The Trump administration’s scapegoating of China over its own disastrous mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic has relied on baseless conspiracy theory, unscientific claims and hyperbole. This week the president’s National Security Advisor went further by comparing the virus outbreak to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
Another week and another self-imposed isolation of the United States from international consensus.
At the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly, the forum for the World Health Organization, held via teleconference from Geneva, there was near-unanimous rejection of the demand made by the Trump administration for an inquisitorial-style investigation into the coronavirus pandemic.
It is far from clear how the world will eventually transition from the current Covid-19 pandemic. There are both deep apprehensions and yet also hopeful signs of progress towards a better future.
The World Health Organization this week warns that the viral disease may not be eradicated and could become a permanent threat to human health in the same way that the HIV disease presents.
American President Donald Trump this week made the incendiary claim that the Covid-19 crisis unfolding in the U.S. is a greater danger to his country’s national security than Pearl Harbor or indeed the 9/11 terror incidents. Both events led the U.S. into wars.
U.S. pundits and politicians have with gusto taken to dusting off an old bogeyman – “evil communism” – in reference to China over the Covid-19 pandemic. Such retrograde rhetoric shows how politically bankrupt Washington is.
The Covid-19 pandemic is unleashing obscene bailouts of Western industries and companies, as well as lifelines for billionaire business magnates.
It is grotesque that millions of workers are being laid off by corporations which are in turn receiving taxpayer funds. Many of these corporations have stashed trillions of dollars away in tax havens and have contributed zero to the public treasury. Yet they are being bailed out due to shutdowns in the economy over the Covid-19 crisis.
The spiteful petulance shown by President Trump this week in announcing the cutting off of U.S. funding to the World Health Organization casts a long shadow on his character and on bombastic claims of American leadership.
In the midst of a global pandemic, Trump has decided to pull the plug on U.S. financial support for the United Nations’ health body. At $400 million a year – 15 per cent of its total budget – the U.S. represents the biggest funder of the WHO. Kudos to the U.S. for its erstwhile support.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week reiterated that economic sanctions would continue against Iran until the goal of regime change was achieved. That was in spite of the fact that Iran’s death toll from the coronavirus pandemic has risen to over 4,000, and the country is clearly struggling to obtain medicines and equipment to defeat the disease.
“Fiddling while Rome burned” was how historians cast the ineffectual Roman emperor Nero when the ancient city was consumed by flames in 64 AD. The same expression could now apply to certain Western states, ideologues and pundits regarding the present coronavirus pandemic.
One would think that given the global emergency it would be entirely apposite to put aside antipathies and hostilities in order to work together as common human beings motivated by solidarity, compassion and a sense of survival. Lamentably, and bizarrely, this seems not to be the case.
In matter of just a few weeks the novel coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the argument for strong government intervention in economics to maintain society, as well as for nation states to cooperate in a spirit of solidarity and internationalism.
Over recent decades it has become fashionable among Western ideologues to dismiss the role of government as a “socialist” appendage impeding the efficiency of private capital and supposed free markets.
