Editor's note: Saad Ahmed Javed is an associate professor at Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology in China. The article reflects the author's opinion, and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

I grew up watching the James Bond series, and some parts of the series I watched multiple times. Mr. James Bond, in all of his incarnations, never ceased to inspire me by how one valiant man can save an entire nation, and sometimes the entire world, single-handedly. For him saving the world was like us saving a drowning cat in a river.

However, today, instead of inspiring me he is disappointing me to an extent that I decided to pen my frustration. It really disappoints me when I see him nowhere especially when the world, in general, and the West, in particular, needs him the most. Even though he has no experience saving China or African countries, but he has, indeed, a rich experience saving Western nations from evil forces.

In December 2019, when the novel coronavirus was first identified in Wuhan, no one came to rescue China except its own people. It was the time when we found China's system, which includes its government, institutions, infrastructure, supply chains, and every sub-system, mobilizing its technological and human resources with the speed that we rarely see outside Hollywood movies.

Last month, while talking about the lesson learned from China's successful experience of combating the COVID-19 outbreak, Bruce Aylward, leader of a joint WHO-China mission of experts, said "The single biggest lesson is speed. Speed is everything and what worries me most is, has the rest of the world learned the lesson of speed?"

Today, when the virus is spreading across the world and the countries are still debating "what to do," and "how to do" despite having at least two successful models – the Chinese model when the virus outbreak is spontaneous (unstructured), and the South Korean model when the outbreak is clustered (structured) – it seems that little has been learned.

In fact, on Wednesday, WHO Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world has squandered the first window of opportunity to defeat COVID-19 in the past two months and should not squander the second one now.

In the past two months, the world witnessed great progress in China where both numbers of confirmed cases and deaths dropped significantly to an extent where the number of imported cases exceeded the number of locally transmitted cases. During his recent visit to China, Pakistan's president congratulated the Chinese people for their great progress in the fight against the disease under Chinese President Xi Jinping's strong leadership. However, this progress didn't come without cost.

The WHO chief has rightly said that the world has overcome many pandemics and crises before and will overcome this one, too. "The question is how large a price we will pay," he said. On Monday, Spain reported more deaths than China, and the U.S. has reported more number of confirmed cases than any other country in the world. And, once again James Bond can neither be found in Europe or in the U.S. In fact, what we found is xenophobia, discrimination and selfishness. The deaths from the pandemic are worrisome but greater worrisome fact is the death of empathy.

Even in this time of crisis, the U.S. could not hold itself from imposing new sanctions on the individuals and companies from Iran, the hardest-hit country in the Middle East. Even in this critical time, Ainsley Earhardt, the host of Fox News, couldn't prevent herself from expressing her concerns over how women are going to get their hair and nails done during the period of social distancing. However, fewer people are concerned about the feelings of those grannies who went to eternal sleep in ICUs, without even seeing their children for one last time.

In January, when China was in the middle of its struggle against the deadly virus, U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross speculated that the coronavirus could bring jobs back to the U.S. from China. As of Thursday, the data released by the U.S. Department of Labor revealed that jobless claims have surged by 3.3 million. These facts may jolt Ross but the people who know the world is connected may hardly be surprised. Trump who tweeted in January, "We have offered China and President Xi any help that is necessary. Our experts are extraordinary!"

Even though China didn't receive any funds or material donations from the U.S. government, as confirmed by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman last week, the services of these "extraordinary experts" is most direly needed in none other than the U.S., which is about to become, if it has not already become, the new center of the pandemic.

Further, a new study by some experts at the University of Washington has showed that COVID-19 could lead to more than 80,000 deaths in the U.S. as early as the second week of April even if social distancing measures are respected.

Since Mr. James Bond is nowhere around and time is running out of hand, the U.S. and the world need to realize that the only expert who is extraordinary is the one who never wastes any opportunity to learn from others' experiences. This can save both time and money.

In the end, we all are in the same boat. If we want to save the world from this deadly pandemic we must give a decisive and collective blow to COVID-19. "COVID-19 does not discriminate, and nor should our response, if it is to succeed," as the UN Network says.

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