Just Saying | Never mind China, look to the US for the next big coronavirus crisis
- Yonden Lhatoo contrasts what China has done to contain the Covid-19 epidemic with how little the US is doing, warning that American complacency may turn out to be the real threat to the world
I know the world is not done yet with crucifying China for the coronavirus crisis, and much of the bad press is justified, given how this contagion was inaugurated by a country with total control over information and a track record of cover-ups.
But let’s take a breather from all the xenophobic hysteria and victim-blaming for a calm, calculating look at what China has done so far in containing the epidemic to understand how the dynamics have changed and why the time has come for other countries to snap out of the schadenfreude and realise they cannot afford to throw stones any more while living in glass houses.
After locking down entire cities and placing tens of millions of citizens under quarantine, China’s authoritarian government has managed to put a lid on the proliferation of Covid-19 to quite an extent.
For the first time since the outbreak began more than two months ago, the Hubei province epicentre had no new cases to report – except ground zero in Wuhan – for two days in a row this week.
The daily number of new infections across mainland China fell below 100 on Saturday. Hospitals packed to the rafters with Covid-19 patients just a couple of weeks ago have empty beds to show now.
All this is because the country is on a war footing, with the World Health Organisation acknowledging it as “perhaps the most ambitious, agile, and aggressive disease containment effort in history”.
