The number of infections confirmed worldwide reached 13 million earlier this week. It is expected to top 20 million in the not too distant future with almost 250,000 new cases a day.

America, which accounts for a high proportion of the world's new and existing cases, has recorded significant day-on-day increases for weeks. It has responded poorly to the crisis due to inept leadership and bizarre political game-playing, confirming 60,565 new cases last Thursday and 62,500 on the Friday.

No amount of excuses can conceal the fact that more than 133,000 Americans have died and that some individual states are recording figures that rival those seen by the entirety of Italy, the UK or Spain at the height of their outbreaks. Brazil, another country that has suffered a failure of leadership which was further exacerbated by a lack of resources, is also recording an apocalyptic growth in new cases and a tidal wave of death.

More than 750,000 South Africans have caught the disease and India is now nudging the million mark. Establishing the actual number of infections in any of these countries is highly problematic. This is either, as in the case of the US, the result of people refusing to be tested, or, in poorer countries, an inability to carry out testing on an appropriate scale. It is little wonder that the World Health Organisation's director general seems to be on the verge of despair with recent footage showing him apparently struggling to hold back tears. While it is true that questions are being asked about his actions in the early days of the crisis, including an apparent delay in declaring a pandemic that may have allowed the virus to spread out of China, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus is clearly horrified by what he is seeing and does not want the situation to become any worse.

His job has not been made any easier by America's decision to withdraw millions of dollars in funding to the WHO in the middle of the world's worst health crisis in 100 years. While Donald Trump is seldom celebrated for informed and rational decision making on the run, that was easily the most stupid and wilfully destructive action he has ever taken.

Mr Tedros, who noted on the weekend that 50 per cent of the 230,000 new cases confirmed on Sunday were just from America and Brazil, is scathingly critical of governments that have let their own populations, and the rest of the world, down.

"Let me blunt, too many countries are headed in the wrong direction, the virus remains public enemy number one," he said.

"If basics are not followed the only way this virus is going to go [is that] it is going to get worse and worse and worse.

"There will be no return to the old normal for the foreseeable future... there is a lot to be concerned about."

So, in summing up, while it is vital Australia gets its own house back in order as soon as possible, our government needs to be awake to the fact that COVID-19 will have a very long tail. The world is already a very different place to what it was eight months ago.

Given the inevitable requests for aid that would already be coming our way, and the massive challenges that will emerge as a result of the shifts in international relationships that are already taking place, is this really the time to be taking the hatchet to the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade?