A call for unity, action: COVID-19 and principles of responsibility, hope

A towering tsunami is rolling toward mankind. It’s an enemy to all humans: a devilish virus, knowing no boundaries, no differences of class, ethnic origins, political systems or convictions. To defeat it, we also have to overcome our boundaries, distinctions of class and ethnicity, of conviction and differences of interest. We have to stand united as one – immediately! The West, staggering inexperienced into this, is (too) slowly learning from China, which gained experience from the SARS crisis in 2003 as well as the current successful containment of COVID-19, a virus more contagious than SARS and in some situations airborne.

When it became known, I stayed in China. I saw officials from all over the world voicing support, as auxiliary goods were sent while expats were flown out of Wuhan. “Wuhan Jiayou!” became known worldwide. This was good. But quite a few privately owned Western media were spilling racist filth at China, bashing China all over the Western world. I was extremely angry, because I knew that, at the same time, thousands of Chinese doctors and nurses willingly sacrificed their own lives not just to protect their own country, but conscious of the need to protect the whole of mankind!

The lack of empathy and gratitude as well as preparative foresight left me speechless. While China was buying the West valuable time, this time was wasted. The events in China were mostly perceived as if taking place on another planet, as if unrelated. Even today, as this is written, I saw a photo of a really huge and dense crowd of people at a concert in the UK. Didn’t they see what’s going on in Italy? They seemed not to be aware of the grave danger in the slightest bit! In many Western countries, even the system to test for the infection with COVID-19 hasn’t been working properly in this crucial stage!

A German proverb says: “A bag of rice fell over in China.” It means that you don’t find at all interesting what someone is telling you. This also has been the attitude of the German health minister who has missed out on three months of valuable time to prepare Germany. But he wasn’t the only one in the West who did not realize that it wasn’t a bag of rice that was falling over in China, but the provision of a valuable orientation for immediate preparation for the worst-case scenario, which has now occurred. Doesn’t that reflect a giant lack of responsibility or duty with regard to self and others, to family, to society, to humanity?

While the death toll rose and rose, with elderly people being left at home to die in a grim Italian warlike situation, people across the borders were, apart from gathering in large, dangerous crowds to buy toilet paper, living their lives as usual, with some happily infecting each other in dance clubs (which started the epidemic in Berlin), densely gathering on playgrounds with their kids without any protective measures, running marathons (like still recently in Frankfurt), and, as I heard from a more cautious friend back home, even angrily staring at single individuals who had the alarming audacity to wear protective respiratory masks! Tons of misinformation is circulating in English and other Western languages. I found the claim that the virus would be destroyed by temperatures higher than 26 to 27 C. How come that we (36 to 37 C) can be infected then? Why do Western official bodies not provide the open source Chinese information in translations to their populations? Everybody could immediately learn that the virus can even remain at 75 C for up to 15 minutes in water.

The British chief health adviser Sir Patrick Vallance openly said that he wanted 60 percent of the British population to get infected with COVID-19 – to achieve what he calls “herd immunity”. It left me shocked that from one day to the other, this “knight” presented his decision that every EU-freed Briton shall be part of an amorphous “herd”; in just one day the Western individual with its brain-tattoo of individual human rights melted to the matter of a perverse calculation. Finally (to use the current death rate in Italy as a yardstick here) more than 7.6 percent of the “herd” (approximately 3 million British citizens in relation to the Italian situation) were able to rejoice to be granted the “individual right” to die for one “nobleman’s” “herd immunity”! Hurray!

What is more absurd: The statement itself, or that an open protest of 600 British scientists was even necessary to stop this? And is it stopped? Britons are still on the dance floor. Is every “advisor,” every citizen in the West aware that no country is isolated? Policies which deliberately or even passively lead to the spread of COVID-19 will lead to more infections in poorer countries. If the Western infection rate is not slowed down (like in South Korea), COVID-19 will ignite hell on earth in these less-developed regions. This can only be mitigated, if all developed nations work together with China. All have to pull all levers to contain this spread as much as possible. It needs the responsibility of every single individual! Every minute counts!

We have to prevent COVID-19 from reaching us, moving everything to higher ground, to pull the system of our lives out of its deadly and devastating reach. Avicenna said: “There are no incurable diseases – only the lack of will. There are no worthless herbs – only the lack of knowledge.” Where there is a will, there is a way! We need a 100 percent cooperative approach and an active, hopeful attitude! Looking for solutions everywhere, approaching new ideas and older materials of science in new ways, thinking out of the box, overcoming prejudice and bias, examining naturopathy, traditional medical systems in Africa, India, China and elsewhere – all of this must also be part of it now! What if a cure for COVID-19 is growing in the burning rainforests of Brazil or Borneo without us knowing?

The author is a professor at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.