Why the West is overreacting to coronavirus
By Md
Enamul Hassan
There is
a saying that faults are thick where love is thin. This proverb holds fully
true when it comes to the treatment by the West, especially the US, of China.
The US government and US media seem to lie in wait for an opportunity to
tarnish the image of China. The US deals with China affairs as if the largest
economy of the world is suffering from some sort of pending-replacement
anxiety.
No
matter what happens in China, the West leaves no stone unturned to mislead the
world as it spreads negative, twisted falsehoods. The West has already proven
its vindictive and anxious mentality with a large-scale propaganda war against
China. Western media constantly wages smear campaigns against the China-proposed
Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), Xinjiang and Tibet, two of China’s autonomous
regions.
From the
very inception of the outbreak of the novel coronavirus pneumonia (NCP) in
Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei Province, the West - the so-called saviors of
humanity and guardians of human rights - has shown its ugliest face to the
world. They have acted out of their old habits as they demean China and its
people. But China has taken swift, effective and successful measures to curb
the outbreak of NCP. The Chinese government has spared no efforts in this
regard, including quarantining cities and constructing a 1,000-bed hospital in
just 10 days.
China
has stopped at nothing in its attempt to prevent the further spreading of the
virus and safeguard the world from the contagion. China’s comprehensive and
rigorous prevention and control measures have helped the world make necessary
preparations to prevent and control the spread of the epidemic.
People
around the world have sent messages of encouragement to the Chinese people in
support of their fight against NCP. The leaders of different countries and
international organizations have also expressed condolences, sympathy, and
solidarity to the Chinese leadership and people in their unprecedented battle
against the epidemic.
The
World Health Organization (WHO) said China deserves the international community’s
gratitude and respect for having taken very serious measures to contain the
NCP, which have prevented widespread export of cases overseas. The speed that
China detected the outbreak, isolated the virus, sequenced the genome and
shared it with WHO and the world are very impressive, so is China’s commitment
to transparency and support of other countries and regions.
In many
ways, China is setting a new standard for outbreak response. China’s efforts to
combat the disease deserve respect and appreciation, and are worth learning.
These efforts not only reflect China’s high sense of responsibility for the
lives and health of its own people, but also its strong support for global
disease prevention and control. The WHO also believes that China will
effectively contain and eventually defeat the epidemic.
But the
West and its media remain unhappy with China’s measures to fight the epidemic.
They are fishing in troubled waters and overreacting to NCP. The US has raised
its China travel advisory to the highest level and temporarily banned the entry
of all foreigners who traveled to China in the past 14 days starting from
February 2. Several other Western countries have followed the suit.
The
Western media have been running news of the epidemic as if the Chinese and
China-made products are themselves the virus. Some of them are trying to
establish that the coronavirus is made in China. The West is doing its utmost
to create panic in China and to demonize Chinese people. They would like to
hamper trade and business in China, thereby isolating the second-largest
economy from the rest of the world.
Though
the West has been overreacting to the coronavirus outbreak, they have remained
silent about just how deadly common influenza is in the US. The Centers for
Disease Control and Prevention, leading national public health institute of the
US, estimates that so far there have been at least 22 million flu illnesses,
210,000 hospitalizations and 12,000 deaths from flu during the 2019-20 season.
The West
hasn’t been so clamorous about the outbreaks of Ebola and Swine flu viruses,
even though the rate of infections and deaths of those viruses were far more
than that of the novel coronavirus. Such a vivid double standard treatment by
the West proves that they have been suffering from the pending replacement
anxiety brought on by China’s rise.
The author is a former diplomatic
correspondent of the Daily Sun, an English-language daily newspaper of
Bangladesh. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn
Source:Global
Times
Why the West is overreacting to coronavirus
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