind of interventions to improve state’s fragility.