In a month or two –
Corona, Pandemic have become common names, read, shared and more so, feared by
millions.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly referred
to the “Chinese virus” when talking about the pandemic. Some of his critics insist the term is racist,
echoing official Chinese talking points. World Health Organization officials warned
against calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus” saying that it could
unintentionally lead to racial profiling.
Since emerging from Wuhan, China, just over three months ago, the new
coronavirus has spread to almost every country around the world. To some
Western media, the crisis is inherently political because it was caused in part
by incompetent, malicious, and corrupt politicians. To ignore the political
dimension of the coronavirus pandemic is an excellent way to ensure it happens
again. If we do not want another global pandemic, we have to hold accountable
the politicians responsible for making it worse, chief among them Chinese
President Xi Jinping. He did not create the novel coronavirus, but his
government’s missteps are directly responsible for its global transmission and
uncontrolled spread, with all its terrible consequences to populations and
economies around the world, wrote a popular media.
A global pandemic is not a
blind force of nature independent of human agency. It is a failure of
governance. An analogy with famines is useful.
For some
positive news – TN Govt – CM and Health Minister are doing great job in trying
to contain spread of virus. Health
Minister Mr C Vijaya Baskar is virtually everywhere – travelling, being with
people, with health officials and personally supervising the arrangements. Another good news is that Phagwara-based
Jagatjit Cotton Textiles (JCT) Mills Limited is all set to supply personal
protective equipment (PPE) for medical professionals and frontline workers
engaged in testing and treatment of COVID-19 patients. The PPE suit, also known as hazmat (hazardous
materials suit), by JCT Mills has been cleared and certified for production by
SITRA (South India Textile Research Association (SITRA) Coimbatore) — an
industry sponsored, Union government supported renowned research institute in
the textiles sector.
Caveat
emptor is Latin for "Let the buyer beware". It has become a proverb
in English. Generally, caveat emptor is the contract law principle that
controls the sale of real property after the date of closing, but may also
apply to sales of other goods. The phrase caveat emptor and its use as a
disclaimer of warranties arise from the fact that buyers typically have less
information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing.
An Airbus plane landed in
Spain on Saturday (Mar 28) carrying a cargo of more than 4 million face masks
from China, the European planemaker said, as countries race to source more
protective gear as they battle the coronavirus pandemic. Low on supplies or
money, traditional American allies like Spain, Italy, France and Japan have had
to turn to China for help. "China creates the poison and sells the
solution to it," foreign affairs expert Gordon Chang told Fox News. China
has used its money, medical equipment and teams of doctors and nurses in a
high-stakes campaign to show the world that while the United States scrambles
to contain the novel coronavirus within its borders, China is busy moving in on
some of America's closest allies.
"Never
let a good crisis go to waste," a senior fellow in the Atlantic Council's
Eurasia Center, wrote. "There is no better illustration that the medical
supplies and crews of doctors China has been supplying to Italy and other
European countries battling COVID-19. Beijing does carry a large share of the
blame for the global pandemic... but now it seeks to shape the narrative of the
crisis unfolding before our eyes. China
has also been floating the idea that it has donated all of the medical supplies
out of concern for the world. That's not the case, Chang said. "A lot of
the stuff that China claims has been donated has not been donate," he
said. "It's been sold." China has come through for several countries
but, in some, it has fallen short of expectations.
People in the United
States and Europe are wrong not to wear face masks in public
during the Covid-19 pandemic, according
to the head of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. “The big
mistake in the US and Europe, in my opinion, is that people aren’t wearing
masks,” Gao Fu, the agency’s director general, said in an interview with
Science Magazine, one of the world’s leading academic journals. “This virus is
transmitted by droplets and close contact,” he said. “Droplets play a very
important role – you’ve got to wear a mask, because when you speak, there are
always droplets coming out of your mouth.” Not everyone agrees with Gao’s
assessment, however. The World Health Organisation (WHO), for instance, says that only people
showing symptoms of infection or those caring for someone that has Covid-19
needs to wear a face mask. The European and US disease control and
prevention centres take a similar view to the WHO. But Gao said people should
err on the side of caution.
But Beijing’s efforts – which
state media has called “China’s solution to fight the pandemic” – have had a
mixed response, and analysts say its “mask diplomacy” will do little to
convince critics in the West. The US Army Europe said it had delivered medical
supplies and equipment – including hospital beds, mattresses and adjustable IV
poles – from its base in the Italian port city of Livorno to the hard-hit
region of Lombardy. US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said earlier that the
country had offered more than US$100 million in medical aid to other nations –
including long-time enemy Iran.
Spain’s capital has
stopped using a rapid Covid-19 test kit made by a Chinese company after
research suggested it was not accurate enough.
In Spain, Health Minister Salvador Illa
announced Wednesday that the country had bought $467 million in medical
supplies from China, including 950 ventilators, 5.5 million testing kits, 11
million gloves and more than half a billion protective face masks. Soon after
receiving the supplies, the Spanish government announced plans to return 9,000
"quick result" test kits to China, El Pais reported, because they
were deemed substandard, specifically the sensibility of the test was around 30
percent, when it should be higher than 80 percent. China admitted that
the kits they sold to Spain were bought from Bioeasy, a Chinese company not
licensed to make them. The time and money Spain wasted on faulty supplies could
have devastating effects on a country that is now in its second week of a
national lockdown after cases of COVID-19 spiked.
The Spanish Society of
Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology (SEIMC), one of Spain’s leading
research institutes, said on its website it had found that nose swabs developed
by Shenzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology had an accuracy rate of less than 30 per cent. It is not Spain alone. Dutch
officials have recalled 600,000 face masks manufactured in China because they
did not meet quality standards, the government’s health ministry said on
Saturday. The news shocked frontline medical staff in the Netherlands, who rely
on high-quality products to protect them from contracting Covid-19, Dutch
public broadcaster NOS said. Half of the shipment of 1.3 million supposedly
top-of-the-line face masks – known as N95 in the United States and Hong Kong –
had already been distributed to doctors and nurses treating the most critical
Covid-19 patients, the government said.
Sad – the acts
of China seems outrightly bad and are
highly condemnable!
With regards – S.
Sampathkumar
29.3.2020
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