The Trump administration's adversarial view of the United Nations now threatens American lives with a resulting shortage of test kits needed to fight the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and lives in other nations by scuttling an coordinated global response to the pandemic similar to that following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Soufan Group said in a report on Monday
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 30th March, 2020) The Trump administration's adversarial view of the United Nations now threatens American lives with a resulting shortage of test kits needed to fight the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and lives in other nations by scuttling an coordinated global response to the pandemic similar to that following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Soufan Group said in a report on Monday.
"While the threat posed by COVID-19 is not analogous to that of terrorism, US disinterest in working with the world's most important multilateral body exemplifies an important point - the void of US leadership on a global crisis will make it harder to garner the international collaboration necessary to stem the COVID-19 pandemic that has left thousands dead in its wake and will kill many more," the report said.
The Soufan Group pointed out in the report that aggressive screening efforts, through testing, could have slowed the spread of the novel coronavirus. Just as the Trump administration ignored January 2020 intelligence community warnings of a looming global pandemic, recent reporting also indicates that meetings convened in the White House situation room allocated insufficient focus on the importance of testing, the report said.
Early in the crisis, the Trump administration maintained that its preference was to produce its own COVID-19 tests instead of relying on a test approved by the UN World Health Organization (WHO). The decision resulted in the United States producing an initial batch of flawed tests, millions of which were shipped to other nations, thereby delaying the response, the report added.
On another level, the United States' reluctance to coordinate with the United Nations and WHO reflects waning US global influence, as evidenced by the G-7 group of wealthy nations' failure to issue a meaningful statement regarding the COVID-19 crisis last week because US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo insisted the declaration include the term "Wuhan coronavirus" to focus attention on China as the nation responsible.
Other nations objected, siding with China's complaint that such a label would be racially motivated.
