Prevention or curve? This is the topic often raised when a pandemic brakes out. When looking back, people often say that if better prevented, things wouldn’t get that bad. But is this really the case? It depends.
Firstly, we need to come to an agreement the health budget is limited and can’t cover up all the costs of both sides. This is especially true when prevention needs to be done continuously as whenever there is a stop there will be a risk. To make matters worse, if an unexpected outcome happens during that time, all the costs and effort devoted beforehand will be in vain. What’s more, this burden severely impacts countries that don’t have an abundant budget even before, not to mention the effectiveness of prevention actions and health education is to be doubted in these countries. Thus, enhancing the curving system to ensure the country is well-equipped and responds immediately to the outbreak should be a better choice for these countries.
On the other hand, things are not the same. For countries whose civilians have a prevalent high level of education, prevention does not only work better than curving as the outspread is much harder to control than the outbreak, but also contributes to a lower number of people to be affected, which means a decrease in the chance of further risks concerning mutations. In a word, for countries that can afford prevention costs in addition to an eligible therapy system, then health education as well as hygienic propaganda should be carried out to release the effect caused by the disease.
To sum up, prevention should be added upon a well-working healthcare system. Without the foundation of curving, there will be no point of prevention. So, prevention should be especially focused by the countries with sufficient budgets.