The Sunday Mail
Kuda Bwititi
The third wave of Covid-19, driven by the Delta variant, has been the most devastating cycle of coronavirus so far, exposing the continued fragility of the world against the disease.
The Delta variant, according to experts, is faster and more transmissible, and its spread like a wild fire over the past few months demonstrates that as the disease continues to mutate, nothing is guaranteed.
With the Covid-19 fourth wave now hovering over some countries, it is probable that a fifth or sixth wave will hit the globe, varying in intensity and destruction.
All this is happening as efforts are being made in vaccinating world populations with various degrees of success: the most developed countries have made significant gains in inoculating their populations but poorer countries in the developing world are lagging behind.
Predictably, the danger in the inequities, spawned in a large part by unequal access to vaccines, is that the even advanced countries remain vulnerable economically and socially because the world is not safe until everyone is safe. Those are the dynamics of today’s globalised order. It means that all hands must remain on deck to find solutions in containing the Covid-19 pandemic.
In this light, it is sad that the world is being led down the garden path by the United States of America as the country continues to play cheap politics over what it has termed “origins tracing” meant to apportion the blame on China for spawning the deadly virus, allegedly in an accidental “lab leak”. Experts, including the World Health Organisation which conducted a study tour of China in January, have dismissed this theory as a distant possibility, among other plausible origins.
However, the US has been waging a massive propaganda effort whose import is not to find solutions to fighting the disease but just to smear China – its global rival – for a few cheap political points.
Currently, the US Intelligence agency is making frantic efforts to prove the claim of “lab leak” by the end of August.
According to information from within the US administration and various reports related to the development, the US intends to release the report by the end of August as scheduled, make up misleading conclusions, list the so-called doubts that can be traced to a “lab leak,” produce the so-called evidence of China’s obstruction of origins-tracing investigation, and raise suspicion on virus-leaking from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The US’ desperate push has so far included what one leading global publication called, “multiple approaches, including pressuring the WHO and Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to launch the ‘second-phase origins tracing’ on China as soon as possible, conducting a third-party independent investigation outside the framework of the WHO with allies when necessary, and exerting pressure on more governments, scientific research institutes, NGOs and individuals to participate in the global origins-tracing investigations”.
Further, it is understood that the US is also pressing its allies, the media and some scientists to put pressure on China, smearing the Asian Giant on “covering up the truth of the origins of the virus” and blaming China for using “vaccine diplomacy,” so as to coerce developing countries and China’s neighbouring countries to go along with the US’ strategic attempts. That the US is sparing no efforts just to win a propaganda war is unfortunate. It shows the moribund nature of Joe Biden’s administration as a country that has lost global leadership and its moral compass.
The ultra-competitive nature of the US, hinged on lack of values and anomic in nature, is a danger to the world, especially in developing parts where the disease will likely have far more lasting effects.
The US should have been using its resources and emotions for good. Currently, it is China that is doing the most for the world in combating the disease through distribution of vaccines and deployment of science to stop the disease. China has either donated or sold vaccines to dozens of countries across the world, including Zimbabwe.
In Africa, less than five percent of the population is inoculated from the disease and all indications are that it will take two or more years to get the people vaccinated.
The same goes for other developing regions of the world, including South America. This is a present and continuing danger that will ultimately affect even the most advanced nations. Objectively speaking, getting vaccines across the world and giving the World Health Organisation support to lead efforts to fight the disease, are the things that should preoccupy the international community right now.
Individualism, hubris and focus on conspiracy theories such as the “lab leak” claim only retard the fight against the pandemic, at a huge cost to humanity.
