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"Fear builds," The New York Times captioned its latest COVID-19 update with these words. 

Succinct.

Over the past few days, the COVID-19 has risen across the globe. Italy has reported that 17 people tested positive. Six Iranians died from the virus. A South Korean church became the connection between more than 100 cases, contributing to the infected numbers' doubling in South Korea. Japan is currently hosting 769 confirmed patients in the country. The U.S. is seeing at least 34 cases.

Managing a public health crisis is a daunting task, much less attempting to rein in one with unknown origin and not contained by borders. The constantly evolving situation and new information could throw governments and authorities off-balance in their responses and lead to mistakes. 

Local authorities in Wuhan failed to disclose information about the virus at the proper time. The Japanese government demanded that all passengers and crews aboard Diamond Princess to be quarantined aboard, even after knowing the cruise ship isn't equipped for such an act and close interactions in an enclosed space would only assist in the transmission of the virus. And the U.S. personnel responsible for evacuating its citizens from the cruise ship decided to transport infected and healthy passengers back to the U.S. on the same plane without informing or consulting the president.

And it's not like only government makes mistakes. People do too. Fear breathes life into discrimination, stigmatization, and racism. And there has been no shortage of such actions around the world. From professors and renowned newspapers to everyday folks on street have acted questionably. Asian faces get hissed and looked at differently abroad. And within China, media and online community have repeatedly warned against any discriminatory behavior towards people in Wuhan.

This isn't intended to erode people's faith in government or in each other, but to remind everyone that, in the face of a common threat, our ideological and political differences wouldn't prevent us from committing similar failures and mistakes in some of our responses. We all share the same instincts to fear and threats to life, and we try to do what we deem is necessary in the interests of our friends and family.

Pundits and politicians who are attempting to make this disease about China and claiming moral high ground in the crisis is deliberating ignoring or just being ignorant about our similarities. We have a shared future not just because we share this world, but also because we share commonalities between us. We share the mistakes we make, and we carry the responsibilities together whether we like it or not. Chinese government's daily updates on new information about the virus, boxes after boxes of face masks donated from other countries and the close cooperation between state authorities and international organizations are the evidence of this fact.

And when looking at other government's responses to the virus, we could see that all the measures aren't born out of vacuum. They are built based on the actions taken prior in other places. When businesses were ordered to shut down and people's daily routine gets confined to their homes, many questioned the effectiveness and the legitimacy of such an act. However, it is reported that South Korea has shut down the area near the church that has been at the center of the outbreak. 

"Across the city of 2.4 million, department stores, shopping alleys and outdoor marketplaces are drained of shoppers," reported The New York Times. Al Jazeera is saying that education and cultural centers in more than a dozen provinces in Iran were closed after the country's death toll become the largest outside of China. U.S.'s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that an uncontrollable spread would lead to closure of schools and businesses in the U.S.

The disease knows no borders, and the world's response neither. We could make the same mistakes, causing consequences that affect more than one country. But, we also share our experience, building up a global response by taking lessons from each other's policies and actions. 

The shared future is about facing the common threats and recognizing that in the face of danger to our future, we share the fundamental similarities between us and that we carry on us the failures and the triumphs for each other.

Script writer: Huang Jiyuan

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