Not to mention fixing all of the other failures that allowed COVID to kill millions worldwide. Everyone's pointing fingers but hardly anybody's talking about improving epidemiology and public health policy (which the US is long overdue for a reckoning on).
One of those failures, by the way, was the seeming assumption that whatever state a global health emergency started in would act in something resembling good faith. Regardless of how COVID came to be, China wasted precious time deflecting when it should have been diligently helping to sound the alarm and properly investigate.
And how many other countries might have prevaricated in the same fashion, if the pandemic had started within their borders? This is not a failure concerning China specifically. Indeed, there will come a point where blaming China for COVID, however cathartic that might be, will be counterproductive to preventing future catastrophes.
My takeaway was the huge denial most of the rest of the world put itself into.
When it was still only Wuhan, everyone assumed it would go down like sars again, it's just "a Chinese thing" and could never happen in the developed world. We feasted on the images of overcrowded hospitals, people collapsing in waiting rooms, and felt good about or country.
Then when it became clear that China messed up containing the spread and it would not only hit other cities in China but the rest of the world too, we did.... Nothing. Like a toddler we tried solving the problem by ignoring it. Forgotten were the images of chaos and death from Wuhan, politicians would assure us "that it's under control and go away soon". Just how can you suddenly pull such a 180 as soon as it arrives at your country? Then the first cases popped up and "we did contact tracing and stopped the chain". Great, but hoe does it prevent new cases from entering the country?
I came from beijing back to germany on Feb 26, 2020. Getting out of the plane there was... nothing. No temperature checks, no masks, no form to fill in, no "hey please stay at home for two weeks". It went from sitting in a plane for 8 hours with a mask to just randomly boarding a train across germany with nobody giving a shit. It was unreal.
But then, when it eventually got real bad in the West, we pulled yet another 180 and stopped ignoring covid and started going "well China should have prevented it", when we got a head start of about a month where we could perfectly see what this virus does, yet didn't take any measures on our side whatsoever and just let it happen. I know, it's always easier to blame someone else across the planet, but I'm most surprised and disappointed by my own government. I'm wondering how things would have gone if this had originated in Germany.
Exactly the same. Things would be the same. There are just as many shitty liars (by proportion at least) in Germany as there are in China. Covering your mistakes is a natural human behavior, if not the nicest thing to do.
Not to mention fixing all of the other failures that allowed COVID to kill millions worldwide. Everyone's pointing fingers but hardly anybody's talking about improving epidemiology and public health policy (which the US is long overdue for a reckoning on).
One of those failures, by the way, was the seeming assumption that whatever state a global health emergency started in would act in something resembling good faith. Regardless of how COVID came to be, China wasted precious time deflecting when it should have been diligently helping to sound the alarm and properly investigate.
And how many other countries might have prevaricated in the same fashion, if the pandemic had started within their borders? This is not a failure concerning China specifically. Indeed, there will come a point where blaming China for COVID, however cathartic that might be, will be counterproductive to preventing future catastrophes.