Three months ago, humanity was worried about everything but not about a virus called Covid-19, or as it is known socially the Coronavirus. The events that marked the global agenda 90 days ago were overshadowed after its appearance.
In one hand, the Americans were beholding the way the former vice-president, Joe Biden, the progressist senator, Bernie Sanders, and the senator for Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, from the same left-wing that his collague, were fighting to get the nomination and to face President Trump in the next elections late this year. In the other hand, the Europeans were dealing with the divorce between EU and Uk after more than three years of negotiations, and at the same time, they were looking for a new identity by the hand of the new president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, to address and reduce the increasing nationalist movements that were threatening get Europe broken in many pieces. At the same time, Middle East was waiting for Netanyahu’s plan to annex the West Bank, waving the anger of all the Muslim countries that surround the Jewish State. And last, but not least, Xi Jinping pursued to bring down the Hong Kong autonomy, including the idea of “one country, two systems”, (which nowadays it was achieved due to the new law that permits to extradite people from the Special Administrative Region to Bejing to stand trial by any action that is against the Government), to take full control of China and to establish the communists, and moreover, to hide and minimize what it was going on in Wuhan.
This is only a level brushstroke of the things that were happening the last February. But after the arrival of the Covid-19, all these topics were pushed into the background. At the beginning of the pandemic, the common thought was based on the notion of listing this virus like the flu. To this reasoning, it added the fact that people seemed this threat pretty far away and it looked very unlikely its appearance outside of Asia. Thus, the Western societies kept going with their normal lifestyle, ignoring both, China’s advertences and sanitary advice from the World Health Organization (WHO), which were already circulating in that atmosphere pre-COVID.
This lack of action and passivity paved the way for the spread of Coronavirus across the whole world. The delayed governmental intervention lead to shocking death toll numbers such as the ones reached in Italy, Spain, UK, Brasil or the United States. We could have mention China, but no one knows the real numbers behind the dark blind of Chinese statistics.
The inefficiency of the States in facing a biological warfare, shown the lack of willingness and action protocols to confront these kinds of threats. The difficulty of these dangers is that we have to fight something that we cannot nor see it nor touch it. An invisible enemy, highly deadly. And the way they took action flush out a significative shortage. A weakness that for countries as France, Denmark or Sweden passes undetected. But maybe for China, Iran or Russia could see this the value of how the Western would be collapsed by the spreading of a biological agent.
With this reality as an example, perhaps we are at the start of a new arms race. This time would be based on the silent and non-destroyed development of biological weapons, more sophisticated, that can be able to undermine a whole nation. And they only would need a microorganism that is hiddenly introduced in that targeted society.
Furthermore, this improved evidence, which it will force the States to get and be ready for new aggression forms against their sovereignty, the Covid-19 expedited the trust impairment among countries, which it was already delicate. Before the virus, the Western-China relationship relied on the minimum trust, feeding by the business. But, at the same time, it got a high level of distrust due to the doubts of the real Chinese intentions and the poor rule of the law, weak respect to human rights, freedom of speech, and authentinc democracy.
In the last year, we could be able to see the increasing Chinese influence globally. And it has become the second superpower, after the US. Its success is due to the creation of a strong economy, which it draws on a low-cost mass production of manufactured goods, those are extending after the adoption of the law that permits to Chinese companies to do business outside of the country. This explains its undeniable presence across the world, which anyone could see just picking almost any object of your house and looking at its precedence.
Nevertheless, the Coronavirus has broken up finally this valuable link to the world economy. According to the data offered by the Analytic company, China represented 15.7% of the world trade in 2018. With the presence of many studies and proofs that point Beijing as the responsible of the Covid-19 look like artificial creation (or maybe by accident) and shutting down the Wuhan market theory, the Asiatic giant has lost great portions of its worldwide credibility. Thereby, there are more and more critical voices that are joining Trump to try to look for the truth, covered by China who rejects any accusation but, at the same time, without providing reliable data or third part investigation, that proves how this pandemic started. Without no answers yet to this riddle, United States will impose punishment against China, and it will go through the trade war and, consequently, the creation of a new deal with different and more demanding requirements.
In addition, and due to this deice feeling, the worldwide industry will reconsider its production strategy. The Covid-19 reveals the business extremely depends on the Chinese low prices. This dependence is used by China to exert pressure globally, forcing it to establish its own criteria, even resorting sometimes to blackmail, like it has been seen with countries like Australia. And not only in trade, manufacture, or clinical stuff, but, especially, in the telecommunication area.
Nowadays, this sector is waging a battle to select the bunch of companies will lead the new 5G technology mobile development. In this race to control the fifth-generation mobile network, the European countries and their companies are increasingly falling into line behind the US president to stop China’s pressure and to expose their doubts about the technology leading company in Asia, Huawei. This enterprise was accused of spying on by using an “back door” that was hidden on its smartphones and routers. Thus, it could extract sensitive information about its consumers and then transfer it to Beijing’s government. The Chinese Security law enforces any national company to “open” their technologies against any threat, real or artificial, to aid in national security. As a consequence of this distrust, UK decided last week to ban equipment of the Chinese company from the country’s high-speed wireless network. Therefore, the British will lead the list of countries that will prohibit Huawei from their 5G development.
Although both, Huawei and Jinping’s government, deny the accusations without providing any proofs, everything point that it will produce a turnaround in global production, which will reduce its dependence from China as a supplier of products. And also, it will start to regard other productive alternatives bases on the creation of new links among the emergent countries such as Turkey, Indonesia, or Vietnam.
And following that skeptic line, it will be repercussions not only for China. Even being less rugged, society across the world will face a new timeframe, characterized by deep mistrust, both people and nations. We have gone from being social beings naturally to be afraid of any human contact, even it is our own relative. This situation, transferred to the international community, could suppose the deployment of a relentless skeptic period in which the governments, afraid of a new contagious wave, keep the distance from other countries in a partnership way.
There are many experts that claim the tension and the cautiousness will conclude when it will find a vaccine and it could be marketed globally. But if we go beyond this solution, it is licit to express that the world we used to know never will come back. A similar situation happened when the 1918 (so called Spanish) flu appeared just at the end of the World War I as the consequence of a lack of sanitation to those times in the battlefronts. This flu was a war propaganda invention from the United States to keep its troops and society chin up and to keep away from the public the real truth in long war critical moment. The current situation is not quite different than in 1918. Every biological pandemic, out of the governmental and social control, brings significant changes to the way of living.
Hence, society will cope with a new era of suspicion, where the fear of infection exceeds the individual and state-wade perspectives. To avoid this, it will adopt new protectionist policies to ensure the health of all the citizens and it will be less focused on the global level. Also, they could adopt new restrictions that affect our own freedom to assure collective safety. As the Israeli writer Yuval Noah Hariri already anticipated in an article in the Financial Times, it is plausible the creation of a new app which with the governments could monitor the live location of those people who have had the virus or have big chances to get it. And, at the same time, they could know the body temperature with just the finger touch on the phone. This is an extreme measure that, perhaps, it could become true in the short-term due to the fact that cases are increasing around the world as countries are trying to resume their activities and economies. For example, US states such as Idaho or Texas got minimum cases at the beginning of the pandemic. Consequently, their restrictions were less taught than other states like New York or New Jersey. Because of that, people didn’t take the Coviv-19 seriously and they continued with their lives as nothing happened. The consequences all of this is nowadays they’re carrying numbers that are growing up every day and they will force those states to go to the first stage of the lockdown.
Therefore, the Coronavirus is a serious problem, that is going to have lifelong consequences and it will very likely create a new social and global system. The time post-COVID is right around the corner, and everything we are doing now will impact in that new earth.
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