On this point, though, they were fighting fire with fire. Good on them for fighting back against disinformation with disinformation.
No doubt a very good case can be mounted that China should have done more to lockdown the early outbreak and should have done more to warn the international community. But Trump showed that cover-ups and minimising the risks wasn’t just part of his own playbook - it was his whole playbook. How the US could cry foul is beyond me, particularly as Trump had pulled out the US epidemiologist who was embedded in the Chinese pandemic response team just prior to the outbreak.
Does that mean other countries like Australia don’t have a right to complain? No, but: Superpower! Now, China matches the US for power and exceptionalism. What do we want to achieve by holding the Chinese to account? They’re not going to pay reparations or allow an international team to come into China to surveil their future pandemic responses. If we want the latter, we’ll need to win a war against them and then impose inspections à la Iraq. Hell, we can’t even expect an apology.
But returning to my first point, labelling Covid by its country of origin has been actively discouraged by epidemiologists. Doing so plays into the hands of racists and increases attacks on Asians. Anyone seen the video of the elderly Thai-American who was crash-tackled while walking on a footpath with such force he died? Or a picture of another Asian-American who has a large scar from 1 side of his face to the other after being slashed with a box-cutter? Hopefully, we have less to fear as we don’t have Trump’s terrorist army to deal with but the risk remains.
That just deals with the coronavirus. Of course, China has chosen to bully Australia and that naturally inspires anger. The blame for that is squarely China’s.
No doubt a very good case can be mounted that China should have done more to lockdown the early outbreak and should have done more to warn the international community. But Trump showed that cover-ups and minimising the risks wasn’t just part of his own playbook - it was his whole playbook. How the US could cry foul is beyond me, particularly as Trump had pulled out the US epidemiologist who was embedded in the Chinese pandemic response team just prior to the outbreak.
Does that mean other countries like Australia don’t have a right to complain? No, but: Superpower! Now, China matches the US for power and exceptionalism. What do we want to achieve by holding the Chinese to account? They’re not going to pay reparations or allow an international team to come into China to surveil their future pandemic responses. If we want the latter, we’ll need to win a war against them and then impose inspections à la Iraq. Hell, we can’t even expect an apology.
But returning to my first point, labelling Covid by its country of origin has been actively discouraged by epidemiologists. Doing so plays into the hands of racists and increases attacks on Asians. Anyone seen the video of the elderly Thai-American who was crash-tackled while walking on a footpath with such force he died? Or a picture of another Asian-American who has a large scar from 1 side of his face to the other after being slashed with a box-cutter? Hopefully, we have less to fear as we don’t have Trump’s terrorist army to deal with but the risk remains.
That just deals with the coronavirus. Of course, China has chosen to bully Australia and that naturally inspires anger. The blame for that is squarely China’s.