COVID 19: The US China Blame Game & the Failure of the West
Karel VEREYCKEN
Political Analyst, Vice-President of Solidarité & Progrès,
Director of the French Monthly Nouvelle Solidarité
Contributor to the Schiller Institute
Before taking up this issue, one has to recognize the extraordinary success of China in dealing at home with the Covid-19 pandemic.
At the close of 2019 and in the early days of 2020, Chinese doctors alerted the world the pandemic was on its way. On December 31, the WHO’s Country Office in China picked up a media statement by the Wuhan Municipal Health Commission warning of cases of “viral pneumonia”. Three days later, on January 2, 2020, the WHO informed all the partners of the Global Outbreak Alert and Response Network (GOARN) about that cluster. These include major public health agencies, laboratories, sister UN agencies, international organizations and NGOs. The virus was rapidly identified, sequenced and all information shared worldwide to scientists and potential vaccine developers.
Today, since its outbreak, the virus has infected 212.5 million people and taken the lives of 4.4 million persons. So far, China registered 106,812 confirmed cases and only 4,848 deaths for a 1.4 billion population. On its side, the USA unfortunately registered 37.9 million cases and 626,457 fatalities for a total population of 330 million people. In other words: with a population 4 times larger, China has 130 times less deaths than the US… In the EU, inhabited by 450 million people and a world class health system we registered so far 35,8 million cases and 748,358 fatalities or 154 times more than in China… whose population is more than three times larger than the EU…
Since January 14, 2021, China has not registered a single death of Covid-19, while the WHO expects more casualties worldwide in 2021 than in 2020. And now again, after an initial three-week outbreak of the much more contagious delta variant, China, on August 23, declared that besides a small number of imported cases, the number of local cases fell to zero. These statistical differences are so stunning that the West remains in total disbelief about the sincerity and reality of China’s methods and achievements.
Since China’s success in coping with the pandemic cannot be true, stories are invented to “explain” what the West decides to be “reality”: China, they say, has falsified its statistics. Others claim, without any proof, that the virus in China was “less deathly” than elsewhere.
The real difference between the West and China, are differences of method, priorities and outlook. While China demonstrated repeatedly the efficiency of its “Zero Covid” method, the West denies its results and slanders it as “communist”, “autocratic” and “totalitarian”. Even worse than a diversion, the ludicrous accusation that China “created” the virus and now should pay the price !
The “Zero Covid” approach puts people and collective health first and especially above profit. Of course, China, who fought already against the outbreak of SRAS (Sars-COV-1), in 2002-3 was psychologically far more reactive than the West: when an epidemic pops up, borders are sealed off and activities involving interpersonal contact temporarily suspended, including public transportation and schools. In Wuhan, in a matter of weeks and days, two large hospitals were build in a record time, reinforcing the population’s confidence that its government is taking care of them. The authorities, but also the PLA, the communities and local citizen committees, all participate, with high tech such as 5G, in large scale testing, contact tracing, long distance telehealth, in depth screening and strict quarantine. Contagious patients with mild or no symptoms (asymptomatic), are NOT send home but isolated in hotels or congress complexes. Others isolate at home and get their food delivered by local committees whose members keep them informed and monitor their temperature.
In the West, the financial circles dominating its economy were very scared. Not at all about the potential deaths that could result from the epidemic, but about the potential return of state policies that could abolish their privileges.
As American economist Lyndon La Rouche warned, since august 15, 1971, banks and money traders have increasingly taken control over the value of currencies, of interest rates, of budget, fiscal and finally of economic and social policies, all oriented toward short term investments into speculative bubbles and at the detriment of physical production and human life. As a result of short-sighted policies, the production of face masks and of most active principles of medical drugs, including vaccines, were outsourced to India and Asia long time ago. Hence, the US and European health system has been bled to death. I can tell you: in France, Intensive Care Units (IUC) were already overwhelmed, way before Covid-19 !
To brainwash populations into accepting their own destruction, real values of love and solidarity have been increasingly replaced by an obnoxious and egoistic libertarian ideology. While many people resist, the fake “personal freedom” –of doing as one likes with one’s own body rather than sacrificing oneself for the freedom of the other– became the dominant cultural mindset.
And when the epidemic came, both Europe and the USA decided that, to keep open borders and maintain free trade, one had to learn how to “live with the virus”. As a result, inefficient half measures and “Stop and Go” became the rule, supposedly to balance between people’s physical and economic health. Flows of people and virus were managed as cattle. Governments listened more to private managers using blind computer simulations than to scientists and doctors. “Zero Covid” can’t work here, they objected. Instead of mobilizing the population and boosting production, people were told to wait for medical deliveries from abroad. At the same time, the pandemic continues and will produce more and more deadly variants. Today, those who denied the seriousness of the epidemic and those who decided to try to “live with the virus” (or those that were forced to do so because of the importance of their informal economy) are the worst off, including economically.
But instead of calling into question its own failures, the West is now blaming China. China, de facto, by its example, is in a position of leadership while the US and EU governments, have been crippled twofold: by their own free market and libertarian ideologies and by their lack of investments in both their production and workforce.
That is what one has to understand when they created the narrative that Covid 19 was the “China virus”! For the Anglo-American financial oligarchy of London and Wall Street, Covid 19 was just a “black swan”: it could mean the end of their privileges and bring back to power what US president Abraham Lincoln called “the government of the people, by the people, for the people”.
A pandemic is not a specific problem to the West or to China, but to Humanity. Clean water, adequate food, infrastructure, diagnostics, vaccines and medical treatments should be provided to all, and not only to the wealthy 10 countries that confiscated 95 percent of the vaccines.
Therefore, my advice to the West is to not wait for an even worse epidemic to stop competing and try to cooperate with China and other powers to make world health a reality for all including itself.
Footnote:
1. Of course, national differences exist. In China, only 1.8 % of the population is older than 80, while for example in France, that proportion is 6.2 %. However, in China, only 6 % of those suffer from obesity, to be compared with over 25 % in France. But these differences are insufficient. The US and the EU are rich, while China after having lifted 800 million out of extreme poverty, remains relatively poor.