Gauhar Zahid Malik
Islamabad
By adopting a proactive, multi-pronged and effective strategy against novel coronavirus (COVID-19), China has not only waged an epic battle against coronavirus but it has also conquered it in record period of time.
On the other hand, the United States of America, the most powerful economy in the world with plenty of resources and scientific advancement finds itself at the mercy of the deadly virus watching helplessly large number of its population, particularly the elderly people die helplessly because of “uncontrollable” virus. More than 81,000 Americans have so far been reported dead due to coronavirus and the country fears it might touch 100,000 mark in next couple of weeks.
China, in order to fight a highly infectious disease, the first and the foremost task is to stop it from spreading further locked down virus epicenter Wuhan and immediately designated 86 hospitals to treat the disease.
Immediately after the virus was reported from its epicenter in Wuhan, China responded to the challenge severing all the contacts from outside and within two weeks built two field hospitals to offer 2,600 beds for the severely-ill. The city added another 13,000 beds in 16 public-facility-turned hospitals for people with mild symptoms.
The US on the other hand wake up to the challenge some three months after the WHO reported COVID-19 as a potential global risk and President Trump instead of taking the bull by the horns floated unfounded theories that the virus came from a lab in the city of Wuhan — an idea US intelligence sources and scientists have said lacks evidence.
While talking to Pakistan Observer, a senior official of the Chinese embassy revealed China was least worried about the negative reports about China the US propaganda mills were continuously projecting to the world. “It is nothing but an attempt to get a face-saving from its own people and international community for failing to protect the US citizens,” said he.
Obsessed by a fixation to deflect his people as well as media attention from the US shortcomings and his bad governance, President Trump even blamed Beijing of using the virus to jeopardize his efforts to secure a second term in the White House.
According to the Chinese official, as Abraham Lincoln once said, “You can fool all the people at some time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time” Trump’s tackling of virus is being questioned by critics at home and abroad.
Referring to some of his allegations, the senior diplomat said, WHO has made it clear that naming COVID-19 as “Chinese virus” or “Wuhan virus” didn’t serve any purpose other than political as it could break out from anywhere in the world. Even The New York Times, the American Broadcasting Company (ABC), the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and other mainstream media in the West all reported that the wrongful connection of Asian communities with COVID-19 stoked serious xenophobia, and frequent occurrences of racist discrimination and harassment against these communities in the US, he further said.
Another allegation being repeatedly hurled by the US propaganda mills that Wuhan is the origin of the virus has also been proven untrue, baseless and false.
This will be incorrect to say Wuhan is the origin of COVID-19. The source is not still identified said he adding identifying the source of the virus should be based on science and should be studied by scientists and medical experts.
The allegation that virus was constructed by the Wuhan Institute of Virology has also been deflated as available evidences show that it is natural in origin, not man-made, said the official while presenting a number of references in support of his claim. Even the West has dismissed the claim and on January 30, this year the prestigious UK medical journal, The Lancet, published an article on COVID-19 which considered the virus a new human-infecting coronavirus, based on the phylogenetic analysis of the ten 2019-nCoV genome sequences from nine confirmed patients from Wuhan.
Besides Executive Director of the WHO Health Emergencies Programme Michael Ryan also mentioned on May 1, 2020 that numerous scientists have looked at the genome sequence of this virus and “we are assured that this virus is natural in origin.”
To the allegation that China could have contained the virus within Wuhan in the first place, he said China took the most stringent measures within the shortest possible time, which has largely kept the virus within Wuhan. Statistics show that very few cases were exported from China.
To the allegation that China is reopening wildlife markets and it should immediately close all “wet markets” the senior official said there was no so-called “wildlife wet market” in China. China has passed legislation banning all illegal hunting and trade of wild animals.
While responding to the allegation that China is not transparent in data releasing and its official numbers of confirmed cases and fatalities are too low to be true, he was of the view China has been fully open and transparent about its COVID-19 data. The figures can well stand the test of history.
Unfortunately, the US has been escalating its political bashing of China and the Chinese media outlets in the US, he said adding in December 2018, the US Department of Justice required CGTN America to register as a “foreign agent”. On 18 February 2020, the US State Department designated five Chinese media entities in the US, including Xinhua News Agency, as “foreign missions”.
Such a discriminatory visa policy toward Chinese journalists like giving them only single-entry visas smacks of the US government’s obsession with increasing might and influence of China around the globe and the United States’ weakness at home.
