Viremia: COVID-19 inside the US-China deep conflict arteries, political accusations of pandemic responsibility

Abstract

In 2020, the US and China blamed mutually on the COVID-19 pandemic management and origin of the virus. Before the pandemic, the Donald J. Trump administration had some conflicts with China in some areas. This study aims to determine how the accusations on the COVID-19 deepened the previous conflict between both nations. It analyses mutual declarations and allegations made by top- level officials from the American and Chinese governments since the 31st. December, 2019, the day that China reported first cases to the WHO, until the 20th. January, 2021, the last day of President Trump in office. In order to achieve the objectives, two methods will be applied. In the first part, it will be analysed the official versions from the US and China of their management of the COVID-19 pandemic, consequently a comparative analysis of both versions will be made. In the second part, in order to determine how the level of conflict changed throughout the intended period, a conflict escalation model will be applied. The results demonstrated that and that both countries used the accusations to prevail over its opponent, both countries politicised the management of the pandemic, and that since the first days of May of 2020 the conflict never decreased in mutual aggression. These results demonstrate that the pandemic...