Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

At the end of 2019, the Chinese authorities announced to the world that they had detected a virus that was attacking the respiratory systems of people in the city of Wuhan. The need to alert the world stemmed from the fact that the virus was being spread in the air.

In order to battle the spread of the disease, China immediately locked down Wuhan city. That proved to have been a very wise and effective way of fighting the novel virus. 

As the virus kept spreading in the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) sprang into action. At first, the question was how this emergency should be treated. Many drugs were tried and many were also discarded. Fear and frustration stalked all lands. A big effort began in many countries to develop a vaccine to protect the masses.

In the meantime, two views emerged in the US. On the one hand, the scientists were urging that the situation be taken seriously. They urged that immediate preparations be made to deal with outbreak. They warned of serious consequence of not taking immediate and serious steps.

On the other hand, the executive branch of government, led by Donald Trump, felt that the issue was being exaggerated. Moreover, the Trump administration, and the president in particular, expressed overconfidence. After all, the US was the most powerful country in the world and it would be able to wipe out the virus in no time should it reach the US. This was the sentiment up to early March 2020 in the US.

There were displays of arrogance by Trump and some in his administration. They have all grossly defended the government's inactions.

US experts, like experts in other developed countries, had long been talking about an event such as the COVID-19 attack. This was their summing up of the world experience and the many pandemics that had visited us throughout history. Only a hundred years ago the "Spanish Flu" had killed millions in the world. Scientists warned that another such event was almost inevitable.

Based on that conclusion, scientists have been warning and urging governments to take precaution and to prepare for such an eventuality. After all, mankind's actions were rapidly changing the world's environment which was making a pandemic a most likely outcome.

The George Bush administration had taken this issue seriously. The US government under President Bush established a task force/think tank of scientists to advise government and guide preparatory actions.

President Obama maintained the organization and ensured that it was well equipped and funded. Those presidents took the warnings seriously and had put an organization in place to deal with such an eventuality. They quite rightly took guidance from scientists.

Enter Trump. On the assumption that he wanted to cut out unnecessary expenditure, Trump disbanded the group that was preparing for any type of pandemic. America became one of the most ill-prepared developed countries. Trump's was an extremely shortsighted decision.

Therefore, when COVID-19 first made its appearance Trump began to play down and even trivialize the real dangers that it posed. He himself is on record as saying that it would just disappear, and nothing to really be over concerned about.

He was even insulting to the WHO and the efforts it was making. He developed great hostility to that organization and pulled the US out of that UN body and halted America's financial contribution to it. That was a very serious blow to the world's response to COVID-19.

Trump began to show much impatience with his own scientists who were urging that this matter be taken seriously. They recommended wearing masks and even lockdown like what China has done. 

Many of the US technical personnel were removed from their posts because they showed disagreement with Trump. He was often insulting to many of the leading scientists in that field like Dr. Fauci, whose position became very uncomfortable. It was only Dr. Fauci's high sense of responsibility that kept him from resigning.

Trump himself refused to wear a mask and even organized many public meetings. Most people at those meetings were not wearing masks or followed social distancing rules. Therefore, the Commander in Chief became the chief spreader of the killer disease.

This situation led to political consequences. Trump began to lose popularity at the time when the US was going toward a presidential election. He therefore had to find another scapegoat to blame.

He began pointing accusing fingers at China. In this exercise he had the full support of the US media. The media in the US seems to be programmed against some countries, China being the foremost. The chorus was that China was to be blamed. To use the situation to politically attack China they began to accuse China of manufacturing the virus. All of this was to divert the public's attention from the great folly of disbanding the organization that was established to deal with a pandemic.

In the meantime, the WHO organized a high level team to investigate the origin of the virus. This group, made up of highly respected scientists, spent 28 days in China, working intensely on the matter.

Their conclusion was that it was extremely unlikely that the virus could have been created in a lab. The technical challenges for that appear to have been too great a challenge. The very strong evidence was that it was transmitted from animal to human. Most likely from Bats which are known to be carriers of COVID virus.

One would have thought that that would have been the end of the matter. However, that was not to be. The issue was turned into a political one to feed the anti-Chinese sentiments that have been created by the media in the US. The media played a big role in propagating this China falsehood.

They had considerable assistance first from Trump who coined the term "China Virus." 

With the change of government in the US one would have thought that the matter would have come to an end. After all, Joe Biden advocated taking the advice of the scientists during the elections campaign. He strongly attacked Trump's handling of the COVID crisis and his blatant disregard for science. He made considerable political mileage on Trump's anti-science stance, and that was probably the main reason that Biden got elected.

On taking power, President Biden did a great job in getting the vaccines into the arms of American citizens. His aggressive actions helped to slow down the spread of the virus in the US. He rightly listened to the experts and was guided by them.

However, President Biden has also shown his anti-China attitude on assuming office. Indeed, in many areas on the international scene we see no difference between Biden and Trump.

President Biden is probably more anti-China than Donald Trump. He has increased tensions in the South China Sea and has intensified the anti-China campaign. He has even gone further than Trump in reversing an old US policy on Taiwan. He made no secret of his stance which is to stop China's ascendency in every sphere of social life.

The US is now even going so far as to using its influence to force smaller countries to recognize Taiwan. This is raising tensions since China sees this as a sovereign issue and is not brooking any interference.

The political nature of the "blame China" campaign was shown at the G7 meeting which took place shortly after Biden's election. At the meeting he took a very strong anti-China stance. He even advocated that the G7 and NATO alliance countries create an alternative to China's Belt and Road Initiative. What is significant about this is that the main objective was not to help poor countries, but to retard and stop China's influence in the world.

Despite having a scientific analysis and conclusion from the WHO-sponsored team, which stated that it was unlikely that the virus originated in a lab, Biden ordered his intelligence agency, mainly the CIA, to launch its own investigation. It is clear that Biden is looking for some cover to blame China. Having not gotten it from the WHO he turned to the CIA. He seems to have hoped that the US intelligence community would come up with some "justification" to continue criticizing China.

After all it is the US intelligence community that justified President Bush's invasion of Iraq, with 100 percent false information. This was not a case where it misled Bush, but where it helped him to make a false case to invade Iraq. All of this is occurring because of the phenomenal and social economic progress that China has made over the last four decades. China has become an alternative source of finances for the third world countries. It has managed to break the monopoly of the World Bank and Western sources of finance. In doing so, third world countries have a greater degree of freedom.

An example of the growing independence and confidence of the third world leaders was seen in a recent interview between Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados with the BBC. The BBC interviewer was stopped in her tracks by the firm reply she got when she asked about Barbados and the Caribbean relations with China. It was a short response.

The constant attacks on China have forced it to respond. In doing so, it has unearthed much information which shows that the virus may not have started in Wuhan first. It even raised questions on the work of labs in the US suggesting leaks could have emanated from them. Those arguments are also very strong.

All of this is taking place because of an irrational fear of China's progress by the US.

It is therefore a great pity that instead of uniting in the face of a common danger, the world has become more divided than ever.

The need for global cooperation has never been stronger than now. The US has shown that it has great possibilities in defeating the pandemic as we see since the new administration took power. At the same time China's contribution to this cause has been second to none. Its approach has helped it to recover quickly from the effects of COVID and is having positive economic growth.

Instead of making the COVID-19 an international political football to be kicked around in the mad haste to stymie China's economic growth, we should seek total cooperation to end this deadly virus. President Biden and the Western media should stop the blame game. They need to stop dividing countries and people. We all need to get past this crisis in the world. If China and America work together and take the lead in fighting COVID-19 together, the whole world would be better for it and the sooner we would be free of the pandemic. 

The author is former President of Guyana. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn