China’s lack of transparency did nothing for the coronavirus pandemic – but it’s Trump who will launch the second wave

By rebranding a major international health crisis as a weapon of ‘fake news media’ and the Democrats, he isn’t just endangering Americans, he’s putting lives at risk around the globe

One crisis doesn’t seem enough for President Donald Trump. Determined to create a new one, the new “liberate” movement, with his backing, has the potential to become a new threat to yet more lives and economies around the world.

What Trump is trying to do in his blame game, is turn democratic governors into the new “enemy of the people”, those who want to strip citizens of their “freedoms”. And that’s not all. The Democratic governors have also been put front and centre as obstructing his new election campaign push to “reopen the economy.”

By pitting rural republican areas against democratic states, Trump is relying on divide-and-conquer trickery at a time when the nation is desperate for every single possible bit of cohesion and national unity.

But the sentiment of the “liberate” campaign has already spread beyond US borders. Many countries are witnessing growing public anger against lockdown. On Monday, Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, led his supporters to protest against the “dictatorial” measures governors have imposed to stem the spread of coronavirus, after Brazil became the most hit in Latin America. In Kenya, protesters challenging curfew have died in clashes with police. Lebanon, Iraq and many other countries have been witnessing similar events, and many more are expected to join them soon.

Given that lockdown is usually imposed on people against their will, this was all expected. Regardless of the death toll, human beings seem inclined to defy restrictions after some time. It is entirely different from wartime nationalism, where patriotism and sacrifice work well as ideals to generate broad acceptance of safety measures, however draconian they might be.

At the end of the 18^th and beginning of the 19^th century, many Russian cities had risen against the plague and cholera isolation measures. Protesters were convinced that the authorities were hiding the truth about the disease. In 1894, cities in Wisconsin rioted against smallpox lockdown rules, driven largely by mistrust in local officials. More recently, thousands erupted in Monrovia, the Liberian capital, during the Ebola outbreak of 2014, accusing the government of injustice and forcing a buffer zone on them against their will. The above incidents and many more have helped nobody but these viruses and diseases, which, in intensive gatherings and protests, will spread faster than before.

What Trump’s “liberate” movement is defending is far from the natural societal-psychological trajectory of isolation. It is a dangerous PR rampage to rescue his presidential career by trying to guarantee his voters a quick economic comeback before the November election, without the slightest regard as to how many souls will be lost in the process. As Nan Whaley, the Democratic mayor of Dayton, Ohio puts it: “There are groups of people that value their economic liberty over someone else’s human life. We want to get people’s liberty back when we have PPE and testing. But I have a hard time with [the] ‘let ’em die’ attitude.”

But here is the irony. Trump has accused China of lying about the virus, which blocked efforts to contain the outbreak “at its source with very little death”. But backing protests to reopen the country too soon could spark a second wave of covid-19, resulting in even more deaths. If this happens, the economy could plunge and potentially be susceptible to complete disintegration. By then, it will be a little too late for any attempt to create jobs, rescue people from starvation, and indeed to win the election.

Trump’s remarks on China’s handling of the first stages of the outbreak may be accurate. But the truth is, his preoccupation with China and President Xi Jinping has never been straightforward. While the UK, France and Germany are joining forces to hold China accountable, Trump’s approach doesn’t suggest the truth has ever been a real priority. He is interested in China for the same reason he has become preoccupied with the WHO: it is yet another entity to blame.

Despite their differences, Trump is well-positioned to become another Xi Jinping. If the Chinese president’s policy of burying the truth resulted in covid-19 becoming a global pandemic, Trump’s moves to ignore it, instead of extending a hand to the world to get back on its feet, could potentially nudge his own country towards another wave of coronavirus. And it won’t be too long before his nationalist stooges around the world join his campaign and put us all at risk.

By rebranding a major international health crisis as just another attempt by the “fake news media” and the Democrats to block Americans from saying: “thank you, Mr President, for what you’ve done”, he is putting lives at risk.

If Americans are going to beat coronavirus and all its devastating economic and social aftershocks, they have a duty to defeat Trump in the ballot box first. The safety of the US and the rest of the world depends on it.