Donald Trump has announced that the US will suspend its funding for the World Health Organisation, accusing it of a cover-up favouring China over the coronavirus spread. Coming as it does when the WHO needs all the support it can get to coordinate and guide nations in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, the short-sighted decision has rightly been condemned by health experts and the UN secretary general.

The pandemic, if anything, has shown how interconnected the world is in almost all fields, including medical, economic and political, and how global disasters need to be handled with a greater degree of global collaboration, most especially in the political sphere.

The initial political rhetoric saw world leaders, including Trump, aiming to project themselves as being in control of an unknown enemy. This attitude soon evolved into a blame game – with medical experts often in the line of fire – that was disturbing for ordinary people scared about their future.

Few political leaders came out of the first phase of pandemic damage limitation efforts unscathed, as it became evident to many around the world that their leaders were more interested in scoring political points than facing facts head on. Who would want a political leader acting as a cheerleader in a time of crisis?

The medical profession performed much better. The straight talk of epidemiologists, infectious disease control experts and ordinary doctors on the front line may have worried many, but what people want are the facts.

There are, of course, some divergences even in the medical advice countries have been given. But like everyone else, the medical profession is still going through a learning curve on this new disease. Few doubt that the health experts’ recommendations are far more reliable than political statements often built on nothing but hunches or hope.  

International institutions too were sending mixed signals about the kind of support they were prepared to offer to help overcome the global health and economic crisis. The WHO’s delay in declaring COVID-19 as a pandemic may have lulled some countries into a false sense of security. The alleged dubious leadership credentials of its director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, must come under scrutiny once this crisis is over, because this vital organisation’s credibility depends on the trust people have in its leadership.

The European Central Bank, often recognised as one of the most trusted EU institutions, was caught up in a particularly unfortunate gaffe when at the beginning of the crisis its president Christine Lagarde declared that it was not the ECB’s role to reduce the spread on Italian sovereign debt. She was technically correct but certainly insensitive to how financial markets react with panic to such comments.

The European Council has once again shown that when push comes to shove, it is national interests and not solidarity and Union integration that matters. Italy, Spain, Greece and possibly even France may suffer the worst economic consequences of this crisis. It remains to be seen how much solidarity the Council will show with these countries when they try to repair the damage to their economic and social fabric.

We live in a world dependent on effective interconnection in trade, medicine, finance and social welfare. The COVID-19 crisis has exposed the dearth of political, institutional and business leaders needed to ensure that a global crisis does not destroy the social and economic infrastructure of nations.

The global community urgently needs to get its act together to prevent moresevere consequences in future.