The Corona Virus Pandemic
Coronavirus is believed to have first been reported in the Huanan seafood market in Wuhan, China, according to the public mind. At the same time, other reliable sources quote Wuhan labs as the source of the virus. According to Laurie (2020), China’s inability to control the infection endangered the stability of life worldwide. Controversies started hitting the sky waves on the real number of those affected and succumbed to the pandemic in China. The major English speaking nations, U.S, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand were at loggerhead with China for lack of transparency and careless handling the virus.
Additionally, China was blamed by the U.S for providing false information that Covid-19 was not a human to human transmission virus (Scissors, 2020). The human to human transmission misinformation was claiming as many lives as possible as safety measures were ignored. The economy has been impacted negatively worldwide. There are many sets of unresolved questions, but why was China misinforming the public about Corona numbers to the world?
It remains a misery whether the coronavirus was human-engineered, lab accident, or from a bat. Shan-Lu et al. (2020) claim that there was no evidence of the virus being genetically engineered; according to them, the virus evolved naturally. However, a country of China’s caliber in health management and emergency response ought to provide answers as to why it did not act fast to control a natural pandemic. Consequently, countries were hardest hit, millions of people were infected, while hundreds of thousands were dying every day. The economy skewed towards a collapse. A new way of life faced people, staying, and working from home. Was the world being punished at the expense of China’s own national and political interest back home?
According to an article by Laurie, the bureaucratic hierarchy in China discouraged the spread of any information about the virus with the central government, who might need their help (Laurie 2020). As a result, the severity of the infection rapidly spread and was at full-blown and could not be contained locally. China ought to have been honest with the infections and deaths that were occurring. Szulczyk and Cheema reinstate that China gave wrong values of infections and deaths. Therefore her figures could not be relied upon in the quest to fight the pandemic. The government of China ought to have come forth and acknowledged the challenge in trying to suppress the virus to seek international assistance. Even though American intelligence agencies may have claimed during the early stages of the spread, that China was blind as the rest of the world on its numbers, it may not be accurate. Bureaucrats in China were silencing information dissemination, especially to other nations (Zhang, 2020). These pieces of information would have helped in the preparation and analysis of data and its timeline in suppressing the virus.
According to Scissors (2020), china lied about the human to human spread of the virus and refused to give out the samples of the virus to other nations so that a vaccine would be made. China being one of the biggest economic hubs, was protecting its markets from collapsing through the human to human transmission claim. It only meant that no Chinese nationals would be allowed into other nations since they would come into contact with people from different countries, thus spreading and risking other nationals’ lives. China was afraid of being locked out from its significant markets globally as it has recently created a robust demand for its finished products to ready markets all over the world (Okyere et al. 2020). It was wrong for China to deny the world critical information to help control the virus, at the expense of its economic growth.
The world’s economy has been negatively hit due to the pandemic. There have been low economic growth and inflation in most major markets. The pandemic has led to the shutdown of businesses globally, among them air transports, which completely shut down. The table below, according to Reuters’ poll, indicate a significant reduction in the unemployment rate in the U.S due to the pandemic. As a result, the government has set aside $500 billion to industries and direct payments to families.
Bryn Nelson (2020), a science journalist, took into the contrasting opinion of the majority, thereby looking into the positive impacts of the virus. Firstly, he claims the virus has changed the way of life, therefore, reducing human risks to other medical conditions, accidents, and earth has been recovering from human actions causing global warming. Contrastingly, many employees were furloughed, therefore lacking the means to sustain their families. As a result, many have diverted into drug abuse and depression, and eventual deaths. Life has been difficult even though there is more family bonding. On the other hand, cases of divorces have been on the rise in some countries as men and women have out loved each other. High cases of obesity have further been on the rise due to a lack of exercise and regular walks to burn fats. Obesity causes health risks like heart attacks and hypertension and eventually leading to death.
According to the British Media Journal, Alice Pong, a pediatric physician at Rady Children’s Hospital in California, was amazed at the decline in respiratory illness admission. The reduction of diseases like influenza has been caused by absenteeism from school and daycares. (Nelson, 2020). Furthermore, the coronavirus emphasizes on personal hygiene that some percentage might have been neglecting before the pandemic hit the world. Children are taught at the early stages of life on the importance of killing germs or preventing their spread. Despite these facts, a pandemic is a wrong way to improve the living standards of the current and future generations.
According to the World Health Organization (2020), there are measures one needs to take into consideration to stop the spread of the virus. Continually sanitizing using an alcohol-based hand wash to kill germs that may be in the hands and aid in the spread of Corona. People should avoid crowded places as one may be easily infected because the one-meter rule is hard to maintain. Additionally, touching your eyes, nose, and mouth where the virus quickly enters through into the body. Good respiratory hygiene is essential to one and the people around them. Covering the mouth and nose during coughing and sneezing using the elbow and tissue helps prevent the spread of the virus because coughs and sneezes spread it rapidly. Finally, one should stay at home and continuously maintain hygiene measures. Staying at home prevents the human from human contacts that may cause further infections by the infected. By undertaking all these measures by the World Health Organization, the virus can successfully be contained until normalcy returns. We shall overcome!
References
Laurie, G. (2020). How China’s Incompetence Endangered the World. Foreign Policy, 15.
Liu, S. L., Saif, L. J., Weiss, S. R., & Su, L. (2020). No credible evidence supporting claims of the laboratory engineering of SARS-CoV-2. Emerging Microbes & Infections, 9(1), 505-507.
Nelson, B. (2020). The positive effects of covid-19. BMJ, 369.
Okyere, M. A., Forson, R., & Essel‐Gaisey, F. (2020). Positive externalities of an epidemic: The case of the coronavirus (COVID‐19) in China. Journal of Medical Virology.
Scissors, D. (2020). Estimating the True Number of China’s COVID-19 Cases. AEI Paper & Studies, 1K.
Szulczyk, K. R., & Cheema, M. A. COVID-19: The impact of socio-economic characteristics on the fatality rate.
World Health Organization. (2020). Infection prevention and control during health care when novel coronavirus ( nCoV) infection is suspected: interim guidance, 25 January 2020.
Zhang, J. (2020). Is Mainland China the Source of all of Hong Kong’s problems?