Coronavirus death toll mounts, undeterred by the usual slogans and ideology
President Donald Trump last week at a White House briefing. Credit: AP/Andrew Harnik
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The nationalism-versus-globalism debate has proved fairly useless in this enormous emergency.
Despite "America first" rhetoric, the Trump administration takes cues from abroad. The crisis in the oil markets is one example. Saudi Arabia and Russia are taking the lead on cutting production as worldwide demand craters, and American and Mexican energy companies respond and lobby in tandem.
Much has been said about the World Health Organization's cosseting of China's failure to keep other nations informed about the coronavirus spread. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO's director general, has recently traded accusations with the White House.
But the UN group "has to balance gaining access to China with not offending the Chinese officials that control their access,” said Tom Bossert, who was Trump’s first homeland security adviser. “And that complicates their ability to remain and appear credible in their objective analysis of China.” (Bossert was quoted by a Bloomberg Opinion columnist.) In addition, the U.S. supported Ghebreyesus for the job in 2017.
President Donald Trump has personally shied away from criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping. Still touting the prospect of a tariff deal, Trump's team in January did not respond when trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote memos warning of a dire pandemic. Steve Bannon, the fomer adviser who crafted Trump's campaign talking points on nationalism, also raised early but unanswered alarms, calling the virus that emanated from Wuhan "China's Chernobyl."
The delayed official efforts to restrict travel to the U.S. revealed the frustrations of trying to get any nation to distance itself from the rest of the world in a timely way.
By March 11, when Trump said he would block travelers from most European countries, New Yorkers already were traveling home with the virus, The New York Times reported. The majority of the virus influx in the city "is clearly European," said Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Americans has had to glean lessons from the contagions in Italy and South Korea. Research on vaccines and treatments, meanwhile, goes on internationally, as it must.
The health threat, and its economic damage, form one massive global disaster. Calling yourself a "nationalist" or a "globalist" just doesn't matter right now.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
