Trump's blaming China for coronavirus pandemic waste of time, energy: scholar

The act of U.S. President Donald Trump to continue blaming China for the coronavirus pandemic is a waste of time and energy, Charles R. Stith, non-executive chairman of the Johannesburg-based African Presidential Leadership Center, has said.

In his opinion article published Monday by South China Morning Post, Stith said "Trump has already tried blaming China for the pandemic and the chaos that followed... To continue down this road is, at best, a waste of time. At worst, it is a distraction that prevents us from dealing with root issues relative to COVID-19 and getting started on a serious global economic recovery."

"The fact is, the crisis is not China's fault," said the author of the recently released book, A View from the Other Side: Locked Down in South Africa.

He recognized China's quick action in identifying the virus and shared pertinent information in late December, and cited a study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research as saying that there might have been COVID-19 cases in the United States as early as December 2019, before China identified the virus and did the analysis to come up with the genome code.

"Working together, the world can deal with this challenge. Working together, we can see this through. To do that, first and foremost, we have to stop blaming China for the pandemic," the scholar concluded.