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The threat of a coronavirus pandemic is common, but the ways the US, China and Russia deal with it are different: a view from Moscow

Date of publication: 14 July 2020

The threat of a coronavirus pandemic is common, but the ways the US, China and Russia deal with it are different: a view from Moscow 16.07.2020 16:08

The real state of affairs of the struggle in the United States with Covid-19 and their claims to the PRC

 

In April 2020, the us President D. Trump alerted the world about the breakthrough in the fight against infection, saying that the strategy he chose helped reduce the increase in the incidence of diseases in the United States, because the number of sick Americans has stopped growing – “This is clear evidence that our strategy to fight the virus is working, and Americans are following the recommendations,” the us President said [1]. He also accused China of hiding the extent of the coronavirus and its degree of contagion in order to stock up on essential medical supplies, and kept information about the virus from the WHO throughout January. Therefore, the us President threatened Beijing with severe penalties if it turns out that it deliberately covered up the covid-19 outbreak [2]. In addition to these threats, US Secretary of state M. Pompeo stated that “the Chinese Communist party seeks world domination and threatens the security of the United States, so either China will live according to the laws of Western civilization, or something will happen to it that previously happened to the USSR”[3].

However, the real state of Affairs in the United States at the initial stage of the fight against Covid-19 indicates that due to their lack of preparedness for this fight, they firmly hold the 1st place in the world in terms of the number of cases of this disease, because their medical staff lacked personal protective equipment, test systems and artificial ventilation (ventilator) devices. As a result, hospitals were overflowing with coronavirus patients and they were placed in temporarily converted shopping complexes and stadiums, while morgues were unable to accommodate the dead and they were placed in food containers. And the American test systems were not accurate enough, which means that US citizens who have a test for coronavirus “negative” in reality-get sick, so it is unknown how many US residents were actually infected with this virus. As the Washington Post notes on this issue- “Americans are dying at home or in overloaded hospitals and nursing homes, due to the fact that they were not detected in time by testing this virus”[4]. In addition, the US state reserve does not have the am

The wave of the pandemic has exposed serious shortcomings of the existing American health care system, where 27 million US citizens do not have health insurance at all. The response of the White house to the pandemic was a patchwork of various efforts, including: the urgent closure of businesses in quarantine; attempts to impose a state of emergency in some States; and orders for all citizens to wear masks and stay at home, which, however, had no restrictions.

Obviously, the April statement of the US President is connected with the beginning of the election fight between the Republican trump and the Democrat J. Biden in the elections on November 2. In this regard, on May 10, former us President Obama criticized trump and his administration for “chaotic actions” in the fight against coronavirus and stressed that he intends to spend his efforts to support Biden’s election campaign [5]. And whether trump will be the 45th President of the United States or not, in part depends on how many American voters believe that, thanks to his efforts, the pandemic was defeated in America, or he is responsible for the failures of the fight against it.

This is due to the fact that the long-term implementation of neoliberal policies by the White house has led to the emergence of US dependence on consumption financed by foreign investors. Therefore, the country’s budget deficit is rapidly increasing, even when the us Federal reserve began to pursue an expansionary policy. During the pandemic, it lowered rates and increased its balance sheet by more than $2.4 trillion to prevent a systemic liquidity shortfall. However, the US continues to build up excess debt, increasingly detached from the real economy, and its banks rely more on capital markets, rather than serving the us economy. And since trump became President of the United States, the Federal debt has grown by more than $ 3 trillion, and experts predict that the state budget deficit will grow by another $1 trillion in 2020, even without taking into account the consequences of the pandemic. As a result, in April, it was announced that the American economy had collapsed by 40%, and the country lost about 25 million jobs due to the closure of enterprises for quarantine [6]. Therefore, even proponents of increasing the US defense budget expect that military spending will decrease significantly over the next years, due to the huge us budget deficit.

The Covid-19 crisis revealed another “Achilles heel” of US national security: their nuclear power plants could not operate if operators became ill and were quarantined, which creates a problem for their smooth functioning. Other vital US agencies-the police, food processing companies, postal service, and health care providers-are also extremely stressed, as their staff also had Covid-19[7]. There is another significant factor that reduces the effectiveness of the fight against the pandemic in the United States.

Foreigners arriving in the United States on flights were surprised that they were not asked medical questions at airports and did not require that they be in mandatory two-week quarantine. In fact, American airports were a “sieve” that allowed millions of people to enter the country, and only a very few were screened out. This is confirmed by data from the US Bureau of transportation statistics – the number of international airline passengers arriving at US airports in January – March 2019 averaged 18 million people. in January, more than 4 million people arrived in the United States on direct flights from China and even from Wuhan. The devastating consequences of this show the following-the subsequent cost of quarantining 200 passengers from an international flight for 2 weeks was about $250 thousand, and the cost of quarantining 9 million people was about $ 11.25 billion. [8] Although in early January, the Centers for disease control and prevention and the national center for medical intelligence repeatedly expressed concern about the spread of Covid-19 across the country. However, these warnings were ignored by the trump administration until mid-March. At the same time, the network of officials and units associated with emergency management who knew how to respond to the pandemic was replaced by a White house team led by Vice President M. Pence [9].

Seeing these failures in the fight against the pandemic, a number of private companies and corporations offered their help to the White house. The head of Salesforce, M. Benioff, called in March for other companies not to lay off employees for 90 days. General Motors Corporation in mid-March merged with the company for the manufacture of ventilators and in April they began production of thousands of devices, increased the production of face masks to 50 thousand masks per day. Starbucks, which owns a chain of restaurants, offered its employees to stay at home with pay until May 3. AT&T, along with other Internet service providers, has opened free Wi-Fi access points across the country, allowing Americans to stay connected to each other, and children have the opportunity to learn remotely. Gilead Science donated its stock of antiviral drugs to the state for patients who were diagnosed with Covid-19[10]. IBM and HP have created the High Performance Computing Consortium to help scientists better understand the nature of the virus, and the US government has allocated the necessary funds to ensure that additional measures are taken to meet the basic needs of the population during the pandemic[11].

In addition, on April 14, the US President announced that he was temporarily stopping funding for who, because it “plays on the side of Beijing and declared serious incompetence of the leadership, and he will do everything to hold China accountable for the pandemic”[12]. To do this, the US has a significant “trump card” – the dollar, which China does not have and which accounts for about 2/3 of the world’s foreign exchange reserves and supports the economic supply chain. However, the Economist believes that China can reduce this advantage with unread measures by trump: China is an important creditor and technical partner of the US and has us bonds worth $13 trillion. He also did not realize that in China there are thousands of American companies and the U.S. if China decides to “reset” your debt under the guise of a coronavirus, China will take that business itself. And if Beijing presents us loan obligations for payment, it is even scary to imagine what will happen then to the US financial system. Nevertheless, Washington continues to persistently pressure Beijing and expects excuses from it, thereby trying to “kill two birds with one stone”. Blame China to cover up its own failures in the fight against the pandemic and demand compensation for its losses. And in order for Beijing to be more accommodating to US claims, trump temporarily canceled duties on Chinese goods worth $150 billion.

At the same time, Beijing does not deny the fact that it reported cases of Cavid-19 to the WHO in February, and not in January. But Beijing does not admit any special blame for this. This is confirmed by the following facts: who has no confirmed information that the coronavirus was created in a laboratory in Wuhan, and studies conducted in the Netherlands and Italy have not revealed that Covid-19 is of artificial origin. This negates US attempts to hold China accountable for the economic damage it has caused. After all, most countries of the world, including the United States, have legal provisions granting sovereign immunity to foreign States in national courts, and the mechanism of international law does not provide for the possibility of condemning a state without its consent. Therefore, in order to hold China to international responsibility, as the White house insists, it is necessary that it it wants to sit in the dock.

 

China’s response to the US and its main ways to fight coronavirus

 

The response to the White house from Beijing came quickly enough. The newspaper Zhimen Zhibao published “10 questions” to which he is waiting for answers from Washington, which are based solely on information received from the American media. Here are some of them [13].

In November 2019, the US national center for medical intelligence published a report detailing the coronavirus pandemic. Related questions: why didn’t the US government declare a “state of emergency” in the country in March? And when will the American authorities publish samples of the genetic sequence of the virus, or when will they allow experts from the UN to select and analyze this virus?

In February 2019, the website of the journal Science published that the US government approved an experiment to modify the avian flu virus, increasing the risk of human-to-human transmission of the virus. Again, questions – why did the US government decide to resume this experiment and why is there no explanation regarding this experiment? And what kind of research is being carried out in the US biological laboratories located in Georgia and Ukraine?

On March 16, The Wall Street Journal reported that the first human testing of Moderna Inc. ‘ s experimental vaccine against Covid-19 has already begun, although it cannot be developed unless the US has received strains of the virus at the earliest stage. In this regard, the next questions about when the US received the virus strains and how they were able to start developing a vaccine so quickly?

In the same month, The New York Times quoted a report saying that from January to August 2019, the us Department of health and intelligence agencies developed a “Crimson infection” scenario simulating an outbreak involving a group of tourists who visited China and contracted the virus there. Why, then, were there no effective preventive measures taken in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, if the United States had already predicted a similar pandemic?

According to the New York Times, the White House has begun to tighten control over reports of coronavirus from health officials. This raises the following questions. Why does the US, which claims freedom of speech, not allow experts and scientists to discuss a new type of coronavirus in the media?

In response to these questions, the White house has not yet responded, because it has no reasoned answers for either Beijing or other capitals of the world.

At the same time, it should be noted that the developed model of China’s struggle in the first stage of the fight against the pandemic continues to improve. Over time, it may become a model for the international community to combat the recurrent cycle of the coronavirus pandemic, which international experts warn about. To do this, China will use already proven methods of fighting Covid-19 in the fight against the recurrent pandemic, which allowed it to successfully overcome the pandemic of This virus, which was first detected in China [14].

First, Hubei province and the city of Wuhan, where the Covid-19 epidemic started, were one of the first to be closed in the country, where a mobile hospital was built within a week, and the second one was built two weeks later. In addition, 6 thousand doctors and nurses arrived in the city and 2 thousand ambulances were sent from all provinces of China. Doctors who worked in the city received a reward of 10 thousand yuan from the authorities and a year of free entry to any tourist sites throughout China (which was done for the first time in the world).

Secondly, the authorities later quarantined the entire population of China, putting on masks, urgently launching them into mass production. Schools, gardens, shopping centers, restaurants, and cafes were closed throughout the PRC. Only stores and pharmacies were open, where a ban on the sale of antipyretic drugs and cough medicine was introduced. During the quarantine, public transport ran a limited number of flights, and the government replaced the old money from the population with new ones (which was also done for the first time).

Thirdly, when moving within China by province and entering / leaving Hong Kong, it was only through quarantine. The camera tracking system was improved using drones with face recognition without masks and through masks. They hovered over the violators and asked them to put on masks. Some hotels used delivery robots, thereby completely excluding contact with residents in quarantine (which was also done for the first time). Fines and criminal liability were imposed for spreading false information about the spread of the virus in social networks in the country. Although there is no free medicine in China, the Chinese government provided free treatment for foreigners and Chinese citizens who got sick with coronavirus (this was an innovation for the PRC).

Fourth, the Chinese government obliged private business owners to keep their employees’ salaries, and civil servants regularly received their salaries from the state budget. Small and medium-sized businesses were supported by payments in the amount of declared profits and the abolition of fees for January-March for renting premises, and apartment owners were advised not to charge tenants for the same months.

Fifth, Chinese companies – “Midea” and “Haier” provided hospitals with televisions, air conditioners and other household appliances. The company “Meityan”, the entire quarantine fulfilled any orders, including medicines, products, etc. Online logistics company “JD.com” it also played an important role-it guaranteed fast delivery of essential goods to consumers during quarantine. Tencent’s Meeting app allowed schools to continue working in the form of online classes. Alibaba and Pinduoduo became a lifeline for small business owners, connecting them with consumers at home and abroad, and the social network WeChat maintained contacts between people who were quarantined. This network has also provided the government with an opportunity to disseminate information that is important to society. And as the quarantine regime eased, the software embedded in WeChat was used to monitor the health of residents (which was made possible by the fact that these apps are installed on almost all smartphones in China).

Sixth, a campaign was launched to help countries affected by the coronavirus. China sent teams of doctors to Russia, Iran, Pakistan and Tajikistan, who received humanitarian aid from China in shipments of anti-epidemic cargo and protective equipment. Beijing also expressed its readiness to support the G20 agreement on ending bilateral loan repayments by poorer countries, and is ready to work with WHO. Although their partnership was difficult, as Beijing sought not so much to share information about the coronavirus, but to find out about methods of treating such diseases. Nevertheless, it has never refused to engage in dialogue (which is a significant advantage of the PRC compared to Western countries).

Seventh, the fight against the pandemic involved not only the Chinese government, but the Chinese Communist party, which is in fact the main core of society. At the peak of the epidemic, its members actively engaged in the fight against Covid-19. Huge powers were given to the CPC district committees, which became centers of anti-crisis management and allowed the authorities not to “lose” the country. The key decisions – to introduce or relax the quarantine on the territory controlled by local authorities-were made not by them, but by the party [15]. And the fight against the pandemic was led by XI Jinping, China’s most influential leader after Mao Zedong, who holds the position of General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee and at the same time chairs many committees that make decisions about the development of China. And he is again ready to introduce tough but effective measures in the country to once again defeat the second wave of coronavirus. And, despite the damage caused by the pandemic of the Chinese economy, the Chinese authorities plan to build a “welfare” society in the country by 2050, the standard of living in which will be equal to the indicators of the developed powers.

However, a serious challenge to the development of China along this path is as a “global factory for the production of goods”. the decline in global demand for its products due to the coronavirus epidemic that swept the planet in 2020 and had a negative impact on the national economy of China: its revenues in the field of tourism and trade sharply decreased; many enterprises suspended work due to the epidemic; a number of countries refused to purchase products from China, etc. And this will continue until an anti-virus vaccine is developed and the population of China and other countries of the world are vaccinated.

But, most importantly – in General, the strategy of the government and the Chinese Communist party for maximum isolation of infected areas of the country turned out to be correct. And if in February the American media scolded the middle Kingdom for closing Wuhan and other cities from the rest of the world, the Chinese authorities “buried the remnants of democracy in the camp.” While at the beginning of March, most Western countries, led by the United States, fell under the impact of the pandemic, began to fall apart into closed national zones, where everyone “stood for himself”. Therefore, these countries began to urgently resort to similar measures that China has already implemented during the fight against the first wave of coronavirus.

 

Problems and measures taken in Russia’s fight against coronavirus

 

In early March, the first cases of coronavirus infection were recorded in Russia. Therefore urgent measures were taken in the regions of the Russian Federation to counteract the spread of this infection: by March 22, the country had deployed more than 55 thousand infectious beds, prepared 7.5 thousand special boxes, more than 40 thousand ventilators and more than 600 extracorporeal membrane oxygenation devices. In medical institutions, a stock of medicines and an unlimited supply of personal protective equipment was formed, and medical workers involved in the fight against the virus decided to pay monetary incentives (for the implementation of these measures, the government of the Russian Federation began to use funds from the reserve Fund). In addition, the authorities began to analyze the fight against the pandemic in foreign countries in order to avoid their mistakes in fighting the infection and learn from their positive experience. Also, monitoring of the epidemic situation in the country was organized and measures were taken to strengthen sanitary control at the border of the Russian Federation, the evacuation of Russians abroad, who were quarantined for 14 days, was carried out. All citizens of the country were ordered to stay at home until May 12, with immediate isolation of persons with suspected coronavirus and disinfection of all premises of enterprises and departments of the Russian Federation. An important aspect in the fight against the disease was the retraining of medical staff so that they could fight Covid-19, providing assistance to 6 thousand infectious diseases doctors, 2 thousand pulmonologists and 18 thousand nurses who were already prepared to fight this virus.

But, despite the measures taken, the epidemic continued to spread in the country and as of May 11 in Russia, the number of cases of Covid-19 approached the mark of 209 thousand cases of diseases, but the number of deaths per day was only 3,510, which is the lowest in the world due to universal testing of the country’s population. As stated by the head of government M. Mishustin: “Now more than 7 million tests have already been done in the country to detect coronavirus infection, such studies are conducted daily in almost 200 thousand people. Thanks to this, you can see the true picture of the disease, which allowed you to avoid the explosive development of infection”[16]. In addition, the authorities constantly imposed restrictive measures up to attempts to impose a curfew, but this proved to be impractical, since there was no such serious spread as abroad in Russia[17].

However, as in the Soviet times during the fight against alcoholism, when overzealous regional authorities destroyed vineyards in the Crimea, on the don and Kuban, in Russia at the beginning of the fight against Covid-19, it was again possible to observe the “excesses” of the authorities in their desire to report on their success in the fight against the epidemic, despite the fact that they did not do everything for this. So, in April, the leadership of the Ministry of internal Affairs reported to V. Putin said that they are ready to introduce electronic passes for personal transport to reduce the spread of the pandemic, but when they began to introduce them, due to multiple software failures, this led to the temporary formation of huge traffic jams on the roads and only after urgent debugging of this program-the situation stabilized. This also happened with attempts to get a one-time payment of 10 thousand rubles for each child under 16 years of age in May, when the portal of Public services “hung up” due to a large number of applications. And in Moscow, which accounts for almost half of all those infected with the coronavirus, it was difficult to call a doctor at home by phone, because the communication lines were always overloaded with calls from Muscovites in need of medical care. And because many medical facilities have been redesigned to deal with Covid-19 and all the staff has been thrown into the fight against the pandemic, it has become more difficult for patients with other diseases to get appropriate care. Although according to statistics, Russians are more likely to die from cardiovascular and oncological diseases, circulatory system failures and diabetes, and not from coronavirus, against which, as of the beginning of May, no vaccine has been developed against this infection either in Russia or in other countries [18].

In April, the President of the Russian Federation instructed the government to set payments to medical workers-80 thousand rubles for doctors; to paramedics, nurses and ambulance doctors-50 thousand rubles; for Junior medical staff and car drivers-25 thousand rubles a month. For these purposes, the regions were allocated 41.8 billion rubles, and more than 10 billion rubles for Federal institutions. But less than half of the medical workers received the money, although the funds have already been distributed to the regions. So V. Putin ordered to stop “bureaucratic nonsense” and not to count the hours and minutes of work of medical workers with coronavirus patients, and to give them money for the very fact of treatment. At a meeting with the government, Vladimir Putin recommended that Russian health Minister Mikhail Murashko not pass on his mistakes to others [19].

The restrictions caused by the pandemic hit the economy and social sphere of the Russian Federation hard, damaging the well-being of many of its citizens, whose incomes fell, and unexpected expenses and debts began to grow. In May, the number of registered unemployed in Russia reached 1 million 400 thousand (while their number was 20 times less than in the United States). The forced restriction of work in March-May had a negative impact on many sectors of the economy, where the teams of a number of large industrial enterprises of the Russian Federation and private entrepreneurs went into quarantine, which sharply reduced the Russian budget revenues. In addition, the country’s state budget continues to be negatively affected by Western economic sanctions and falling oil revenues. And if for China the fall in oil prices is a “plus”, then for the Russian Treasury it is a “minus”, because of the fall in oil prices, which is the main source of income for the Russian Federation. And the suspension of activity of Chinese enterprises that use these energy resources by 30% -40% may slow down the growth of Russian GDP from 2% planned this year to 1.7%.

With the beginning of the spread of coronavirus in the country, the President of Russia addressed the population five times in connection with the spread of coronavirus [20]. on May 11, he again addressed the citizens of the country, where he noted that the declared period of non-working days, which lasted more than 6 weeks, ended on this day. During this time, all regions had to form plans to get out of the country’s declared quarantine based on recommendations prepared by the government of the Russian Federation. Their leaders should make their own decision to cancel a number of quarantine measures, taking into account the real situation on the ground. This is due to the fact that in mid-May, who representative in Russia M. Vujinovich said that the situation with the spread of coronavirus in Russia has entered the stabilization stage. However, Putin warned the government that a second wave of Covid-19 cases is possible in the fall, which the country’s authorities already know how to counter. To do this, the number of specialized beds in the Russian Federation was increased to 130 thousand and a reserve of additional equipment and equipment was formed. The Ministry of defense has built 16 inpatient hospitals (not temporary ones, as was done in the US and China). Every region of the country has everything necessary to help people with severe complications, and our doctors know much more about the disease than they did at the beginning of the epidemic. They have developed new methods of treatment using effective drugs, the production of which has increased significantly in Russia. All government agencies, continuous cycle organizations, medical institutions, pharmacies, financial structures, and trade in food and essential goods continue to operate.

However, Russian President Vladimir Putin considered these measures insufficient. He put into effect a Decree on providing material support to Russian families for child care, which raised the minimum amount of financial assistance to them to 6,750 rubles, which will also be received by non-working citizens and students. The President also considered it necessary to launch a special credit program “employment support” from June 1 to July inclusive, which can be used by all enterprises in the affected sectors of the economy and socially oriented non-profit organizations( NPOs), which will support 7 million jobs (if during the entire period of this program, enterprises will maintain employment at the level of 90% or higher of the staff number, then after its expiration, the loan and interest on it will be completely written off). And the enterprises of the affected industries that have already received a 6-month deferred tax and insurance payments, it was decided that their payments for the second quarter of 2020 should be completely written off (this measure will apply to individual entrepreneurs, small and medium-sized businesses in the affected industries, and NGOs). In the sphere of assistance to self-employed citizens, their income tax paid in 2019 in full will be refunded. To implement these measures, V. Putin proposed to allocate 12 billion rubles laid down in the national project “Support for small and medium-sized businesses” for the future, which should start working this year. In addition to personally monitoring the implementation of these measures, Vladimir Putin instructed the Russian control authorities to strictly monitor the implementation of the Presidential Decree, so that “excesses and distortions” made at the beginning of the fight against the pandemic are not allowed in the regions of the Russian Federation. It should be noted that many of these measures, put into effect by the decree of the President of the Russian Federation – neither in the United States nor in China in providing support to the population were not made. As for relatively small surcharges to Russians, compared to the one-time financial assistance of the US government to their citizens of 1 thousand dollars, they are monthly for a long time, based on the capabilities of the Russian Federation.

At the same time, Russia continues to help countries around the world in their fight against coronavirus, for this purpose, thousands of test systems for the diagnosis of Covid-19 batches of technical equipment were transferred to China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Venezuela. In early April, a Russian plane with humanitarian aid arrived in the United States. in response, the American government sent similar aid to Russia in May. Earlier, a large group of military specialists with technical equipment was sent to Italy to assist in the fight against the pandemic, for which Russia received gratitude from the official authorities of Italy and the local population. While the US media erupted with indignation at the assistance provided to Italy in the fight against coronavirus by Russian military personnel in a NATO member state. Although the us military, instead of helping its allies in the Alliance, illegally intercepted a cargo of 500 thousand tests for Covid-1, intended for Italy. In addition, Washington is dissatisfied with the fact that Russia considers the us demands to China to compensate for damage from the coronavirus unacceptable. Expressing this point of view, Russian foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that China helps other countries by sharing experience in fighting coronavirus, including Russia, where a delegation of Chinese virologists and epidemiologists arrived in April. The PRC also transferred the virus genome to the Russian Federation, which allowed the development of rapid tests and a large number of tools to combat Covid-19. In early May, 1 million protective suits and 80 million medical masks were delivered to Russia. In addition to this assistance to the country, Russian foreign policy is closely linked to the Russian-Chinese strategic partnership.

First, the Russian authorities take into account the leading factor that determines the situation in the world – the growing economic and increasingly frequent political confrontation between China and the United States and the ongoing confrontation between Moscow and Washington. And the strengthening of partnership with China helps to resist US sanctions that are damaging the Russian economy. Therefore, the government will continue to work at linking the Russian project of the EEU project of China “One belt and one road” /OBOR (this pairing is seen as a way of harmonization of the mutual interests of the countries to strengthen partnerships with the countries of Eurasia in the “Big Eurasian partnerships”, which plays an important role in the interaction of Russia and China within the organizations of which they were members).

Secondly, such a global challenge as the pandemic is a reason to increase the effectiveness of joint humanitarian work between Russia and China at the international level. When China was in the acute phase of the epidemic, it did not hesitate to accept foreign aid. And when there was an improvement, I began to actively provide assistance to other countries. Similarly, Russia, which provides assistance to a number of countries around the world, despite the fact that the country has not yet passed the peak of the pandemic. But some us allies prefer to keep silent about this and not accept assistance from the Russian Federation and China. Thus, they preserve the hierarchy of Washington’s hegemony in the world, which is opposed by Moscow and Beijing, for whom the joint struggle against Covid-19 is a step towards building a new system of international relations with the same rules for all, which has a beneficial effect on the citizens of the world.

Third, in addition to fighting the pandemic, Russia is addressing a number of economic challenges that should strengthen its interaction with China. This is due to the fact that due to the pandemic, Russia’s share in gas supplies to the European market is declining, which makes it necessary to strengthen Chinese-Russian cooperation in this area. Therefore, oil and gas from Russia to China is delivered in the same mode, despite the fact that a number of oil and gas regions of the Russian Federation have been quarantined. The government will also develop the Eurasian transport highway in the country in order to increase the scale of international transport within the framework of OBOR, which will have a positive impact on Chinese-Russian contacts in the field of logistics.

 

Conclusion

 

Based on the analysis of methods and methods of controlling coronavirus in the United States, China and Russia, we can come to the following conclusions.

First, nothing exposes the systemic differences between the various methods of fighting the United States, China, and Russia as much as the fight against Covid-19 at its first stage, which caused significant damage to these countries. According to the results of their confrontation of the pandemic as at 22 may: in the US 1 577 287 people showed Covid-19, which died 94 702 people, and has recovered – 298 418; in Russia, there were 326 448 cases of coronavirus, which died 3249, and 99 825 – recovered; the number of cases Covid-19 made in China 84081, of which 79329 recovered and died 4638 people. And how devastating the consequences of the first wave of the pandemic were for their economies and finances is still difficult to accurately calculate. But despite these losses, these States will strengthen their health systems and improve proven methods of fighting the pandemic to reflect the second wave of Covid-19. At the same time, an international race began between them – who will be the first to invent a vaccine against Covid-19, in which the rivals of this race carefully hide their achievements in this field. The prize of this race is huge geopolitical and financial bonuses to the winner from many countries of the world, which will be covered by the second wave of coronavirus. Although to speed up the creation of an antiviral vaccine, it would be advisable to combine the efforts of the world community, which is called for by the leader of Germany, A. Merkel.

Second, in the course of countering the first wave of the pandemic, the White house administration accused China of spreading the pandemic around the world, which caused damage to the US economy. And in the American media, a “pandemic of disinformation” broke out about Russia; distorted information was published about the death rate and about its assistance to Italy. And if in the new “cold war” that Washington has been waging against Moscow since 2014, now this war is being waged against Beijing. Although the analysis of the us ways of fighting the virus shows that the initial unpreparedness of the us authorities at the first stages of countering Covid-19, the overload of the health system, which almost completely moved to the private sector, and its state support was minimized, all this did not allow the us authorities to cope with the pandemic in a timely manner. Therefore, if the pandemic returns to the US, they need to draw conclusions from the negative lessons of the initial management of the pandemic emergency, so that the response is adequate to this threat, and the response to Covid-19 would be diverse. To do this, it would be appropriate for the United States to review its health system so that it can effectively withstand the second wave of the coronavirus pandemic.

Third, despite the fact that Covid-19 was the first to strike at China, It has most successfully coped with this virus thanks to timely and tough measures taken by the government and the CPC, which applied various ways to counter the pandemic in all areas of the country’s life. Therefore, these methods will be used by the Chinese authorities in the event of a repeat wave of the pandemic. At the same time, in the near future, relations between China and the United States will balance between their confrontation and partnership, with the periodic violation of this balance by mutual outbreaks of sanctions due to mutual accusations of Covid-19 proliferation.

Fourth, the Russian authorities are generally ready to repel the second wave of Covid-19. To do this, the country has created a comprehensive system to combat this disease. Russia’s problems in fighting the pandemic are mainly related to the fall in oil prices, which occurred simultaneously with the appearance of Covid-19. And instead of ceasing to be a “raw material appendage” to Western countries, Russia is gradually turning into a similar appendage to China. This is due to the fact that the Russian authorities still prefer to receive “short money” coming to the budget through exports of crude oil, gas and timber abroad, instead of developing the manufacturing sector of the economy of this raw material, which will later bring the country much more profit, but for this purpose, it is necessary to invest significant funds in this sector and wait a long time for them to pay off. Also, the authorities do not take into account the fact that many countries of the world are already switching to renewable energy, so the need for energy resources in Russia on the international market will not be endless.

 

Morozov Yury Vasilyevich, candidate of military Sciences, leading researcher of the research Center of northeast Asia and SCO of the Institute of Far Eastern studies; senior research fellow, Centre for military-political problems of the Institute of USA and Canada studies

 

Bibliography:

 

[1]Donald trump made a statement. URL: https://www.cosmo.ru/stars/news/14-04-2020/vazhneyshiy-progress-v-voyne-s-koronavirusom-donald-tramp-sdelal-zayavlenie/

 

[2] China hid data on coronavirus to accumulate drugs. URL: https://ria.ru/20200504/1570937934.html?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fyandex.ru%2Fnews

 

[3] How Pompeo offended the Chinese authorities. URL: https://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2019/10/31_a_12787340.shtml

 

[4] Eileen Choffnes. Declaring victory too soon: Lessons from Europe’s different responses to coronavirus. URL: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/declaring-victory-too-soon-lessons-from-europes-different-responses-to-coronavirus/

 

[5] Obama criticized trump for “chaotic actions” in the fight against COVID-19. URL: https://riafan.ru/1275258-obama-raskritikoval-trampa-za-khaotichnye-deistviya-v-borbe-s-covid-19

[6] Record decline: the US economy will collapse by 40 percent. URL: https://ria.ru/20200414/1569979813.html

 

[7] Henry Sokolski and Victor Gilinsky. The Hidden Nuclear Risk of the Pandemic URL: https://mail.yandex.ru/?uid=68109018#message/172262685746972947

 

[8] Laura H. Kahn. The Commissioned Corps was created to stop plagues at the US border. Why hasn’t it been used at airports during the pandemic? URL: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/the-commissioned-corps-was-created-to-stop-plagues-at-the-us-border-why-hasnt-it-been-used-at-airports-during-the-pandemic/?

 

[9] Daniel M. Gerstein. Epic fail: Why the US wasn’t prepared for the coronavirus pandemic. URL: https://thebulletin.org/2020/04/epic-fail-why-the-us-wasnt-prepared-for-the-coronavirus-pandemic/

 

[10] 7 companies that help the US government in the fight against coronavirus. URL: https://www.vesti.ru/doc.html?id=3264921&tid=108446

 

[11] Published measures to achieve an adequate result in the fight against coronavirus in the United States. URL: https://medvestnik.ru/content/medarticles/Obnarodovany-mery-po-dostijeniu-adekvatnogo-rezultata-v-borbe-s-koronavirusom-v-SShA.html

 

[12] America and China accuse each other of infecting the planet with the coronavirus. Komsomolskaya Pravda from March 7, 2020

 

[13] 10 questions of the people’s daily that the world is waiting for answers from the United States. URL: https://www.razumei.ru/blog/Belyj_Rus/7039/amerika-otvet-10-neudobnyh-voprosov-vlastyam-ssha-ot-zhenmin-zhibao

 

[14] Chinese method of fighting the virus. 22 facts as China entered the quarantine. URL: https://zen.yandex.ru/media/redpion/kitaiskii-metod-borby-s-virusom-22-fakta-kak-postupil-kitai-v-karantin-5e8170d2d421bb7d8627ba99

 

[15] Seven secrets that helped defeat the coronavirus epidemic in China. URL: https://www.kp.ru/daily/27107.5/4182089/

 

[16] Coronavirus Data for May 11. URL: https://yandex.ru/news/story/Opublikovanydannye

[17] From a long quarantine, the consequences are more dangerous than a coronavirus. URL: https://www.kp.ru/daily/27107.5/4182029/

 

[18] From what diseases people die most often in Russia. URL: https://news.ru/health/ot-kakih-boleznej-chashe-vsego-umirayut-rossiyane/

 

[19] IA Red Spring. URL: https://rossaprimavera.ru/news/bd6e3347

 

[20] Putin announced the extension of the self-isolation regime until may 11. URL: https://metaratings.ru/news/putin-obyavil-o-prodlenii-rezhima-samoizolyatsii-do-11-maya/



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