When it first appeared, nobody will expect the tremendous impact of the new version of coronavirus. Prior the outbreak, the world was so busy to determine what and how to stimulate the global economic slowdown in the new decade. Lot of talks organized by the UN to regulate global economic system and many multilateral projects prepared to welcome China as the new superpower. We are still remembered the last global issues that provoke international attention was the climate strike actions inspired from Greta Thurnberg. Other than that, last thing I remembered from the media were always about day-to-day blunder by the Donald Trump policies. But the world I know has change in a blinked.
January, 7 marked as an important date in the book of modern world history when WHO firstly identified a new version of coronavirus, further, people will always be easy to remember twenty-twenty (2020) as the period of “Covid-19 tragedy”. When China decided to locked Wuhan, the world still have a time to think how they can save the economy. Assuming that the crisis in China will affecting the global supply chain and resulted with economic collapse. But day after day the disease are getting worse, I was seen how Chinese were struggled to survive from the disease. At that time, it was like a film, seeing ton of people infected by a new virus that no expert had to deal with.
I might be right that lot of people has a same feeling like me when seeing this outbreak. I was wondering like ‘is it real? Or it’s just a nightmare?’. When the virus starts to transmitted to another countries, it woke people up that it is a ‘real nightmare’. The WHO call for global emergency when the number of infected from the virus was over 10.000 people. Yet, there are only several cases with no confirmation of death by the virus outside of the China. However, the virus grows exponentially until finally the WHO considered Covid-19 as a pandemic disease in March, 13. At that time, the number of infected was over 150.000 people and around 6.000 deaths toll reported. The number of cases were much higher than the previous coronavirus of MERS and SARS combined.
When the virus spreading beyond the border, the domino effect of public panic happened all over the world. At this time the world starts to realized that it’s not the ‘crisis in China’ or so forth, but it is a ‘global crisis’ that might be turns out into the global recession. We have seen collective chaos and panic buying in the big city around the world, Southeast Asian facing lack of mask as people tries to prevents P-to-P transmission, and European were anxiety due to limited toilet papers in the market.
The virus carries no flag
No Italian ever imagined how their country changed in a real quick. A week before total lockdown in Italy, some people in European might see the pandemic as a regular flu, ‘it’s just a flu’, they’ve said. Until they finally realized that this pandemic could really make Italy close its country, this made Italy as the first liberal democracy country that adopted the lockdown policy. We are never imagined how could it be, in the modern era of democracy people are prohibited to move freely under the Italian military monitor for 24/7. But that was inevitable.
The panic is become surreal when the virus has infected the top policymakers around the world. The vice president of Iran, Australian Minister of Home Affairs, UK junior health minister, French Minister of Culture and Indonesian Minister of Transportation were among the examples of it. It means that premium security that those people had cannot prevents the virus to coming in. If those figure with high-quality healthcare and security were able to infected, how about people that using public transportation day after day? or those who living their life in the crowd places like traditional market and public services? We are all vulnerable, so that I am totally agree with Emmanuel Macron and Moon Jae-in have said that we are in the war against the virus.
Yes, you might heard from your minister of health that this virus not as deathly as SARS or MERS. But the number of Covid-19 victim are much higher than both combined, so we are not supposed to treat this virus like a regular flu. For some cases, this requiring us to change our culture and behavior. For example, the Italian government banned kissing for its people, Italian Head of Civil Protection Angelo Borrelli, admitted that it seems unnatural for Italian not to kiss or hug each other. But this was the best policy for its people.
The Government around the world promoting the social distancing approach to prevents surge in Covid-19 sufferer. International events that gathering lot of people were canceled, even the virus had been affecting the sports industry globally. NBA, Premier League, La Liga, Serie A, J-league and most of all sports event postponed during the outbreak. I’m never seen this happen since the World War II. Even in China, sports centers, exhibition halls and other local venues turns into makeshift hospital for the victim.
Call For Global Solidarity
As the virus spreads beyond the geo-political landscape, it is important for all leaders around the world to measure strategic vision to recover from the disease. We all know that economic disparity could hamper the battle against the virus. Take a look at what China President Xi Jinping have acted, he calls for country’s tech sector to help battle the pandemic. In order to minimize the risk of cross-infection, Chinese firm developed an automated robot that enable to do contactless sprayed disinfectant, autopilot-delivery and help medical staff. China also utilizing their sophisticated AI technology to identify infected individuals in a crowd. Not to mention South Korea tech with its advance mobile app to mapped people with infected of the virus. This is something that developing countries couldn’t even imagine.
To put developing country into perspective, Indonesian case is pretty much ironic. The first problem is that the people of Indonesia have a trust issue with their government. Most of us accused that the government were underdiagnose the patient, means that official case of Covid-19 in Indonesia allegedly was not represented the real number of Covid-19 patients. Government inability to provide transparent data have reducing public trust for the government, this resulted to inefficient public participatory to contain the virus. Even more, people are questioning on Indonesian medical readiness to battle the pandemic, there are several suspect cases that was abandoned by the hospital due to its lack of ability. So Indonesian was not even think about the automated robot or sophisticated mobile app, they are just insisted the government to better serve them, at least in a standard medical procedure.
Considering country’s different abilities to handle this pandemic, if we want to recover our earth, there is no other solution could help this issue other than international cooperation and/or global solidarity. WHO take the lead to spread the awareness and possible recommendations for countries to put local issues in the helicopter view. Furthermore, world leaders need to have a broad sense of internationalism when dealing with this virus, no country could handle this outbreak alone. It is the right time for us re-united as a global society, as Tedros Adhanom have said “we are in this together to protect the citizens of the world”. All the more, global emergency status ideally harsh enough to postpone World Bank’s, ADB’s or IMF’s unnecessary infrastructural program, and started to focus on the economy impact of the coronavirus.
