ONE would have thought that in the face of a worldwide health pandemic, which even as it appears to be ebbing in China where it started, is only now gradually reaching a crescendo in the rest of the world — and in its wake having so far claimed nearly two million victims globally and over 120,000 deaths and counting — that universally-accepted protocols or standard operating procedures on how to handle it will have been quickly and uncontroversially adopted and implemented.
Thankfully, pandemics with the ferocity of Covid-19 are few and far between.
But epidemics occur with some regularity and it may come as a little surprise that the world has been caught almost flat-footed now as the Covid-19 epidemic rapidly turned into a pandemic.
THE BLAME GAME
Recriminations have swiftly followed and now, regrettably, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has been caught in the dragnet, with the United States acting to suspend its funding to the organisation.
This comes at the worst possible time as the country seeks to investigate WHO’s pandemic-related conduct.
There will be those who argue this US action is a piece in its blame game as it struggles to handle the rapid spread of the virus in the country, now the worst affected one with over 25,000 deaths and over 600,000 cases as at last count.
The real tragedy may be that this pandemic also arrives at a moment of unprecedentedly fraught relations between the US and China on a host of non-health issues, nearly all of them with underlying Sino-US strategic rivalry at the root.
Mutual mistrust has already been brewing and may now have further deteriorated.
The fuse may have been lit with US politicians rather flippantly airing speculations on the origins of the virus in a military laboratory in Wuhan, China.
That apparently touched some frayed nerves in Beijing which inadvisably lashed back in kind when, ideally, Beijing should have laid out as expeditiously and transparently as facts become available what actually had happened.
WARRING SENTIMENTS
China’s anti-Covid-19 measures have been draconian and impressively effective on current evidence.
However, they have also given its diplomats bragging rights about the so-called China model which they readily use at exactly the time when that very model is causing much angst in almost every Western capital.
Adding further into the volatile mix this time, the battle may have been joined not just among ruling circles but also in the streets, in China and the West, and elsewhere besides.
Those outside China predisposed against it to begin with find almost every reason to pile on their antagonisms towards practically everything about China.
Those inside China and others without (especially amongst the Chinese diaspora) rightly or wrongly smelled a rat (but also largely oblivious to the fact that China’s own actions may be contributory factors at least), recoil in horror or disgust over foreign reactions to it and responded with equally ferocious counter-reactions.
DIVIDED WE FALL
The world hardly needs all this at a time when it is, according to credible economic forecasts, on the edge of an abyss not seen since the days of the Great Depression of the 1930’s.
All decks need to be on hand to save Mothership Earth so a great economic calamity will be mitigated if not averted.
At a time when concerted global action is sorely needed, it appears to be each nation unto itself. Even the European Union seems at a loss over a continent-wide pandemic response.
While it is encouraging that Asean is holding a virtual leaders’ summit to come up with a regional Covid-19 action-plan, the regional organisation needs to show that its actions can match the rhetoric of joint communiques.
At the end of the day, we must hope that the two top global leaders — Presidents Donald Trump of the US and Xi Jinping of China — can set aside whatever differences to provide desperately-needed leadership to all humanity which is currently facing an extreme peril.
The writer views developments in the nation, region and wider world from his vantage point in Kuching, Sarawak
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times