CORONAVIRUS: EXCUSE OR OPPORTUNITY?

摘要

It's hard to believe that just a few months ago we were assessing the shootdown of Ukraine International Airlines flight PS752 following its departure from Teheran, and the responsibility borne by the Iranian regime for the military error, which claimed 176 innocent lives. That was 8 January 2020. Only a week earlier, on New Year's Eve, China had reported a cluster of cases of pneumonia in Wuhan, resulting in the identification of a novel coronavirus. Within hours, the World Health Organisation (W.H.O.) had established its Incident Management Support Team (IMST) and had placed the organisation on an emergency footing for dealing with the outbreak. By 10 January, the W.H.O. had issued a comprehensive package of technical guidance online with advice to all countries on how to detect, test and manage potential cases, based on what was known about the virus at the time. And, on 12 January, less than two weeks after sounding the alarm, China publicly shared the genetic sequence for what we now refer to as COVID-19. A day later, a case of COVID-19 was recorded in Thailand, the first recorded case outside of China. And so began what has since become an international pandemic...