News reports vary regarding the origin of the current COVID-19 (Coronavirus) epidemic. The evidence strongly suggests that a laboratory (Wuhan Institute of Virology) in Wuhan, China was conducting research on bats, which carry the virus. The possibility that the virus was transmitted to the community from the laboratory appears likely, but it is still under investigation. We know that people were allowed to leave Wuhan, and Hubei Province, and to travel outside China to flee the COVID-19 outbreak. As a result, over half a million people world-wide have died, and trillions of dollars’ worth of damage has been done to the economies of other nations. The final cost in lives and wealth is still growing.
Reports (Japan Times, New York Post, Fox News) seem to indicate that the spread of the COVID-19 epidemic out of China was not deliberate and was due to mismanagement on the part of the Chinese government. Let us hope that is correct. Time will tell.
On television, I have heard some commentators call for China to be “consequenced.” That is newspeak for punished. If after the dust settles, we learn that China deliberately unleashed this plague on the world for nefarious reasons, then I agree that they should be punished economically by the rest of the world. However, given the way the economy of the United States (and other countries) is entangled with the Chinese economy, I urge that we proceed with caution economically. If we are not careful, we might hurt ourselves as much, or more, than we hurt the Chinese.
Instead, I think we should support the efforts of the Trump Administration to create a trade environment with China that is fair to both sides. Then, I think we should begin to create and pursue a long-term strategy setting economic and geopolitical goals that will strengthen our economy while gradually reducing our dependence on Chinese goods. Whatever other nations do, America needs to act in ways that will return our businesses and jobs to the United States. It is time that we do a cost/benefit analysis, and then plan and act accordingly over the next 20 years. China is a superpower that was built by foreign business and foreign consumers. If we built it, we can take it away.
In the near-term, America must produce all goods in the U.S.A. that would be needed for survival should we have a war, natural disaster, epidemic, or economic problems. If we go to war, if Yellowstone blows up, if California finally has “the big one,” or if there is another pandemic then we need to be making our own bullets, tires, boots, blankets, steel, medicine, computers and bandages. Whoa, how did we ever let it get this bad. It needs to get fixed … now!
One last thing, China has priors:
1.
the Asian flu (H2N2) in 1957
2.
the Hong Cong flu (H3N2) in 1968
3.
the “Russian” flu (H1N1)1977
4.
the 2003 SARS pandemic (SARS-CoV-2)
The international community must find ways to exert diplomatic pressure on the Communist government of China to correct its public health problems and the effectiveness with which they deal with them. For example, we might send their non-essential diplomatic personnel home, close all cultural exchange activities, and suspend further enrollment by Chinese students at our universities. We might suspend participation by our athletes in Chinese events, and temporarily halt tourism to China. I am sure there are lots of other things that I didn’t list. World-wide diplomatic efforts should continue until China can show to our inspectors (not the UN’s) that their sources of disease have been cleaned up. We need to act together. The rest of the world has a stake in this, too. The United States, the European Union, Russia, the Middle East, and China’s Asian neighbors cannot afford to spend trillions to fix China’s mistakes.
