Opinion: Western media's unhelpful response to the novel coronavirus outbreak

Five years ago, I was debating an Ebola outbreak in the European Parliament and its budgetary control committee. Western governments made huge mistakes when it came to responding to the Ebola virus, failing to understand the clinical challenges faced by an outbreak of that type. Meanwhile, media sensationalism was rampant. The coverage engendered tangible fear in many communities which were never in any serious risk. 

The response by Chinese authorities to the novel coronavirus outbreak has, as you would expect of an economic powerhouse, been far superior to that in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia to the Ebola outbreak of 2014. One of the few things correctly being reported in the Western media is that the Chinese government intended to have a dedicated hospital for the novel coronavirus "within a week."

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Western media's unhelpful response to the novel coronavirus outbreak