In a global pandemic, the last things we need are politics and racism.
Yet, it seems, the United States, China and the World Health Organization are all too happy to play these cards as they try to shift the blame for the COVID-19 outbreak away from themselves.
US President Donald Trump, eager to avoid personal blame for the deaths of thousands of Americans that could have been prevented had he responded to early warnings instead of playing the new coronavirus down, has opened a racist can of worms by calling it “the Chinese virus.” That has inflamed xenophobia and racist attacks against Asian-Americans.
China, eager to rehabilitate its own image after the virus first appeared in the city of Wuhan in Hubei province, has turned to face-mask diplomacy by providing protective gear to other countries in the grip of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet it has also returned to its tendency to silence and to censor, an approach that had a devastating effect on Wuhan, where officials initially tried to stifle reports about the new virus back in December 2019.
China has now imposed restrictions on the publication of academic research on the origins of COVID-19, requiring all academic papers on the virus to be subjected to extra vetting before being submitted for publication. Studies on the origin of the virus will receive extra scrutiny and must be approved by central government officials, according to online notices—now deleted–published by two Chinese universities.
Worse, Chinese foreign ministry officials have floated the bogus claim that COVID-19 may have originated in the United States. “It might be the US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan,” on foreign ministry official said on Twitter. His claim was backed by another foreign ministry spokesman, who said there were “varied opinions” on the origin of the virus.
The World Health Organization, the UN agency that ought to be the global authority on the pandemic, has also clearly let politics get in the way of doing its job.
Taiwan, which has been successful in keeping its infection rates down, this week accused the WHO of failing to act on a warning that Taipei had sent it in December 2019 about the transmission of the coronavirus between humans.
Taiwan is excluded from the WHO because China, which claims it as part of its territory, demands that third countries and international bodies do not treat it in any way that resembles how independent states are treated.
This point was driven home in a widely seen online interview in which a senior WHO official, Dr. Bruce Aylward, pretended not to hear a question from a Hong Kong broadcaster about whether or not the UN agency would reconsider accepting Taiwan as a member. When the journalist offered to repeat her question, Aylward cut in: “No, that’s okay. Let’s move on to another question then”—then he hung up.
Much to Taiwan’s disadvantage, the WHO has lumped its coronavirus statistics into China’s, a practice that obscures its success in keeping the coronavirus at bay on the island.
None of this is particularly helpful in dealing with the deadly pandemic, in which the cost of straying from the truth can be counted in thousands of lives.