If the United States wants to overcome the COVID-19 virus and return to life before the outbreak began, should China be regarded as an opponent to contend with, or an indispensable partner for combat victory? The fact is that if China is not included in the solution, it will be difficult for the United States to achieve a final victory in the fight against epidemics.
Regardless of denying or concealing it, a rapidly rising China is testing the United States’ leading position in various fields. The question is: In such a big environment, when any party faces a challenge that cannot be tackled alone, do politicians in both countries have enough wisdom to find a way to cooperate in competition.
The most pressing challenge facing the US is not China
The virus has no passport, no ideology, and no boundaries. When the droplets formed by the sneezing of a virus-infected person are inhaled by a healthy person, whether they are Americans, Italians or Chinese, their physiological effects are the same.
When the epidemic spreads globally, it is because no country can truly isolate itself from the world through the blockade, so every country is in crisis. The inescapable reality today is that 7.7 billion human beings live together on the same tiny earth-as President Kennedy pointed out when the US and Soviet Union faced a fateful nuclear crisis: the inevitable way of coexistence between the two sides: “We breathe the same piece Air, we also cherish the future of future generations. We will eventually leave this world. ”
The officials of Washington and the foreign policy elites of the two parties in the United States have exposed some kind of evasionism on the epidemic. They tried to evade their responsibility for failure. Adults should accept reality. In combating the COVID-19 virus, the most pressing challenge facing the United States is not China, but the failure to respond accordingly when the crisis comes.
Singapore and South Korea have taken emergency measures for several weeks, why is the US still deaf to this? After the outbreaks of SARS in 2003, swine flu in 2009, and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome in 2012, who was not prepared for it? The Korean government started to test more than 10,000 people per day (the number is now as high as 20,000 people per day) immediately after the number zero patient appeared a few weeks ago. At the same time, who was repeatedly escaping with one excuse after another ?
Like most Americans, we still firmly believe that the American system is fundamentally good; but the United States must be soberly aware of its missteps and at the same time recognize the success of other countries.
Do you want to reject the successful experience and assistance of other countries?
As early as January, China has notified the World Health Organization of the epidemic situation: in early January, China successfully isolated the first COVID-19 virus strain and shared the COVID-19 virus genome sequence information with WHO. Scientists all over the world were able to start vaccine research. (Moderna, a Boston-based company, has responded to the call to develop a vaccine in less than two months, and now this vaccine has entered the government’s testing and approval process).
After realizing the threat of this virus, China launched a high-intensity anti-epidemic struggle that attracted worldwide attention. This includes blocking the earliest outbreak in China-Wuhan, a city with a population of more than 10 million people. A few days later, the central government pulled up an epidemic prevention blockade in Hubei province, and more than 50 million people were isolated.
All communities and bus hubs in cities have mandatory testing points; many hotels, gyms and schools have been transformed into temporary medical centers; thousands of construction workers and mixer trucks and transport trucks gather in Wuhan, new hospitals Raised the ground at an alarming rate (one of the hospitals with a capacity of 1,000 beds was completed within 10 days); thousands of PLA were mobilized to distribute materials and ensure logistics operations.
The data shows that China has achieved success now, and its infection curve has in fact tended to zero, and US retail giants including Apple, Starbucks and McDonald ’s have begun to reopen.
For America today, it is imperative to do everything possible to stop the virus from infecting thousands of people, killing hundreds of thousands of people, and ultimately disintegrating our society. If Chinese doctors and scientists can develop antiviral drugs that reduce the infection rate of the population, should the United States import these drugs?
Imagine if China developed a vaccine in the next one to two months, but some US departments insisted that these drugs would not receive any approval within a year. Once these drugs are proven effective in Singapore and South Korea, will readers be willing to wait for approval by the US Food and Drug Administration?
Considering the current urgent need for N95 masks in hospitals and first-line medical and emergency personnel across the United States, if China is willing to ship millions of masks to the United States, as they recently did in Italy, should the United States welcome these masks? If the screening and diagnosis process established in China is effective (first conduct extensive body temperature testing, and then perform CT examinations on those who are found to have fever symptoms, if there is suspicion, the doctor will also collect laboratory samples for analysis until the diagnosis is confirmed ), Should the United States refuse to learn because of the source of these experiences?
Giving up fantasy, China and the United States need to work together
Should not have illusions. Overcoming this epidemic is a key national interest and requires the concerted efforts of both countries. Without sincere cooperation, neither the US nor China can accomplish this goal alone. From the economic growth in the next 12 months, to the confidence of the citizens of the two countries in their respective governments, to the global status and prestige of the two countries, the success or failure of this test affects the hearts and minds of the world.
In a real war, the number of deaths is the key. In terms of economy, real growth can generate profit. In country-to-state relations, with the advent of the epidemic, the urgent need for medical equipment will make any war of words dwarfed.
Now, financial markets bet on China, and in their view, China has taken the lead in this protracted war. After the sharp decline in the first quarter, if the Chinese economy can return to steady growth, but the United States is back and forth between a long-term recession and depression, the GDP gap between China and the United States will continue to widen. If the Chinese government can prove its ability to protect the most basic rights of citizens, the right to survival, but the US government is helpless in the face of the epidemic, then criticisms of Chinese practices will look like sour grape psychology.
Besides the epidemic, we must not forget that there is a higher perspective, that is, the grand narrative about the rise of China. At the beginning of this century, China’s GDP was less than a quarter of the United States. Today, China has caught up. After the 2008 financial crisis, the rapid growth of the Chinese economy made the Chinese leadership full of confidence, while the US economy fell into a long period of stagnation.
Cooperation in three major areas is a top priority
Researching knowledge about diseases, developing medicines to treat diseases, and formulating prevention and treatment programs are all naturally open and international businesses. Through scientific discoveries in laboratories around the world, biomedicine has advanced. Essentially, scientific research requires full cooperation. Today, more than one-third of the scientific papers published by Americans have at least one foreign collaborator. A third of the nation’s science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) doctorate is obtained by Chinese students.
Therefore, how should China and the United States cooperate in combating the COVID-19 virus and preventing possible future viruses? There are three major areas that can be described as urgent:
First of all, the two countries should start with data exchange from genome sequencing to epidemiological research.
When assessing the current situation and considering countermeasures, the key factor is how to reduce the uncertainty of the epidemic: Because little is known about this new virus, only by continuously collecting data for analysis, can it be gradually deepened. High-quality data from various outbreak countries will become the second key factor in overcoming the outbreak. The extensive demand for accurate data from various countries reminds us how important it is to agree on procedures and transparency in an international organization such as the World Health Organization.
As Chinese scientists quickly determined the COVID-19 virus gene sequence and released it to countries around the world, a global-scale research work was finally able to be carried out. Using these gene sequences, scientists at the National Institutes of Health successfully confirmed the mechanism by which the virus enters infected cells two weeks later. The following day, this experimental discovery was successfully replicated by a Chinese laboratory. Even the progress of research vaccines depends on these early published viral genomes. As Anthony Fudge, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, commented, from obtaining the sequence to conducting human trials, the progress made by the scientists in this epidemic is “the fastest in history.” More importantly, after possessing these genetic information, scientists can compare the infection situation and draw a detailed map of the virus transmission like a family tree.
In the early stage of the outbreak, the data shared by the affected countries in time will help other countries better understand how the virus spreads. For the earliest cases that occurred in Wuhan, the data collected by Chinese doctors allows countries around the world to make a preliminary estimate of the ability of the virus to spread; with these data, it is possible to construct epidemiological models-these models have become many countries The basis of the government’s response to the outbreak. China, which was the first to be hit by the epidemic, provided global health experts with first-hand information to estimate mortality, and used these data to build models to predict the scope, spread, and severity of the epidemic, thus ensuring that countries The government can take stronger measures.
Is followed by cooperation in the field of diagnostics and public health measures.
If China can find an effective patient screening procedure that can be widely used in airports, businesses and schools, can the United States adopt it? Conversely, if researchers find some kind of high-throughput diagnostic technology and prove that this technology is cheaper, faster and more accurate, will this result not be shared? Before the start of the trade friction, about a quarter of the US $ 22 billion in medical equipment imported by the United States came from China. Considering the currently increasing number of infections in the United States, these devices are indispensable to the US medical system.
The final cooperation is basic research and translational research in the field of biomedical research.
For this reason, Harvard Medical School recently announced a cooperation plan to work with Chinese counterparts to combat the COVID-19 virus. Among them, the person in charge of China is Zhong Nanshan, the main leader of the Chinese government’s efforts to combat the COVID-19 virus. As early as 2003, he was the first person to discover atypical acute respiratory syndrome. The joint project of Harvard University and Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Diseases is currently working on the basic biological characteristics of COVID-19 virus and how it interacts with infected persons. These studies will help to find better diagnosis and treatment methods.
In order to better study antiviral drugs, scientists need to understand how viruses infect humans-by identifying the entrance of coronavirus into the host cell, scientists can design a lock to prevent virus intrusion. In order to better diagnose the virus and monitor the development of the disease, scientists need to accurately identify the biomarkers of the virus. In the process of developing vaccines, it was discovered that immune imbalances may lead to antibody-dependent enhancement. In this case, the body’s defense proteins will accelerate the infection process. At present, the academic community urgently needs to accurately identify the immunological indicators.
As scientists have repeatedly emphasized, cooperative research can often bring more desirable results. No country in this era can monopolize scientific ideas, and cooperation on fighting urgent issues such as the COVID-19 virus always outweighs the disadvantages. As governments around the world begin to fight the epidemic, they should keep in mind that regardless of data collection and integration, or sharing of reagents and equipment, countries need to maintain close communication.
To sum up, China and the United States should realize that only by joining hands can the two countries defeat the deadly enemy of the virus. Therefore, forming a partnership, even limited cooperation, is of great strategic importance to both countries. Can China and the United States become close cooperation partners while competing? It is difficult for people to maintain two conflicting ideas at the same time. However, there is no other way to overcome the disease.