By Victor Davis Hanson
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Sometime in late November the Chinese Communist Party
apparat was aware that the ingredients of some sort of an epidemic were brewing
in Wuhan. Soon after, it was also clear to them that a new type of coronavirus
was on the loose, a threat they might have taken more seriously given the
similar Chinese origins of the prior toxic SARS coronavirus and the resources
of a Level 4 virology lab nearby.
Yet the government initially hid all that knowledge from
its own people in particular and in general from the world at large. Translated
into American terms, that disingenuousness ensured that over 10,000 Chinese
nationals and foreigners living in China flew every day on direct flights into
the United States (Washington and California especially) from late November to
the beginning of February, until the Trump travel ban of January 31.
All this laxity was also known to the Communist apparat
in Beijing, which must have been amused when Trump was roundly damned by his
liberal critics as a xenophobe and racist for finally daring to stop the influx
on January 31 — the first major leader to enact such a total ban.
Yet, no thanks to the Chinese, America, so far, has been
comparatively lucky — despite the grave risks of damaging a multi-trillion-dollar
economy with the strictest quarantining, isolation policies, and social
distancing in its history. Half the country lives in the interior away from
ports of entry on the coasts. Medical care, sanitation, hygiene, and meat
markets operate on different premises than in China, the supposed fated global
hegemon. Transparency in a consensual society together with a free-market
economy is encouraging tens of millions of citizens to work in tandem and
independently to figure out creative ways to ameliorate the epidemic,
politically, medically, socially, and economically. The result is that as of
mid-March, the U.S., the world’s foremost immigration destination and among the
most visited of nations, had suffered fewer virus fatalities than some European
countries a fifth or sixth of its population size.
No doubt when mass testing begins, the figures of known
cases will soar, and fatalities will rise. Yet while we know pretty well the
number of Americans who have died from the virus, we have in truth little idea
of how many now carry it or how many have recovered from it, without knowing
what sickened them or even whether they were ostensibly sick at all. In other
words, the rate of new cases identified by testing may exceed the rate of new
deaths, apprising us of a more precise — and perhaps lower — degree of viral
toxicity.
Whereas annual flu toxicity is adjudicated by modeling
case numbers, and by sophisticated and learned guesses at the number of likely
infections, so far the death rate of the coronavirus is calibrated a bit
differently — apparently predicated both on known deaths and known
cases. When we make facile comparisons between the flu and coronaviruses, they
may prove valid, but for now it’s still wise to remember that annual flu cases
could be fewer than what is guessed at through modeling each year, and corona
infections may be higher than the current known numbers of confirmed positives.
The former reality might mean that the flu is at times a little more lethal
than we think and the corona virus a little less deadly. That is not to suggest
that most strains of flu are as lethal as the coronavirus, only that for the
vast majority of Americans the current U.S. COVID-19 case-to-fatality ratio of
2 percent may eventually prove less, and influenza’s commonly cited 0.01
lethality rate may prove higher. In any case, 98–99 percent of Americans may
well recover from the coronavirus — a rate that is not typical of most of
history’s plagues.
The realities are paradoxical: If the coronavirus infects
as many Americans as an average flu strain, then ten times more Americans could
die — mostly over the age of 65 — even as the vast majority of all Americans
will not. Statistics change hourly, but the CDC as of the afternoon of March 16
reports that there are currently 3,437 cases of known coronavirus infections
and 68 deaths attributed to the virus, or about two deaths per 100 infected —
the majority of them again likely over 65.
To the degree that we are suffering death and economic
hurt from COVID-19, we can also attribute the toll to the Chinese Communist
Party. Had it just called in the international medical community in late
November, instituted early quarantines, and allowed its own citizens to use
email and social media to apprise and warn others of the new disease, then the
world and the U.S. would probably not have found themselves in the current
panic. The reasons China did not act more responsibly may be inherent in
communist governments, or they may involve more Byzantine causes left to be
disclosed.
Add in the proximity of a Level 4 virology lab nearby
Ground Zero of COVID-19, which fueled Internet conspiracy theories; the weird
rumors about quite strange animals such as snakes and pangolins birthing the
infection in primeval open meat markets stocked with live animals in filthy
conditions in cages; and pirated videos of supposed patients dropping comatose
in crowded hospital hallways. With all of that, we had the ingredients of a
Hollywood zombie movie, adding to the frenzy.
Plus, 2020 is an election year — echoing how the 1976
swine flu was politicized. The Left and its media appendages saw COVID-19 as
able to do what John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe,
the Mueller team, and impeachment could not: destroy the hated Trump presidency.
China will rue what it begat.
That is, it will come to appreciate fully that the
supposed efficiency, ruthlessness, and autocracy of the Communist Party — what
had so impressed foolish American journalists who once marveled at Beijing’s
ability to enact by fiat liberal pet projects such as high-speed rail and solar
industries — were China’s worst enemies, ensuring that the virus would spread
and that China’s international reputation would be ruined.
The coronavirus could be the straw that breaks the
proverbial back of the Chinese camel, stooped under the recent weight of a
trade war with the U.S., the revelation of 1 million Uighurs in reeducation
camps, the crackdown on Hong Kong democracy protesters, and news of the
sprawling Chinese internal-surveillance apparat. The world is now both
terrified and put off by China, and such anathemas will only harm its already
suspect and misbegotten Silk Road neocolonial schemes.
Here in the U.S., COVID-19 will create bipartisan
pressure to adopt policies of keeping key U.S. industries — such as medical
supplies, pharmaceuticals, and military applied high-tech — in America.
Americans will not again wish to outsource the vast majority of their
chemotherapy-drug, antibiotic, and heart-medicine production to a government
that cannot be trusted and that sees such globalized output as a weapon to be
used in extremis.
Although we cannot see it now, spin-off effects from the
panic and frenzy will eventually fuel more economic recovery. Oil prices are
nearing record modern lows, ensuring cheap gas for spring and summer American
drivers. Cheap mortgages and car loans likewise will spur buying, as will
relief once the virus wanes and splurging ensue.
It will be salutary for Americans to once again
appreciate the value of muscular labor, as those who grow food, transport it,
and provide us energy and sanitation while protecting us from danger, foreign
and domestic, have allowed millions of Americans to stay home, sequestered and
quarantined but safe with plenty of food, water, and uninterrupted sanitation
and public safety. In these days of crisis, we should not forget that millions
of often unmentioned Americans have made us the world’s greatest energy and
most diverse food producer — a singular position that China, with over four
times our population, envies.
Before the outbreak, China was trying to game its trade
war in terms of how best to hurt the hated Trump administration. Ironically,
its abhorrence only strengthened the U.S. in ways no one in the pre-COVID-19 days
could have imagined.
Call it paradox, irony, karma, or even tragedy, but China
emerges from its deceit about the coronavirus outbreak in its weakest position
since its Westernization began under Deng Xiaoping. And the U.S., after some
rocky months ahead, if it stays calm, will likely reemerge in its strongest
state in memory vis-à-vis its rivals.
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