The president insisted the Chinese outbreak posed no threat to America—and some critics have labeled this call “the worst intelligence failure in U.S. history.”

It was clear that little was being done at the federal level to quell the spread of the virus—and citizens increasingly felt desperately thrown back on their own limited resources to contend with the specter of a long-term, lethal pandemic. By the time of Trump’s March 12 special address to the nation, much of the American public already knew the awful truth: that the entire Trump administration strategy for protecting them from Covid-19, which rested on airport controls to keep the virus out of the country, was a nonstarter. The virus was already all over America.

Desperate to keep “the numbers where they are,” as the president put it in a press briefing at the CDC, the White House seemed determined to draw from the Xi Jinping playbook—censoring data, and clamping down on concern and dissent within the administration.

And just as politics has largely dictated the woefully inadequate American response to the coronavirus threat, so will politics shape our reactions to this colossal governing failure. Our political system, together with the media ecosystem that relies on it, has grown notoriously polarized. The nation is facing a heated presidential election, and the coronavirus threat has supplied charged ideological fodder in political salvos from all sides. Until the first reports emerged of community-acquired Covid-19 cases within U.S. borders, America seemed satisfied to act as a collective epidemic voyeur, watching horror unfold in China and elsewhere overseas without anticipating its arrival domestically. As outbreaks exploded in South Korea, Iran, Japan, and Italy, anxiety rose in financial markets, fretting about quarantine conditions and supply-chain disruptions poised to extend well beyond the already collapsed production and distribution networks in China.

As longtime China-watcher Bill Bishop wrote for his website Sinocism, “We might be heading into [the] first global recession caused by [Chinese Communist Party] mismanagement. Previous manmade disasters in China since 1949 never really spread outside the PRC’s borders in meaningful ways. This time looks to be different, and being the proximate cause of a global recession may not be helpful to the PRC’s global image and aspirations.”

Chinese leaders clearly heeded this threat. China rolled out a propaganda campaign, accusing the United States of responsibility for the pandemic, and complaining that other world powers weren’t following its example.

Inside China, meanwhile, Xi waged a propaganda effort to shore up his damaged image as a great leader, visiting factories and hospitals. After one such visit, the state-run media issued this glowing report: “The inspection tour by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Wuhan, Central China’s Hubei province, has greatly inspired Chinese society. People interpret the visit in their own simple way, and optimism has blended with the atmosphere of spring.”

Eager to get his economy back on track, Xi ordered key factories and industrial centers reopened—only to have some efforts backfire. On March 11, as the South China Morning News described it, “At 8.30am the government of Qianjiang—which lies about 150 km (90 miles) east of Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province—said that all restrictions on the movement of people and traffic would be lifted at 10am. They were.

“Then, at 10.30am, they were reinstated.

“‘The city will continue its restrictions on the movement of traffic and residents,’ the government said, without elaborating.”

Two days previously, well-known Chinese author Fang Fang wrote a tough essay, labeling the epidemic (not the virus) “man-made” and insisting, “Now is the best time for reflecting on what happened and investigating who is responsible.” Pointedly, she rejected CCP claims that the people should thank the party for stopping Covid-19. “A word that crops up frequently in conversation these days is ‘gratitude.’ High-level officials in Wuhan demand that the people show they’re grateful to the Communist Party and the country. I find this way of thinking very strange. Our government is supposed to be a people’s government; it exists solely to serve the people. Government officials work for us, not the other way around. I don’t understand why our leaders seem to draw exactly the opposite conclusion.”

Outside the country, China waged a two-pronged effort: one showing its willingness to help the rest of the world, the other leveling accusations and blame. At the forefront of this PR offensive is the country’s United Nations Ambassador Zhang Jun. In a March 10 letter to all 192 member-states of the United Nations, Zhang wrote, “The spread of the epidemic has been basically contained in Hubei and Wuhan. We are ready to strengthen solidarity with the rest of the international community to jointly fight the epidemic.”

CCP leadership noted that the “comprehensive, thorough and rigorous” measures China took to bring its epidemic to a halt could be shared with the rest of the world. And in the process, the CCP said, the governance of the United Nations and other international institutions would be improved.

That’s the polite side of China’s campaign. Beijing has instructed its ambassadors all over the world to raise doubts about the origin of the virus, calling it “the Italian virus,” or the “Japanese virus,” suggesting that it might even have been man-made. In a perverse mirror image of xenophobic anti-China conspiracy theories on the American right, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian suggested the virus came out of an American laboratory. The White House responded with accusations about Chinese cover-ups and incompetence.

He also has tweeted and given speeches claiming that U.S. Army representatives brought the novel coronavirus to Wuhan in October 2019.

“The US has finally acknowledged that among those who had died of the influenza previously were cases of the coronavirus. The true source of the virus was the US!” one commentator said in response to Zhao’s postings. “The US owes the world, especially China, an apology,” another commentator said, and some on social media referred to the “American coronavirus.”

State-run media accused the United States of denigrating China’s fight, while castigating the many genuine failures of U.S. planning and policy execution in the face of the crisis: “They have misused the time China bought for them by blaming China for so-called ‘delays’ during the initial stage of the outbreak. A full month after the beginning of the out-break in China, the US still has not yet equipped itself with sufficient and reliable testing kits, missing the opportunity to identify cases and curbing the spread of the virus. Large public events and rallies are still being held in the US, despite the risk of mass infection.... After accusing China of providing ‘imperfect’ data, the US is being far from transparent.”

White House National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien counterpunched, charging that China’s handling of the initial outbreak in Wuhan “probably cost the world community two months to respond and those two months, if we’d had those [and] been able to sequence the virus and had the cooperation necessary from the Chinese, had a WHO team been on the ground, had a CDC team, which we had offered, been on the ground, I think we could have dramatically curtailed what happened both in China and what’s now happening across the world.”

Similarly, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo consistently refers to “the Wuhan virus,” enraging China. Pompeo also eagerly took up O’Brien’s line of attack, charging that the early cover-up efforts in Wuhan damaged the rest of the world’s ability to prepare, “putting the U.S. behind the curve.” The State Department summoned China’s ambassador to the United States, dressing him down for waging a “blatant” disinformation campaign. Pompeo went further, undermining negotiations over a G7 statement responding to Covid-19 by insisting all official communiques refer to the “Wuhan Virus”—and the president pointedly and repeatedly has called Covid-19 the “China Virus” or “Chinese Virus.”

Trump campaign supporter Charlie Kirk, head of the Koch-funded right-wing advocacy group Turning Point USA, tweeted reference to the “China Virus,” adding that the United States could still contain its spread, “if we can control … our borders.” President Trump piled on that tweet, writing, “Going up fast. We need the Wall more than ever!”

One recent study claims 66 percent of the global burden of Covid-19 would have been eliminated if China had acted faster, closing down Wuhan weeks earlier. But the same study credits China’s eventual actions for preventing a catastrophic pandemic that would have been 67 times worse without them. Nevertheless, a host of conservative talk show pundits and politicians have taken to China-bashing, accusing Beijing of deliberately imperiling the world, and of deceiving the president, thus rationalizing America’s slow response to Covid-19. Both China and the United States have expelled journalists hailing from their rival nation, claiming the reporters spread falsehoods.

President Trump seemed genuinely bewildered when Congress rejected his request for $2.5 billion in emergency funds to fight the epidemic, much of it stripped from prior moneys committed to Ebola preparedness. A bipartisan vote in both houses found the White House request woefully small, authorizing instead a bill funded for $8.3 billion. In remarks to Sean Hannity on Fox News, Trump also seemed to dismiss, yet again, the likely severity of the Covid-19 threat, calling it the “coronaflu.” He observed further that, much like seasonal influenza, the coronavirus would be something that made a few people very sick but for most was so mild that they could go to work, as usual.

Seemingly unable to grasp how monumental the pandemic battle would be, Trump continued to address crowded rallies of supporters and shake hands on the campaign trail. He’s also socialized with Florida Republican Representative Matt Gaetz, who has since been quarantined for coronavirus exposure, and Fábio Wajngarten, communications chief for Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who’s been diagnosed with Covid-19, apparently acquired during a visit to Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida retreat.

Nothing seemed capable of shaking Trump’s faith in border closures and travel bans—the core of his Covid-19 control campaign. But the CDC acknowledged that during the first three weeks of airport screening only one potential Covid-19 case was discovered out of 46,016 examined. And two graphics told the tale of America’s vulnerability by mid-March. The first tracks outbreaks all over the world, indicating that the United States was running in tandem with Italy, lagging about 10 days behind the overwhelmed nation.

The second damning comparative chart, produced by the Council on Foreign Relations, tracked the rise of cases in countries with, and without, travel bans, indicating the four fastest-growing epidemics were all in nations that made travel bans the key element of their coronavirus policies—one of them, the United States of America.

Such are the risks incurred by dangerously uninformed demagogues in the rounds of their daily political life. For the rest of us, the stakes of the coronavirus pandemic are much higher. In a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill in early March, congressional physician Brian Monahan told staffers that roughly a third of all Americans, perhaps up to 150 million, will be infected with the coronavirus this year.

As April approached, some in China’s leadership seemed eager to soften tensions, trying to disclaim prior allegations that Covid-19 was manufactured in a U.S. military laboratory. But real damage has been done to the Sino-American relationship, and it may not be easily reparable.

It is tragic and perverse that animosities between two egotistical leaders and their sycophantic circles of advisers have placed the entire world in grave peril. Trade disputes between Washington and Beijing were already producing widespread global fallout before the emergence of Covid-19.

True, conventional diplomatic initiatives can control some of this damage—but it’s also the case that no reasonable dialogue between the United States and China can transpire unless both sides are willing to start the conversation based on valid science. Neither Beijing nor Washington seems remotely inclined to take on this humbling challenge to the actual legacies of their respective Covid-19 programs. President Donald Trump refuses to grasp scientific principles, on any topic, and openly contradicts his leading public health and scientific research advisers. For his part, President Xi Jinping remains determined to change the conversation regarding the origins of SARS-CoV-2, removing all references to its linkage to Wuhan.

Going forward, there is one hope for humanity, and for the Sino-American relationship: the development of an effective coronavirus vaccine. Several nations, including China and the United States, are racing to create a vaccine, and to push prototypes of one into large clinical trials. With luck, one of those products can stop Covid-19’s spread, without difficult side effects.

But that may well lay the groundwork for additional high-stakes battles. In past global epidemics, such discoveries have led to two terrible outcomes: patent disputes, and a fully unjust distribution of lifesaving innovations worldwide. In 2009, for example, the H1N1 swine flu spread globally in less than six months, but viable vaccines weren’t available for most countries until the epidemic had passed. Poor countries never did receive supplies of the vaccine that were sufficient to put a dent in their outbreaks. Fortunately, the H1N1 virus was relatively benign, and the failure to distribute a global vaccine had no significant mortality outcome.

President Trump refuses to grasp scientific principles, on any topic, and openly contradicts his leading public health and scientific research advisers.

International agencies are now poised to counter such profit-motive failures in the vaccines markets, drawing their funding mostly from the Gates Foundation and the foreign aid budgets of a handful of wealthy countries. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which grew out of the World Economic Forum, offers financial support for vaccine invention. Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, makes bulk purchases of childhood vaccines and helps ensure their distribution in poor countries. The Global Fund underwrites some health system costs for poor countries, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa. Together, they represent a fledgling international infrastructure for global immunization.

But Covid-19 won’t simply disappear if the wealthy world is left to its own devices, manufacturing costly vaccines that are only affordable to fully insured residents of the 30 richest nations on Earth. What we collectively face is the need to execute the largest mass immunization program in world history, deploying teams of vaccinators to every nook and cranny of the planet, rich or poor.

The last time any such gargantuan feat was attempted was following a Soviet and American 1966 call for smallpox eradication, led by WHO. Thousands of vaccinating teams deployed all over the world, eventually in 1977 vanquishing the virus that killed more human beings in the twentieth century than all wars combined. As totemic as smallpox eradication is in the annals of global public health, it was accomplished at a time when three billion fewer people lived on the planet, and many of them lived in countries that conducted routine childhood immunization. This meant that the immunization initiative undertaken from 1966 to 1977 targeted about one billion people.

If an effective Covid-19 vaccine is developed, its targets will include almost eight billion human beings, with nearly three-quarters of a billion living in conditions of extreme poverty, according to World Bank figures. Eliminating the coronavirus scourge will require mobilization of tens of thousands of immunization teams, armed with affordably priced vaccines. It is likely that both China and the United States, based on their initial human tests of candidate vaccines, will lead global manufacturing—and that both countries will face the moral and economic pressures of balancing global needs against company profits.

In the best of all possible worlds, Presidents Xi and Trump can rise to this epochal challenge, and see their way clear to formalize an agreement to execute the largest humanitarian effort in world history to arrest the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. And in that long-shot scenario, we might even see these two power-mad egomaniacs share a Nobel Peace Prize.