The Relentless Pursuit of the Virus: Humanity’s Ultimate Test

The Relentless Pursuit of the Virus: Humanity’s Ultimate Test

United Daily News Editorial (Taipei, Taiwan)

March 22, 2020

 Translation of an Excerpt

City closure, closure of national borders, ban of airline flights, shutdown sine die. These heavy wordings have recently been broadcast globally in various languages; these panics and shocks have shaped the most realistic sense of apocalypse, whose end we still cannot see at the present.

As the pandemic is spreading, bigotry and discrimination will only make all people feel unsafe. US President Trump insists on calling the new coronavirus as the "Chinese virus", oblivious to the possible storm of hate-China and hate-Asia that racial discrimination rhetoric might incite.

Besides dealing with epidemic control, if we could still learn anything from this great challenge, that would be "branding and discrimination are precisely the truly dreadful viruses", which no vaccine, no medicine can cure; we can only rely on humanity’s goodwill and compassion. Following medical evidence, examining one’s scale in heart, to all people—irrespective of nationalities and origins, we are all equal before the epidemic. Only then can we, as the scholars expect in their joint appeal in writing: together fight and win the battle against the pandemic and for human rights.

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