Now the COVID-19 epidemic is spreading fast over the world and has seriously undermined global public health security. No country can tackle this disease on its own. It is the time more than ever that the international community needs solidarity and cooperation. At the crucial time for every country to fight against the disease, however, I have heard few organizations are disregarding the facts, denigrating and smearing China. They try to undertake the so-called “class action”, and demand China accountable and compensate for the epidemic. This is totally baseless and is confusing the public. Hereby I would like to address the following facts.
- China responds to the epidemic and develops international cooperation in an open, transparent and timely manner.
There is criticism that China ignored and concealed the situation during the early phase of the epidemic. But actually, through China’s timeline of epidemic prevention and control, it is quite clear how Chinese government responded to the epidemic in a timely and decisive manner, and how China shared epidemic information as well as developing cooperation with the international community openly and transparently.
On December 27, 2019, relevant Wuhan authorities received the first report of suspected cases. From January 3, 2020, China started to update the WHO and relevant countries about COVID-19 on a regular basis. On January 7, China CDC identified the first novel coronavirus strain. On January 12, China shared with the world the whole genome sequencing information of the coronavirus, which has been critical for diagnosis and vaccine development in other countries. Although there was limited scientific research data for reference at the beginning of the outbreak, China responded promptly and received high evaluation from international experts.
As reported by major media in the world, on January 23, Wuhan, a city of over 10 million people, was put under quarantine, which was unseen before. China has made great achievements in public health over the past a few decades. If it was not due to the fierce virus, why would China choose for a lockdown during the Chinese Spring Festival? China has adopted the most comprehensive, rigorous and thorough measures to prevent and control the disease. With the efforts and sacrifice of Chinese people, China has contained the spread of the virus in just over two months, and has made great contributions to the international efforts to combat the virus.
- It is neither reasonable nor legal to demand compensation from China.
China is one of the victims of the epidemic, and is the first country to report the COVID-19 cases, but that does not necessarily make China the origin of the novel coronavirus. Not long ago, the WHO concluded based on the research of many scientists that the new coronavirus came from nature. As for its origin, no conclusion has been reached yet. It’s a complicated scientific matter that should be the subject of study for scientists and medical experts.
I have noticed there are reports of cases in the US and some other countries which are believed to be earlier than those in Wuhan. There is still lots of discussion among scientists about the origin of the virus. In this regard, we should have the basic concept that there is a process to understand a new virus. With the development of the epidemic, scientists will have a more clear understanding of the nature of the virus, which will definitely help mankind to win the battle against the epidemic.
Regardless the origin of the virus, at this particular time people should focus on domestic epidemic control and international anti-epidemic cooperation. To this end, medical personnel in various countries are making their efforts to save lives regardless of personal safety. During this period, the hype to blame China is tantamount to spreading political virus, which is more terrible than the virus in nature.
Meanwhile, as for accountability, there is no legal basis. No international law supports to blame a country that first reported an epidemic. And there is no precedent as well. Has any country been blamed or held accountable after major outbreak of AIDS and H1N1 flu?
The Dutch Caribbean islands were also hit by the epidemic. Over the past two months, nearly 200 confirmed cases have been reported. However, the islands responded in a timely manner and controlled the epidemic through measures including travel restrictions, shelter-in-place orders and curfews. I am pleased to see that the relevant measures have achieved positive results. There has been no large-scale community transmission of the virus, and also no new cases among the islands in the past one week. Relevant measures are being gradually eased and it is expected to resume normal life in the following period.
I am also pleased to see that the Chinese communities have organized themselves to actively donate masks and other necessary anti-epidemic materials to local police departments, hospitals, etc., and donate daily products to poor families in the community. It demonstrates the traditional virtue of Chinese people of sharing weal and woe.
Since January, I have maintained communication with government officials and medical experts, exchanging epidemic prevention technology, introducing China's progress fighting against the epidemic, and providing all possible assistance.
China sincerely upholds the concept of building community of shared future for mankind. Since the outbreak, countries around the world have been understanding it in a more intuitive way. Chinese President Xi Jinping pointed out that unity and cooperation are the international community’s most potent weapon to overcome the pandemic. I believe that as long as we are united and support each other, we will be able to win the battle against the disease at an early date.
Li Yigang
Consul General of the People’s Republic of China in Willemstad
Dear Editor,
In this piece of writing, I am giving public recognition to the late David Mills for his services to the community of St. Maarten in retrospect. David, as he was affectionately called, was the father of the late Vance James, Jr. a former Island Council member, and leader of Government of St. Maarten. He was a man of many skills. A sailor turned businessman, a natural-born salesman, and a great sea captain. David Mills was very active in transporting cargoes from the twin islands of St. Kitts and Nevis to St. Maarten in his early days.
He brought food supplies, building materials, and soft drinks for the people of St. Maarten from the twin-island state. David was one of the early pioneers risking his life, crewmen, and cargoes through a dangerous channel at night between St. Maarten and St. Kitts with his small vessel, Lady James. Upon arrival at the Great Bay Pier in Philipsburg Harbor, he was greeted by the “sounds of the conch shell.”
“I was filled with enthusiasm on arrival, and was praised for his great entrepreneurial spirit by the people of the Island,” said Mills. David Mills came from Dieppe Bay, a small quiet village on the Western side of St. Kitts, overlooking St. Eustatius, Saba, and a view of St. Maarten in the background. On hearing of so many sad and horrific stories about fishermen lost at sea, small boats overturned in the channel, and men eaten by sharks. I sometimes wonder how did he manage these perilous journeys with men on board and supplies through the dangerous “Statia Channel.”
“St. Maarten should never turn its back on St. Kitts,” said Mills. He brought English language textbooks, agricultural supplies, soft drinks, building materials, medicines, and the list goes on. Most of his times in St. Maarten, he used to wear mostly short pants, white tee-shirt, sailor-type shoes, a cap and dark pair of shades.
David Mills was a big supporter of the late Dr. Claude Wathey. “I always told Vance James, Jr. to stay out of politics, but he doesn’t listen, and I never voted for him because of that,” said Mills.
“My voyages to St. Maarten with cargoes were never easy. It was breath-taking at times, especially sailing through the Statia Channel. Sometimes my crewmen would ask, Are we going to make it to St. Maarten with all these supplies on board?” “Yes, we will make it,” said David. He was a very positive person.
David Mills was the first to set up a soft drink distribution company on St. Maarten, and because of him Coca Cola is here today.
It is so sad in retrospect to see such an important person who did so much for the people of this country was never recognized for his contributions to the community of St. Maarten. David Mills, aka Vance James, Sr., you are truly a shining star in my book of heroes looking over this little island. You always said to me in the past that one of these days someone will set sail from the twin-island state with a larger vessel loaded with more supplies of materials and foods for the people of this country (St. Maarten).
This is a short COVID-19 relaxer for all those readers who love to read non-fiction stories about great people.
Joseph Harvey
Dear Editor,
This year 2020 marks the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale. This year the world is faced with the COVID-19 pandemic. With all the ups and downs in between this year Nurses Day, we must not allow the situation to take our minds away from this special day.
This Nurses Day, at this crucial time provide the opportunity to celebrate in our hearts our nurses in every area departments, and all Health Care Services providers, Hospitals, Nursing homes, Doctor's clinics, EMS Services (ambulance), Mental Health care, Baby clinics, Collective Prevention Services, (ESF 6) nurses, Private Home care, White &Yellow Cross Foundation, in St. Maarten. Just a moment to recognize you and your hard work.
Nursing has been a profession with high standards and a strong sense of public service for over 160 years. Nurses are those who give support to people who are suffering from any disease. Especially this year 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic.
The profession they have chosen is very remarkable for which it is an honored and well-remembered one once a year.
During this Nurses Day I want to honor all nurses working in the public and private sector and also thank you for the dedicated work you do every day to achieve good health and life for everyone. It is a profession which requires a real dedication to service and support for others.
These great professionals are those who fail to quell the feelings of fear and provide security and necessary care to those who have cracked their health and support physicians in performing their responsibilities. Thanks to their care, patients are able to recover their health.
It is my wish as President of the St. Maarten Nurses Association to send special greetings to all nurses for their hard work in the interest of protecting the health of the population, by reaching out to help all our patients, and especially for making our world more friendly to live.
God bless and keep all of our nurses safe!
Happy Nurses Day.
Nurse Mavis Rombley
President of the St. Maarten Nurses Association
Dear Editor,
If we survive this global pandemic, we may witness the most consequential U.S. Presidential elections for that nation ─ and for the world ─ since the election of President Reagan and his team of Republicans 40 years ago, in November 1980. That is when democracy, self-government, Lincoln’s “government of the people, by the people, for the people” was reclaimed and retrieved from a looming hellish utopia of Soviet world communism.
After much upheaval, social redress and progress in the ’60s, followed by economic depression and hopelessness in the ’70s, the U.S.A. was rescued from impending disaster. The nation was retrieved from the ash-heap of history and Soviet-style world communism where the stewardship of so-called Liberals (Republicans and Democrats) of that era was leading it and its people.
President Nixon’s “rapprochement” with China had led to the Republic of China (Taiwan) being ejected from the United Nations (UN) and Communist China being included as a member state. “Détente” under Presidents Nixon and Carter had led to the Soviet Union invasion of Afghanistan and the Iran hostage crisis in 1979.
In 1980, Republican candidate Ronald Reagan was vilified by the defeatists, appeasers and sympathizers of the Soviets and their program of world communism. But the American people elected Ronald Reagan, an ex-movie actor and union leader and his team of enthusiastic reformers. Their governance, with support from the Iron Lady, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher of the UK, and a few others elsewhere, led to the implosion of the USSR and to the demise of Soviet-style world communism.
Twenty years later, in October 2000, at the very end of his second term in office, President Clinton, a Democrat, granted China normal trade relations with the U.S. He could never have succeeded in enacting the “U.S.A.-China Relation Act of 2000” into law without the strong backing of the Republicans who controlled the Congress: House and Senate.
Business interest was strongly in support of the bill; opponents to it argued that it rewarded a repressive communist state and undermined US labor and environmental protection. The bill pitted corporate and farming groups against organized labor, human rights groups, veterans’ organizations and religious leaders. 164 Republicans and Democrats voted for; 138 Democrats and 2 Independents voted against. The agreement was a triumph for the Republicans and for President Clinton ─ a Democrat!
But the broader context of this legislation is worth noting: the Clinton administration was under a sturdy, stealthy assault by the forces of global governance in the US, at the United Nations (UN) and at the European Union (EU).
“From 1980 to 2005, the World Bank’s loans to China totaled about $40 billion” (most of it US funded), the highest loan on record at the World Bank. (Online Pieter Bottelier, China and the World Bank, April 2006).
Politicians in Europe and in the U.S.A. and the technocrats at the UN and the EU were not concerned with democracy ─ to the contrary ─ they were undermining self-governance by promoting the UN’s “Global Neighborhood” and “Global Governance” (UN Report: Our Global Neighborhood, 1995, chap.2).
On May 19, 2000, the EU agreed to China becoming a member of the WTO; five months later, on October 10, President Clinton signed the “United States-China Relations Act of 2000” into law; the following year, on December 21, 2001, China was welcomed into the World Trade Organization. Without the consent of the U.S.A, China would have remained outside of the WTO which might have forced its leaders to clean up their act. In their numerous signed agreements with the EU, the US and the WTO, Chinese officials promised all sorts of incremental reforms which Europeans and Americans, and the WTO are still awaiting patiently today – twenty years later.
The “U.S.A.-China Relation Act of 2000” decimated American industries and their workers. President Clinton’s successors, Republican President Bush W., and Democrat President Obama stood by and allowed their nation to be stripped of its manufacturing, industrial and military might to the benefit of a ruthless communist nation hell-bent on exporting, on spreading its model of tyrannical government: its repressive Maoist brand of communism throughout the world. The 20-year rape of America by Communist China, the so-called People’s Republic of China, was a consensual affair; it occurred with the consent of America; of Americans; of most of their media; and of their corporate leaders and politicians: Republicans and Democrats.
That is why, like with Ronald Reagan in 1980, it took an outsider, someone who was neither Republican nor Democrat, to address the neglect inflicted on the people, on the working classes of the nation by their politicians, their intellectuals: their corporate and globalist elites. It took an informed outsider to address and to try to redress the exploitation that resulted from that dismal trade agreement with China in 2000. In 2016, it took the TV star businessman Donald J. Trump to tackle the issue of “China!” as he refers to it, and to undertake the most worthy effort of rescuing and restoring his nation’s industrial, commercial and military might. He was wrestling that mighty dragon with very promising results.
And then, with the New Year, while the U.S. Senate was debating the impeachment of the President on trumped-up charges, seemingly out of Communist China, like H1N1 and some other earlier pandemics, coronavirus COVID-19 came to America and to the world: an invisible enemy; centillions of silent, spiked crown killers!
If my information is correct, to date, the virus has taken the lives of 280,000 human beings worldwide including some 79,773 in the US; 5,440 in the Netherlands, 26,310 in France and 18 individuals on “Sweet St. Martin” (French and Dutch). It has crushed the US economy, wiped away everything President Trump and his team had accomplished, everything except the President’s will of steel, his determination to start all over again in a second mandate. Will the American people indulge him?
Gérard M. Hunt
Dear Editor,
As has been said by a writer Friday, May 8, 2020, in The Daily Herald, indirectly learn from your Republican foes. I agree. Republicans have “wielded with success, skill, emotion, and patriotism” in their recent, I say, affirmation of President Trump.
I will make my opinion, as a voice of one legal American citizen, in a concise way.
We are fortuitous to have President Trump to guide our country particularly during this Corona Virus occurrence. He has proceeded in the best method possible.
It’s time for Democrats to unite with everyone else in working toward the eradication of this sometimes deadly virus. How about it, stop criticizing, and put your energy into conquering this microorganism. Is this not what’s in the best interest of our country and world?
Scientifically, masks need to be worn during times of groups of people gathered in one place; and especially in confined spaces such as airplanes. Be sensible, and stay at home still as much as possible, and ideally keep the streets as free from people as possible for a little longer, as each country, and the world uniquely opens up slowly, in relation to their progress toward normalcy. This is the only way to conquer this foe, especially until we have a drug to treat, and one to cure this virus.
A quick study in epidemiology would be helpful for those with little understanding of our current situation, including writers.
I hesitate to even think what might have happened if President Trump were not leading. The average person, quiet now, knows what is going on, and will rise to the occasion, and President Trump will win the upcoming election by a landslide.
By the way, being up at 1:00, 2:00, or 3:00am is not unusual for President Trump, as he conducts his duties as President. Not all people require the same amount of sleep each night to function effectively.
Respectively,
I. Ruth M.
Surname withheld at author's request.
