LIKE THE GREAT NATIONS OF EUROPE IN THE 16TH CENTURY
The phrase “may you live in interesting times” may be a curse, but apparently it didn’t originate in China. Nevertheless, we’re seeing interesting times in China, and they’re spreading around the world rapidly.
My wife and I have a nephew who lives in Beijing. He went there to make a little money teaching English to the locals in advance of the 2008 Olympic Games, met a Chinese lady and married her. They have two pre-teen sons.
Thanks to the coronavirus outbreak, my nephew and his family have been restricted to their small apartment for weeks. Well, they’re not exactly forbidden to leave, but there are guards at each entrance, armed with medical thermometers. They take the temperature of everyone who leaves and enters. If anyone has fever, the police will escort them to a quarantine facility for the duration.
Nothing like that could happen here, of course – not with Donald Trump on the job. Surely we can take comfort in his appointment of Mike Pence as America’s Coronavirus Czar, right?
Unless this is the same Mike Pence who used to be Governor of Indiana. Then we’re screwed, because that Mike Pence failed his only public health crisis so far. First, he cut public health spending in 2013, resulting in the closure of the only HIV testing facility in Scott County, Indiana.
You’ll never guess what happened two years later. In the most unpredictable coincidence of all time, there was a sizeable outbreak of HIV in that very Scott County, mostly from drug users’ dirty needles. Medical experts say that the death toll might have been cut by half or more had Governor Pence rushed to adopt a needle exchange program, as medical experts recommended. Instead, Mike Pence promised to “go home and pray on it.”
Get ready for a lot of thoughts and prayers during the coming coronavirus epidemic.
Maybe you’ve seen some of the data on current coronavirus cases, and are relieved that the fatality rate is currently only c. 2%. Besides, the fatalities disproportionately come from cases involving the old and infirm. I can understand while people find that last data point reassuring, although personally, as a member of the Old & Infirm American community, I’m still a little nervous. Call me a hypochondriac.
But before we get too complacent, it would be smart to watch what happens when quarantines spread to places that America relies on to keep our farms and industries going. Supply chains will be disrupted. Manufacturers won’t be able to get parts. Which might not even matter, because a lot of factories will probably suspend operations, at least temporarily. Schools will close – and instead of spending their free time at the movies or roaming around a shopping mall, kids will have to stay home. Malls and movie theaters will likely be closed anyway. Ditto for factories, public transportation, sports and entertainment venues, and other places where contagion could spread rapidly. As the economic disruption spread, the stock market will react negatively, as it has already begun to do. Maybe stuffing cash in a mattress isn’t such a crazy idea after all.
Donald Trump doesn’t care about anything that doesn’t affect him personally. But I suspect that his handlers have made him aware that a stock market crash would hurt his re-election chances. His handlers must also know that the poop is going to hit the propeller no matter what we do. From that perspective, it looks to me like Mike Pence is being set up to be the scapegoat when things go south.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about a 1999 Randy Newman song called “The Great Nations Of Europe” (link below). Newman deflates the Age of Conquest by identifying the conquistadors’ secret weapons – “TB and typhoid and athlete’s foot, diphtheria and the flu.” He left out smallpox, but who’s counting? All’s fair in love and biological warfare.
In his last verse, Newman posits a turning of the tables – “some bug from out of Africa might come for you and me.” He was thinking about AIDS when he wrote the song, but substituting “some virus out of China” would bring it right up to date.
The best advice I’ve seen about preparing for the coronavirus is to start planning now. You don’t have to go full prepper, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to stock up on two or three weeks’ worth of supplies just in case.