Mankind is a community with a shared future

I have been following the COVID-19 news daily. Besides the Chinese media, I also check the data from Johns Hopkins University every day. When I am writing this article, there have been more than 6.9 million confirmed cases and more than 400,000 deaths worldwide, with nearly 2 million cases and over 110,000 deaths in the United States. Each time I saw the increasing numbers, I felt shocked, stunned and sad, and John Donne (1572-1631)’s poem “For Whom the Bell Tolls” would come to my mind:

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main ... any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and, therefore, never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”

Ernest Hemingway once quoted this poem as the epigraph to his novel “A Farewell to Arms.”

I found a video on Douyin mocking the racism and COVID-19 deaths in the US. I was shocked. I can understand the criticism of the racism in America, but mocking the coronavirus death toll is to me immoral.

After painstaking efforts, China has successfully contained the spread of the pandemic.

We should definitely be proud of this achievement. But it is improper to use words such as “purgatory” or “doomsday” to describe other countries and mock the number of deaths.

Of course, we condemn anyone playing the blame game against China and politicizing the pandemic.

The origin of the virus is still under investigation, and only science can give the answer.

Zhang Wenhong, leader of the expert team for coronavirus treatment in Shanghai, once said: “After the outbreak of the pandemic around the world, we see some people mocking what other countries are doing. Not all countries are able to learn from or copy our experiences because of the differences in political and social systems. Besides, it is a disaster. Mocking other countries is nothing short of blasphemy against the dead.”

I really admire his insight.

The death knell has not stopped; it is getting louder every day.

Mankind is a community with a shared future. The novel coronavirus is no respecter of borders and races. As Confucius once said, “Within the four seas all men are brothers.”

We should mourn for every life lost because all men and women are brothers and sisters, as Michael Jackson sang in the song “We Are the World.”

We are doing our best to fight the virus in China and to help others. I believe finally Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” will replace the death knells across the world.

The author is an associate professor in culture and communication and a research fellow at the Sino-Denmark joint research center on China and international relations, University of International Relations. The views are his own.