THE BLAME GAME
President Donald Trump has accused China of a coronavirus cover-up, suggested the government may have allowed the disease to spread, threatened to extract a “substantial” price from Beijing for the pandemic and has claimed that the virus originated in a Chinese virology lab based on evidence he had seen, but declined to give details. “My opinion is they made a mistake. They tried to cover it. They tried to put it out, just like a fire,” Trump told Fox News on Sunday. Although the Wuhan Institute of Virology was studying bat-borne coronaviruses like the one that causes Covid-19 at the time of the first known outbreak nearby, there has so far been no evidence showing it possessed the previously unknown strain.
Beijing has sought to push back against the U.S.’s virus allegations without prompting a confrontation with President Donald Trump. Chinese state media lashed out at Secretary of State Michael Pompeo calling him “evil” and a liar. The official Xinhua News Agency said the top U.S. diplomat was speaking “nonsense,” while a newscaster from China Central Television read a commentary accusing him of “spitting poison.” Xinhua also published a short animation this week titled "Once Upon a Virus" mocking the U.S. response to the new coronavirus using Lego-like figures to represent the two countries. China also tried to provoke Trump when a foreign ministry spokesman circulated unsubstantiated allegations last month that U.S. Army athletes introduced the virus to Wuhan. Trump blamed that move for his decision to start referring to the pathogen as the “Chinese virus,” a term he has refrained from using in recent weeks. The closest Beijing has come to provoking trump without criticising him by name in recent days was a foreign ministry statement Thursday attacking “certain U.S. politicians.” Such officials “have attempted to shift their own responsibility for their poor handling of the epidemic to others,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang told reporters.
SURVIVAL STRATEGY
As China faces criticism at home and abroad over its handling of the virus, especially during the initial outbreak - it is accused of silencing whistle-blowers and delaying in informing the public about the severity of the crisis - it's hoping that being the first to offer the world a vaccine would provide vital leverage and help ease tensions with the international community, while also helping to deflect international criticism.
Meanwhile, as President Donald Trump seeks to deflect from his own failures in regard to the pandemic, he's granted carte blanche to his administration's coronavirus-vaccine project: "Operation Warp Speed.” In a sign of the country's desperation, the Trump Administration had also reportedly already tried to get a head start by trying to convince a German biopharmaceutical firm working on a COVID-19 vaccine to move its research operations to the U.S. That raised alarm bells among German officials worrying Trump was trying to make a deal that would get Americans access to the vaccine first. Trump aides and CureVac officials adamantly denied the mid-March report, but German officials confirmed and condemned it.
But Beijing’s drive to win the race for a vaccine seems to be working. Four Chinese companies have begun testing their vaccine candidates on humans, more than the United States and Britain combined. Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech has already announced that its candidate—made with chemically inactivated virus—can protect monkeysfrom infection without noticeable side effects. After the early human trials are complete, the company says it will request emergency authorisation from China's FDA to give the vaccine to those at high risk of becoming infected, such as customs agents and police officers.
The head of China’s CDC has said a vaccine could be ready for emergency use by September, while the US is planning an intense push to create a vaccine and have enough doses available to cover most Americans by the end of this year, the president confirmed.
There are growing concerns among current and former US national security officials and top global health experts that if China develops a vaccine for the novel coronavirus first, that it could put the US at a major disadvantage a time of historic tensions between Washington and Beijing. “Often, Chinese offers of aid come with strings attached,” Matt Kroenig, a former Pentagon and CIA official who recently released a book examining American power competition with China, told Politico. “So, they could use it as a way to try to increase their influence and further push out the US.”
A national security official who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about government affairs also confirmed to told Politicothat Beijing "does have a head start" in the global effort to develop a vaccine, while another official said China knows "whoever finds a workable vaccine right now basically rules the world." These sentiments were echoed by Michael Callahan, an infectious disease doctor and special adviser to the US assistant secretary for preparedness and response, who told Wiredthat there is no doubt that China’s three- to six-month lead will result in a reshuffling of the global order. “That is terrifying our administration now,” he says.
But China’s companies must also win over the trust of the public, Kroenignoted, given the recent episodes of China delivering faulty medical equipment to Europe. “One of the great advantages the U.S. has in this competition is that we have these 30 formal treaty allies with leading scientific research communities,” Kroenig said. “So we could and should be doing a much better job of galvanizing allies and bringing them together” on the vaccine issue.
China has publicly framed the race as a contest between the two countries. A headline in the state-run Xinhua news broadcast that China "is the first to enter Phase 2 clinical trials." A video published on the state-run CCTV news website in April read "China vs. U.S. - Whose Vaccine With More Hope?" Beijing has also been accused by the US government of attempting to hack and steal research on the coronavirus to bolster its vaccine development. Meanwhile, there has been a spike in hacking attempts on US hospitals and labs, which intelligence and national officials attributed primarily to China.
AN UNHEALTHY COMPETITON
The rivalry between the two countries and lack of interest in cooperation has prompted fears that they could threaten the quest towards a universally available vaccine after they both snubbed a virtual summit of world leaders on coronavirus earlier this week. Leaders from Britain, Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia and European countries joined the meeting that pledged $8 billion towards developing a vaccine that could be manufactured and distributed to the world, irrespective of which countries’ scientists get there first. The US skipped the summit and China made the last-minute choice to send its ambassador to the EU.
Both countries also didn’t join in when global leaders gathered virtually last month at the behest of the World Health Organization to commit coordinate research and development for vaccines, tests and coronavirus cures in an internationally equitable way. The absence of the two pharma powerhouses disappointed European leaders, who are pushing for a cooperative approach. French President Emmanuel Macron said he hoped they could “reconcile this initiative with China and the U.S.”
Trump has also dealt a blow to the WHO by recently pausing America’s substantial funding for it and his administration has accused the UN body of a few things: of being too close to China; being complicit in a Chinese cover-up of the initial information on the virus, and in so doing, delaying the world’s ability to respond; and it’s of making the wrong call on travel bans. The WHO’s supporters say Trump is trying to deflect attention from his own downplaying of the crisis early on.
The fear is the race between the US and China to develop and distribute the vaccine to evolve into a global contest which will drag out the health crisis by letting the virus spread for longer than it otherwise might if poorer countries, who are least equipped to fight it are left behind. Another risk is that if one country develops a vaccine first, it could find ways to limit access to their adversaries.
However, the problem spreads beyond the America-first/China-first vaccine war. Nationalism thrives in times of crisis and many of countries have imposed travel restrictions, unilaterally shut borders and hoarded critical medical gear and disrupted food supply chains. Global health leaders are demanding a strengthening of international cooperation and multilateral institutions to try and to avoid a repeat of such insular attitude and nationalist tactics when it comes to vaccines and other types of medicines that could combat Covid-19. They warn that leaving the virus to fester in one country could mean it will reemerge elsewhere. “The worst situation would be, if when these tools are available, they go to the highest bidder — that would be terrible for the world,” said Melinda Gates, who, along with her tech entrepreneur husband, Bill, leads a powerful foundation that has devoted billions to health research. “Covid-19 anywhere is Covid-19 everywhere. And that’s why it’s got to take global cooperation.”
But as the global health infrastructure isn’t entirely the control of any one government, it could be difficult to ensure global cooperation. And even though the WHO has announced a global initiative for the equitable distribution of vaccines and other medicines, few believe it will hold any weight—even if all countries had signed on.
