Solidarity

If we are to defeat this virus, we need a genuine global effort to share resources and properly distribute a vaccine if ever this becomes available. Anything less than effective global solidarity will lead to this pandemic recurring in waves and the world’s economy caught in intermittent lockdowns.

At the level of governments, French President Emmanuel Macron led the way in convening a caucus of the richest economies to pool resources to aid the weaker economies.

The US did not send a representative to this meeting. International solidarity is an alien concept for the Trump administration. Fortunately, the Gates Foundation participated in this valuable initiative. It would never occur to a warped person like Donald Trump to share anything with anybody. No one ever accused the American President of performing philanthropy – or, for that matter, capable of empathy or strategic thought.

At any rate, the principal institutional instrument for aiding the poorer nations and sharing instruments to fight the virus will have to be the World Health Organization (WHO). In the midst of this pandemic, the WHO is a precious resource for all humanity.

But last month, Donald Trump, desperately searching for a scapegoat for his own ghastly incompetence, announced the US would be cutting its contributions to the WHO. That is a setback for all humankind.

The second initiative launched this week is a network of advocacy groups aiming to spark a global social movement to advance a long-term response to this crisis centered on building harmony with nature and altering the wasteful lifestyles of the recent past.

The goal, according to spokesmen of this new social movement, cannot be a return to the old “normal.” That old “normal” was destructive of the Earth and would invite waves of calamities, from pandemics to extreme weather, in the future. A truly “new normal” will have to dawn for humanity to thrive in harmony with the natural world.

This second initiative, too, will not sit well with the Trump administration. Recall that Trump unilaterally withdrew the US from the Paris Accord on Climate Change. Trump is a climate change denier and, over the past three years, has been preoccupied with dismantling environmental regulations to pave the way for the big corporations to rake in super profits.

The rest of the world will have to do without US leadership if we are to move out of this pandemic. For as long as Trump is there, the US will abdicate on its responsibilities, look ever more inward and become a cesspool for disease.

Blame game

A memo circulated among the talking heads of Trump’s Republican Party proposes working two themes: projecting Trump as the economic savior and portraying the pandemic as an “attack” by China. As the economy slides, the strategy becomes more dependent on attacking China.

These are the talking points to help Trump get reelected. It involves reassigning blame away from the sitting president. It also involved picturing the Democratic challenger as “weak on China.”

On the basis of this partisan spin strategy, US government has begun behaving strangely.

The past few days, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been claiming, without evidence, the virus originated from a laboratory in Wuhan. That contorted claim has been rejected by America’s defense partners and even by the US intelligence agencies.

It does not help Pompeo that doctors have confirmed patients in France and in Nebraska have been infected by the coronavirus as early as November last year. China’s own timeline puts the outbreak of infections in Wuhan at the last week of December.

When seven patients exhibited symptoms of a “new flu,” China’s top virologists were deployed to the scene. Dr. Zhang Jixian was diagnosing the first cluster of patients on Dec. 27, 2019. This is significant because Dr. Li Wenliang, the ophthalmologist celebrated as the virus “whistleblower” began posting his observations of a “new disease” on social media on Dec. 30. By that time, China’s epidemic alert system was already on the case.

On the same day, the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission had already issued an urgent notification to all medical institutions under its jurisdiction, providing guidance for the appropriate handling of patients afflicted with “pneumonia of unknown cause.” By Dec. 31, the National Health Commission had assembled an expert team to be deployed to Wuhan.

On Jan. 1, the WHO set up an Incident Management Support Team to coordinate with Chinese authorities. On Jan. 2, the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences began identifying the pathogen that afflicted the first batch of patients. By Jan. 3, China began regularly informing the WHO, the US and all other countries in the region about the progress of their work in identifying the pathogen.

On Jan. 4, the head of the China CDC discussed the new disease with his counterpart at the US CDC.  On Jan. 5, WHO published its first bulletin on the outbreak to the world’s medical and scientific community. By Jan. 10, WHO issued a comprehensive package of technical guidance for all countries. By Jan. 12, China publicly shared the genetic sequence of the new coronavirus to assist in developing tests and possibly a vaccine.

Considering that it took American scientists nearly two decades to identify the HIV that causes AIDS, the Chinese response was rapid. And on each day in those crucial two weeks, the world’s scientific community was kept abreast of developments.

Those vital two weeks are thoroughly documented. An important plank of Trump’s disinformation campaign could not withstand the evidence.