COVID-19 and politics

Abstract

Nowadays, the world experiences one of the most severe international public health issues of the past 100 years since the great pneumonia (Spanish flu) pandemic in 1918-1919. In late December 2019, Dr. Li Wenliang, an ophthalmologist at Wuhan Central Hospital in China, has used social media to report the likelihood of a new outbreak of coronavirus infection. (1) After a fruitless attempt to discredit the aforementioned physician, Chinese authorities have rapidly imposed mandatory quarantine on 60 million Chinese citizens. The outbreak caused by SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, which was initially restricted to local markets in Wuhan City, has rapidly spread throughout the city and the Hubei province. Within 3 months, the virus crossed the Chinese borders and spread towards the entire world, a fact that forced the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare pandemic state. Nowadays, its epicenters lie on Europe and United States; most countries have closed their borders and adopted the lockdown regime.