US grabs chance of UN gathering to try and spread political virus

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior US official has told the media that the special session of the United Nations General Assembly on the COVID-19 pandemic that begins on Thursday has been “pre-engineered to serve China’s purposes”.

It seems that this US official is a fortune-teller. Even before the prerecorded video statements of 53 heads of state, 39 heads of government and 38 ministers have been heard, he or she professed to know exactly what was going to be said.

But what the official will not be able to foretell is the tremendous cost the United States will end up paying for the current administration’s disastrous handling of the public health crisis. As of Thursday afternoon, the novel coronavirus had infected more than 14.31 million people in the US, of whom about 280,000 had died.

While any new case is enough to have local officials sitting on pins and needles in China lest it be the start of a cluster, to witness thousands of deaths and hundreds of thousands of new infections a day is now the norm in the US. Pinning its hopes on impending vaccines, the US administration gave up on trying to curb the spread of the virus. But it has never abandoned its attempts to spread its anti-China “propaganda”.

A spokesperson for China’s mission to the UN in New York, without naming the country concerned, said that politicizing the pandemic is not in the interests of the international community, and if a certain country insists on doing so, “it will once again find itself isolated”. It does not take a mindreader to know which country the spokesperson was referring to since the US has tried to stigmatize China at the UN before.

And in September, the US and Israel were the only two countries to oppose a UN resolution calling for strengthening international collaboration and the role of the World Health Organization in coordinating the global response to the pandemic.

The purpose of this special session is also to strengthen international cooperation. And State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi in his speech said that China on its part will further strengthen communication and collaboration with other UN member states and make positive and constructive contributions to the world’s fight against the common enemy.

It is a shame that even after the US leader admitted he was informed of the grave threat of the virus long before its outbreak in the country, US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar chose to still read from the old China-bashing playbook in his speech.

Perhaps this obsession originates in the perceptible jealousy — which is evident in the US’ attacks — of the effectiveness of China’s pandemic control work.

That the US official predicted China will urge the UN to recognize proof that the virus existed elsewhere in the world before the outbreak was first detected in Wuhan was simply acknowledgement that China and the rest of the world are not science-deniers.

The attempts to smear China make it clear which country is again trying to hijack the UN stage to spread its “propaganda”.