American press coverage of Covid-19 was first dismissive, then alarmist—but always condescending.
On April 18, 40 days after Italy became the
first Western country to go into lockdown to contain the spread of the
novel coronavirus, the director-general of the World Health
Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, found solace amid the
worsening pandemic in the words of Jennifer Lopez. “What I know is how
much we need each other,” he tweeted, attributing the words to the star
of such pop hits as “Booty.” Then, not content with quoting (as Emerson
would have it) “some saint or sage,” he imparted to his 1 million
followers a few exhortations of his own. “No to hate,” he said. “No to
stigma. No to divisions. Yes to unity. Yes to solidarity.”
Anyone surprised by this rhetoric from Tedros (as he is known) hadn’t
been paying attention. Stigma, especially, was the bête noire of the
leader of the WHO, which for weeks in late 2019 and early 2020 was all
but asleep at the wheel as the virus spread around the globe. More than
once since the beginning of the outbreak in Wuhan, Tedros had taken it
upon himself to admonish the masses not to disparage the Chinese. “It’s
so painful to see the level of stigma we are observing,” he declared in
early March. “Stigma, to be honest, is more dangerous than the virus
itself.” Two months later, a quarter of a million people would be dead,
though not of stigma.........To Read More...
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