With the countries across the world reeling by the impact of Coronavirus pandemic, Buddhist majority countries are faring well. Has COVID-19 spared these Buddhist majority countries? Is there some Karmic grace to explain the comparative stand out in terms of the impact of the pandemic that has caused the never seen health and economic devastation else where?
The Buddhist majority countries include Cambodia, Thailand, Myanmar, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. These Asian countries have surprisingly fared very well during the worst pandemic caused by Coronavirus. Despite being close to the source of covid-19, in China, and to one of the current hot spots of the outbreak, India, these countries have only tiny outbreaks!
If we take a closer look into the number of cases from these nations, Thailand has reported just 58 fatalities while it has population of 70m. Similarly Myanmar reports just six deaths from 317 cases, while Cambodia has just 141 confirmed cases. Sri Lanka too has reported only 11 deaths from around 3000 confirmed cases. Bhutan is a standout with no fatalities from this deadly outbreak!
However, if we compare these with the nearby countries such as Indonesia (some 68,100 cases and 3,400 deaths), Philippines (50,400 cases and 1,300 deaths), India (third worst hit country in the world with surging cases) and China (the origin of the pandemic fearing second wave of surge). Other near by countries like Bangladesh and Pakistan are going through very large number of confirmed cases.
Popular Buddhist followers are Tibetans and there has only a negligible number of cases reported from inside Tibet. As far as Tibetans in exile are concerned, largest number of them are present in India where cases are hitting new records each day. But there has been only two fatalities from almost 150K people spread across the territory of India.
While it is not a question of religion, the common feature among these countries is Buddhist majority. A very important point from the study of such successes distrusting Chinese reassurances about the disease since the early stages of the pandemic. Since the outbreak of the Coronarvirus pandemic from China, most powerful nations in Europe, America and Asia were crippled. With no clear explanation on the successes of these poor countries, Buddhism is just a striking feature to look at.
Leave a Reply