Journal on World Affairs, UCLA
Existing on the edge of brinkmanship over multiple subjects of global contention, China and the West now see the COVID vaccine as a crucial leverage. After more than 142 million confirmed cases and over 3 million deaths worldwide, the key to ending the pandemic has become a weapon itself.
Perhaps nothing represents the political, ethnic, and economic duality of the West Bank better than Israel’s dissemination of the COVID vaccine, which has strictly prioritized the vaccination of its settlers over the many Palestinians living in the West Bank.
The tendency of Eastern cultures to focus on relationships highlights the importance of community, hierarchy, and interpersonal relations, while the emphasis on logic and fixed rules in ancient Greece is fundamental to the individualist Western worldview.
The challenges that COVID-19 poses for counterterrorism are yet to fully materialize. The potential reduction in overall resources dedicated to counterterrorism calls for a re-evaluation of the efficacy and sustainability of current initiatives, including security-related foreign aid and the use of military force.
By May of 2020, at least six class-action lawsuits had been filed against the Chinese government in federal U.S. courts. However, early on in the wave of lawsuits, legal experts were already responding to the discourse around this possible route of action and informing the public that such suits would be symbolic at best.
These protests lasted weeks and culminated in a night of tear gas, water cannons, and police clashes on November 26th, leading to the world’s largest general strike and a reigniting of India’s most left leaning political organizations
While coronavirus has swept across the globe leaving devastating impacts, Africa has survived surprisingly well, having just hit 1.3 million confirmed cases and about 33,231 deaths. Healthcare experts and policymakers alike feared the worst for this continent, making these results especially puzzling.
Cox’s Bazar, a city in Bangladesh, used to be known for its fishing ports and sandy beaches. Now, it is known for holding the world’s largest refugee camp with over 860,000 Rohingya living in it as of May 2020.
On December 31st, the government in Wuhan confirmed they had been treating dozens of cases of an unknown virus. By January 20th, other cases of this pathogen appeared in the United States, South Korea, and Thailand. A full seventy-two hours later, President Xi Jinping closed off Wuhan when 570 more cases had been confirmed.
Journal on World Affairs, UCLA