Iranian officials unjustly accuse nCoV of being a US biological weapon, after some Washington officials said the same thing about China.

Saudi Arabia blames Iran for spreading nCoV to their country. South Korea was angered by Japan's travel restrictions and responded accordingly.

At the time Covid-19 caused a global crisis when it appeared in more than 100 countries and territories, scientists and public health officials around the world were working together to prevent the epidemic. However, leaders in many countries seem to notice another question: Who can blame it?

"It is inevitable that there will be political problems related to the epidemic," said Keiji Fukuda, a former assistant director-general of the WHO. "But I think the 'blame game' is now on a higher level than we have ever seen."

Public dissatisfaction with leaders has spread as fast as nCoV. And when those leaders look for a place to blame, they tend to "point their noses" at the most predictable goal: their sides have inherent discord.

Condemned as too subjective to Covid-19, US President Donald Trump tried to deflect criticism by blaming testing errors on former President Barack Obama's administration. This is considered a rare tune between Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who also accused the opponent of deliberately provoking a wave of panic about nCoV.

Iran initially thought that Covid-19 could not affect this country. But now they have recorded more than 5,800 cases, 145 died of nCoV. Several other countries report cases of human origin from Iran. But the country that has reacted the most harshly is Iran's longtime rival in the region: Saudi Arabia, which has banned citizens from going to Iran.

Saudi Arabia on March 5 accused Iran of spreading the disease. They said five Saudis had arrived in Iran but Iranian officials did not stamp their entry and exit passports. These people then returned to Saudi Arabia, carrying the disease.

In Japan, nearly a million recent Twitter posts demanded that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe resign. He was "silent" in the first weeks of the outbreak and the Japanese government's handling of the Diamond Princess yacht was also condemned. Nearly 700 of the more than 3,700 people aboard infected with nCoV, 6 died.

On March 5, Abe imposed a 14-day quarantine order against all people traveling from or through Korea and China. More than 100 countries have tightened travel restrictions with South Korea, the second largest outbreak after China. However, the move of Japan - "eternal rival" of South Korea, Seoul is the most attention.

The South Korean government on March 6 called the measure "outrageous and illogical", arguing that Tokyo had another motive besides preventing the epidemic and declaring a response by restricting it to people from Japan. "We cannot understand Japan's decision to take this unfair measure without first consulting with us," the National Security Council said.

In Britain, opposition politicians quickly condemned a decade of "austerity" under conservative governments that depleted the health system's resources, leaving them unprepared to deal with. Translate. In Hong Kong, residents were angry that the special government did not "ban" people from mainland China.

Experts say that in the face of a new virus spreading rapidly, governments in the country cannot avoid mistakes in their response and mistakes. "We should not assume that a country recognizes a high number of cases as the government is at fault," says Devi Sridhar, a professor of public health at the University of Edinburgh. "We should see in such a way that the government may have tried its best but it is still difficult to contain the virus."

In China, when Covid-19 broke out in Wuhan in December 2019, the government initially delayed the response, lowered its severity, and warned early warning warrants. However, officials later took strong measures to prevent nCoV from spreading by putting pressure on the region of more than 50 million people. This approach is internationally acclaimed and China also sees its response strategy as a "role model" for the rest of the learning world.

In China, however, public anger over the government continues. When Chinese officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Ton Xuan Lan, visited Wuhan on March 5, residents shouted out complaints out the window. "Everything is fake," a resident shouted, according to a video shared by the People's Daily newspaper.

The hallmark of many countries struggling to fight the epidemic is that it is also infected by government officials, such as in China, France, Iran and Japan. The situation was particularly serious in Iran when dozens of officials were infected, including the vice president and deputy health minister, and an adviser for the supreme leader died.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on March 5 that he was disappointed with the governments he thought were ignoring the epidemic. This is his most bitter public rebuke since the outbreak. "Now is not the time to justify it, but it is time to give it our all," he said. "In some countries, the level of political commitment and actions that show those commitments are not commensurate with the level of threat we all face."

However, as always, due to political sensitivities, the WHO leadership does not identify any country or leader.

Experts fear that blaming each other will undermine confidence in public health systems and governments, when they need to work together to overcome the crisis. "We can tell each other 'it's your fault, this is my fault' and then accept the current situation and continue to work," said David Heymann, former head of infectious diseases at WHO.