Covid pandemic: We work together or sink together

People maintain safe distance as they queue to buy vegetables at a stadium turned into a makeshift market during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to limit the spreading of Coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Vijayawada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India, yesterday. Reuters

In times of crisis, selfishness exacerbates the disaster. A person cannot stand guard to the money he has stacked in a secret room when the fire is engulfing him from all sides or the flood water level is rising. He should leave everything and try to save his life. At a time when the coronavirus pandemic is making science and knowledge appear primitive and pathetically and pathologically inadequate, the rich nations’ focus should not be on measures to protect their wealth or their economies, but on measures to save lives worldwide through global efforts.

Every dollar should be spent towards saving humanity from the existential threat it is facing. We need not overly worry about the fate of the economy now. But some world leaders like the United States president Donald Trump do not think so. On Tuesday, Trump, in yet another shocking statement, said social distancing had caused too much pain to the economy and added that he wanted the country “opened up and just raring to go by Easter,” on April 12.

At a time when nearly three billion people worldwide are under lockdown, leaders should not act irresponsibly and say ‘it’s the economy, stupid’. This is the time for big powers to exercise their soft power for the wellbeing of not only the populations within their nations but the world’s population at large. Can someone staying in a luxury suite in a seven-star hotel feel safe when the workers’ quarters in the basement is on fire? This is the time for superpowers to give leadership to a global effort in the war against the virus. The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for the world to act together to halt the menace.

“COVID-19 is threatening the whole of humanity — and the whole of humanity must fight back,” Guterres said, launching an appeal for $2 billion to help the world’s poor. He said individual responses were not going to be enough.

At the onset of the Covid crisis, the United States, which yesterday became the worst affected country in terms of number of cases, or for that matter China or Russia, should have convened a video conference of leaders of nations affected by the virus. The world should have by now seen a global command centre led by a team of experts working in coordination with the World Health Organisation.

Sadly, this week’s G7 ministerial conference online produced more talk than substance, with the US Secretary of State making a big deal about a puerile dispute with China over the US insistence that the virus should be called Wuhan virus.

In contrast to Washington’s inadequate or irresponsible movement in the direction of a global response, Cuba, despite crippling US economic sanctions, is playing an exemplary role, by sending brigades of doctors to Italy where the death toll soared past 8,200 yesterday, and to neighbourhood countries such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname and Grenada to help these nations deal with the pandemic.

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