Ellen Johnson Sirleaf gave a speech at a World Bank reception and called for commitments by world leaders to financing global pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.
The first reaction of nation states was to protect their own, hoard, close borders – and indulge in nationalist points-scoring. The more the US and its allies blamed China, both for the outbreak in Wuhan and for what many considered to be a cover-up, and the more China refused to provide the necessary access or information, the more distrustful and disjointed the global response became.
The final year of Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ presidency was characterised by a Covid policy of denial, denigration of science and, at that point, the world’s highest infection rate. The president launched repeated broadsides against the World Health Organization, denouncing its director general Tedros Ghebreyesus as a “puppet” of China; he announced the termination of the US’s WHO membership and $400m annual payment, putting its finances in peril just at a time when the organisation was most needed. Trump’s approach was borne partly of ideology, partly of a need to create a dist
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Read more about Worse than Covid : Threat of pandemics spurs race for vaccines in 100 days on Business Standard. Researchers and governments want to smash vaccine development records, harnessing technologies such as messenger RNA.