Cooperate or perish

The ‘Made in China’ cartoon in your daily egged me on into sharing a few of my thoughts. We take the ‘Made in China’ label as a matter-of-fact situation when we buy furniture, electronic products, in fact almost everything non-perishable for that matter. But this ‘Made in China’ strain is perish(able) and can’t be ignored (“Coronavirus death toll hits 132; foreigners airlifted from China,” Jan.29, Gulf Today).

The fatalities keep rising by the day and in today’s globalised world the chances of the virus spreading is very high. It’s time for global cooperation. We don’t want a repeat of the SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) contagion that claimed 800 lives in over a dozen countries in 2002-03.

While the Chinese authorities themselves are acknowledging that the virus has affected over 6000 people, other experts opine that the figure could range between 70,000 to 100,000 people. If the latter is right, we have a huge problem at hand.

The new disease has spread to more than 15 countries since it emerged out of Wuhan late last year, and similar to the SARS outbreak all the confirmed fatalities have so far been in China. But the world at large can’t take chances. It looks like a ‘cooperate or perish’ situation to me.

Prithi Sawal

By email