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* A thorough review of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response is needed4
http://www.hsvg.org/ Guahan Global Foundation
Guahan Global Foundation P.O. Box 206, Hagatna, GU 96932, USA
(December 12, 2025) 2025 ends with uncertainty on climate action More people are now aware that more natural disasters caused by global warming are seriously affecting human society’s well-being and sustainability. But, the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference held in Brazil last month did not turn past promises into concrete results on the ground as expected.   The conference is commonly known as COP30, which stands for the 30th Conference of the Parties, serving as the formal meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) parties and a vital platform for advancing solutions to the climate crisis and reinforcing the collective commitment to a sustainable future. It was billed by many as the “implementation COP,” but eventually COP30 did not significantly move us closer to a safer future.   For example, all countries were expected to submit an updated climate plan, which is known as a Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC), showing how they would help keep global warming limited to below 2 degrees Celsius from pre-industrial levels, and pursue efforts to keep it to 1.5 degrees, the goal outlined in the 2015 Paris Agreement. Although several major economies, including Brazil, Japan, Norway, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the European Union submitted stronger climate plans, some of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters have not finalized their plans or have announced targets that fall far short of what science says is needed.   The annual Global Carbon Budget Report was published on November 13 as countries met for COP30 climate talks. An international team of scientists found that the emissions of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels would be 1.1 percent higher in 2025 than a year ago. The overall figure is due to reach a record of 38.1 billion tons of carbon dioxide, hitting a new high in history. It warns that curbing global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius would be essentially “impossible,” according to the report.   However, even though more than 80 countries had been pushing for the COP30 final agreement to include explicit reference to fossil fuels, including a roadmap to transition away from energy sources such as coal, oil, and gas, objections from some other countries won out with the final agreement avoiding mention of a shift away from fossil fuels.   Similarly, while more than 90 countries supported the inclusion of a binding roadmap to halt and reverse deforestation, the final text of the COP30 agreement included only the recognition of a need to halt and reverse forest loss, without any mandatory commitments.   The COP30’s Brazil presidency committed to create a science-based roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels and halting deforestation over the next year, but these would be voluntary and sit outside of the UN system.   In fact, it is international scientific consensus that, in order to prevent the worst climate damages, global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030 and reach net zero, which means emissions and removals are in balance, by 2050. A Shift away from fossil fuels is considered as one of the most important measures to significantly reduce global carbon dioxide emissions. Deforestation is hurting the planet’s ability to naturally remove carbon dioxide. The planet will keep heating for as long as global emissions remain more than zero. Climate damages, caused by global heating, will continue escalating for as long as emissions continue.   Our Pacific island community has reaffirmed for many times at the Pacific Islands Forum that the “2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent” is the region’s collective commitment to a resilient Pacific, and climate change continues to be a matter of priority. Ahead of COP30, many representatives from Pacific countries were optimistic about the progress that the conference would make since the international Court of Justice (ICJ) just issued its advisory opinion on climate obligations this July.   The advisory opinion said countries could be in violation of international law if they fail to take measures to protect the planet from climate change and nations harmed by the effects could be entitled to reparations. The case was actually initiated by a group of students from the University of South Pacific in Vanuatu and backed by more than 130 countries. After years of lobbying by island nations who fear they could disappear under rising sea waters, the UN General Assembly asked the ICJ for an advisory opinion in 2023. In July, 2025, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres welcomed the historic advisory opinion and said “Young Pacific islanders initiated this call for humanity to the world. And the world must respond.”   Unfortunately, the COP30 results remind us that we can not solely rely on the ICJ document to hold certain countries to account and promote global climate action. As what is still happening in Ukraine, Russia has not stopped its aggression and invasion to Ukraine at all since February 2022, even though the Pre-Trial Chamber of the UN-backed International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin in March 2023.   Mr. Ralph Regenvanu, Vanuatu’s minister for climate change, has actually described the broader context as “a period of geopolitical upheaval” where militarization is rising, aid spending is falling, and international law is often disregarded, when he talked to the media before COP30.   Since conflicts have been reported in many different parts of the world, Pope Leo XIV has warned in his first overseas trip last month that World War Three is already fought and the future of humanity is at stake. He emphasized that “ambitions and choices that trample on justice and peace” were throwing the world into chaos. He wanted to urge peace for the world and encourage people of different backgrounds to live together in harmony, So, all Pacific islanders must work together to strongly call for de-escalating all tensions emerging in any parts of the world. We have to promote dialogues to resolve problems and avoid conflicts. Any attempts trying to unilaterally change the stable and peaceful status quo around the world should not be acceptable by our Pacific island community.   The only good news from COP30 seems to be a pledge to triple finance for adaptation to climate change, increasing from around $40 billion to $120 billion per year by 2035. It’s part of a larger goal to reach $1.3 trillion in total climate finance yearly by then, alongside operationalizing the Loss & Damage Fund for those most affected and establishing a Just Transition Mechanism, which would support the protection of workers and communities as countries shift to clean energy and a climate-resilient future. Our Pacific island community certainly welcomes the global financial mechanism helping vulnerable countries’ climate mitigation and adaptation. We need to keep following up the progress of the mechanism and ensure the fund will be rapidly raised and the financial aids will be well allocated and used to strengthen climate resilience across the Pacific as soon as possible. http://www.hsvg.org/hot_527443.html * 2025 ends with uncertainty on climate action 2025-12-12 2026-12-12
Guahan Global Foundation P.O. Box 206, Hagatna, GU 96932, USA http://www.hsvg.org/hot_527443.html
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Home ﹥ News > News > * A thorough review of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response is needed

Links：https://www.postguam.com/forum/featured_columnists/no-one-sh ...

(October 21, 2024)

A thorough review of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response is needed



When Mr. Edward Lu, our Director of Public Health Office and the President of Guahan Global Foundation, was preparing his monthly column in the Guam Daily Post and thinking of the Breast Cancer Awareness Month, he found a CBS News report telling Morgen Chesonis-Gonzalez’s story. She, an art therapist in Miami, skipped her annual screenings when the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe and people stayed home and kept their distance. After persistent pain in her armpit forced her to schedule a mammogram later in the year, the hospital found she had two forms of breast cancer.



When the oncologist told Morgen the result, her husband was actually “listening in” from the car, not physically being with her. During her chemotherapy sessions, Morgen sat alone in the hospital, unable to have someone by her side because of pandemic restrictions. When she needed a bilateral mastectomy, she went into the hospital alone again. When there was an oncology meeting, her husband continued to join it by phone, taking notes in the hospital’s parking lot.



It’s very likely that Morgen wasn’t the only case experiencing the hardship. An original investigation result published in JAMA Network Open on January 21, 2021, showed that 41% of US adults reported forgone medical care from March to mid-July 2020, the initial phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US. When researchers looked at data from those who reported needing care during those months, 58% of people surveyed missed scheduled preventative care. Some of them might be shocked by the diagnosis they heard after their medical arrangement returned to normalcy and had to undergo treatments alone, much like what Morgen suffered from.



While the World Health Organization is calling “No one should face breast cancer alone” as the theme of 2024 Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we would like to call for thorough reviews of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic response in order to facilitate better systematic measures in the future when the next public health crisis comes, making sure no one needs to face difficulties alone again.



In fact, the editors of The Economist had written in September 2020 that, when COVID-19 struck, many governments were taken by surprise and pulled the emergency brake. However, treatments and medicines were making COVID-19 less deadly. New vaccines would soon add to their effects. Yet it was here, in the basics of public health, where too many governments were still failing their people. They had to do better.



The Economist pointed out one problem at the time, which was the desire to escape a trade-off between shutting down to keep people alive and staying open so that life goes on. Their editors emphasized that blanket lockdowns that most countries implemented were costly and unsustainable. In contrast, Germany, Taiwan and South Korea used fine-grained testing and tracing to spot individual super-spreading venues and slowed the spreading with quarantines.



Quite a number of public health experts had advised before COVID vaccines became available that the human society was inevitably going to live with the coronavirus for a while and only sustainable measures would help everybody get through the pandemic. Unfortunately, most governments, with certain high-profile scientists and celebrities, put too much faith in lockdowns, ignoring the basics of public health and just waiting for vaccines. They gave the public the wrong expectation that COVID vaccines would work perfectly like a silver bullet. After so-called “breakthrough infections” emerged although vaccines rolled out, people feared virus exposure even more seriously.



A case report published in the New England Journal of Medicine on January 30, 2020 has informed the world that Germany’s first two infected people contracted COVID-19 from a colleague who flew in from Shanghai to join a company workshop. Soon after, two other colleagues, who had not had contact with the Chinese visitor, tested positive for the coronavirus. The cluster showed how the coronavirus was transmitted from human to human — very similar to an influenza virus — and COVID-19 only caused mild flu-like symptoms.



As of February 29, 2020 Singapore reported 93 cases, including five clusters, and quite a few patients whose source of infection could not be traced. Those numbers showed that the coronavirus could spread easily within a community, just like an influenza virus.



Excluding the cruise ship cases, Japan confirmed more than 250 cases by February 2020. Most of those infected only had flu-like symptoms, while six older patients died of pneumonia. So, in Japan, the coronavirus spreading also looked like a flu epidemic, with elderly people more likely to have a severe illness and to die.



As for the frighteningly high death tolls in China and Italy in the early months of the pandemic, it’s very likely to result from collapsing healthcare systems, where too many people were rushing to hospitals for treatment, a scenario usually seen in severe flu-like epidemics.  However, most people appeared too nervous to notice the COVID-19’s “flu-like” pattern as they rushed into lockdowns and did not consider other options.



The biggest myth is that lockdowns are the only solution when an epidemic worsens. In fact, a lockdown is a measure to cordon off a seriously affected place so that people in surrounding areas are protected. When SARS hit Taiwan in 2003, local health authorities locked down a hospital with a nosocomial, or hospital-acquired, infection to protect the neighboring community. When Wuhan became the epicenter of China’s COVID-19 outbreak in January 2020, authorities issued a lockdown order to prevent the virus from spreading to other cities and provinces.



Italy misunderstood the lockdown measure and became the first country in Europe to enforce a lockdown, starting in the north and then spreading nationwide. But on March 19, 2020 it also became the first country having a death toll that surpassed China’s.



Belgium rushed into a lockdown as well, and forgot to take care of at-risk older people. As of the end of April 2020, 53% of Belgium’s 7,703 deaths occurred in care homes. Belgium officials admitted that, because of poor preparation, care home staff lacked personal protective equipment and, unfortunately, allowed the virus to spread quickly.



In addition to tragedies happening to many individuals, lots of social-economic impacts are still giving some communities a hard time about returning to pre-pandemic normality. For example, Guam Visitors Bureau recently reported that visitor arrivals to Guam during the first 11 months of fiscal 2024 only represented 47% of pre-pandemic 2019 levels.



We certainly understand research on the pathogen takes time and epidemic control can’t wait when facing an emerging new disease. However, the only pragmatic move is to find clues through a quick epidemiological analysis of reported cases to form a proper action plan, instead of rushing into a chaotic response. Hopefully, we all learned lessons from COVID-19 pandemic and the world’s leading countries and international organizations will prepare a better global health network before the next crisis comes.



Mr. Lu's column titled "One one should face difficulites alone" has been published in the Guam Daily Post on October 19, 2024.










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