COVID-19: WHO is to Blame?

The COVID-19 virus has claimed over 110,000 lives and infected over 2 million people globally. The entire world is in a state of lock-down, markets are in a freefall, and experts say that the earliest timeline for a vaccine would be by December. The lockdown in India has been extended for another 3 weeks until the 3^rd of May 2020, with a provision that essential services in areas which are not hotspots yet will resume from the 20^th of April. However, that is not the question here. The question that we shall ask ourselves today is: Who is at fault here? Who is to blame? 

(Source: Times Of Israel)

Answering this question is not as simple as it seems, though. For starters, there have been theories going around that the virus is a carefully designed bio-weapon released into the world by China in order to gain political supremacy by throwing the rest of the world into chaos. This is as absurd as it is untrue. For starters, this is not the first coronavirus that we have seen. The coronavirus is a family of viruses that is usually found in humans. The only difference is that this particular strain (COVID-19) affects humans, and its composition is a little different so we have not been able to find a vaccine for it yet. However, it is surely pushing the boundaries of logic to presume that with all the medical funding that is going into finding a vaccine, no one yet would have noticed if the virus had been synthetically created. 

With that being settled then, that the virus was not created in a lab in China and released into the world, does not absolve China of any blame in the incident? Of course not. China is still very culpable in what happened, and there are two reasons why:

The Bat and Flea market had very very low standards of hygiene. For those who are not aware of the market, it is a market in the Wuhan province of China where almost all kinds of meat are sold. This is where the virus is said to have originated from. Also, it is worth mentioning here that China re-opened this market as of last month, despite several people voicing their concerns against this.

(Source: Wikipedia)

Misinformation. This is the main reason why people are blaming China for the virus. The first case of this virus was recorded as far back as December, and China had kept it all under wraps. China also released a statement saying that the virus could not be transmitted from human to human. In addition to this, China severely downplayed the severity of the virus, by falsifying statistics of its infected and dead from the virus. This resulted in the rest of the world not taking the virus as seriously as they should have, and cost countries very precious preparation time.

(Source: EURDemocracy)

Another reason, while not so major, is that even after the entire story came out, China has still not apologized or accepted its share of the blame for the spread of the virus. In fact, China is still looking out only for itself, and doing whatever it needs to do in order to assert its dominance in the world stage. There are several rumours that China’s allegation of 70,000+ recoveries is also fake, and that Chinese industries are only running on paper. It has been claimed by several sources that China is still falsifying its reports, in order to present a picture of strength and stability at a time when Western governments are struggling to provide enough medical facilities and hospital beds to hold all their patients. 

Another incident which was severely made fun of on social media but is a good example of China’s duplicity is when Pakistan requested China for N-95 masks, China sent them underwear instead. 

(Source: IndiaTimes)

Is there anyone else to blame? Of course. The World Health Organization is as much to blame as possibly China itself. While China’s word as far as happenings in the country has always been shaky at best, it was WHO that endorsed China’s claim that the virus could not spread from person to person. When the true nature of the virus was revealed, there was a huge backlash against WHO Secretary Teros Adhanam, with #WHOLiedPeopleDied trending on Twitter for over a week. WHO’s biggest source of funding, the USA, blocked all future donations to the WHO for their role in spreading misinformation along with the Chinese government. 

(Source: CNBC)

Therefore, in summation, who is to blame for the virus? No one. The virus was no one’s fault, and no one could have predicted it. It was not engineered and is definitely not a Chinese bio-weapon.

But, who is to blame for the spread of the virus? Who is to blame for all the inconvenience? Who is to blame for the lock-down? China and WHO undoubtedly

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And once the lock-down is over and the threat of Corona is past, we need to remember this, and China ought to apologize for their actions. They deserve every bit of economic sanctions coming their way, and the world needs to see China for what they are: a power-hungry, arrogant country who can stoop to any level to assert their dominance over the world. 

-NK