Corona- Opportunity

The emergence of the Coronavirus or COVID19 as it is now called has caused a great deal of worry worldwide as it has spread to several  countries, including Iran and South Korea.  The contagion has inflicted a great deal of damage on the Chinese economy and interrupted supply chains.  About 800 million people in China are on travel restriction. 

And we are early in this conflagration.

But I see long term opportunity in this disruptive event. 

It’s a big wake up call.

At the same time President Xi struggles to deal with COVID19, other aspects of the Chinese regime’s rule and intentions are revealing themselves, and the picture is troubling.

First, let’s look at the Chinese response to COVID19.  The New York Times in its February 8^th edition, wrote an expansive and well-documented piece, exposing the attempts of the Chinese government to quash information about the virus, and its cloddy efforts to silence those that were warning about it, culminating in the death of Dr. Lee, who, the doctor who first rang the alarm bell.   Lee was disciplined for publicizing the illness.  This effort is ongoing as independent journalists are “disappearing” routinely.   The Beijing government knew of the problem in early December but didn’t admit to it until a month later.   We offered assistance from the CDC which offer was rebuffed and CDC officials are still being barred from Wuhan.  Most telling were the statements from the Chinese ambassador, who brushed off a question of the outbreak’s origin and the bioweapons lab as arising from xenophobia and “maybe the virus originated in the U.S.”

Emily Landon of the University of Chicago  Medical School stated: “If you could have contained really early on at the beginning when there were 20 cases, there wouldn’t be any cost. You should use a quarantine strategy.  Once it passes to the 4^th generation of transmission, you switch to a mitigation strategy.”  We’re clearly into mitigation now as the virus has spread to South Korea and Iran.  The CCP at the outset was more interested in controlling the narrative than the virus.

I was fortunate enough to have William H. McNeill as a professor as an undergrad.  One of McNeill’s major works was an epidemiological study published in 1976,  Plagues and Peoples.  In it, McNeill asserted that throughout history, plagues have had a major impact on the course of history.  Most economists are talking about the length and cost of the quarantine.  But I believe that COVID19 will have a different, and more permanent outcome.

COVID19 and its handling by the Chinese government is yet another piece of evidence that suggests that it should trigger a re-evaluation of our relationship with China. We have seen just in the past few months, just how the CCP behaves.  Its suppression of protests in Hong Kong were thuggish.  It immediately sought reprisals against the NBA for daring to question its handling of the protests.  It has coerced the Vatican into a secret deal regarding the selection of Catholic bishops in China (so secret that even the bishops in China don’t know what it entails).  It’s clear from WHO, that it, too has been coerced by the CCP.

It’s one thing when your totalitarian behavior affects your own citizens. That is bad enough.  It’s another to use economic coercion to bully your way.  But now the Chinese government’s behavior is threatening life across the globe.

This is not simply a matter of the length and cost of the quarantine.  If the West has any sense at all, the outbreak should cause a real and permanent shift in our relationship with China.  Our government, business and academic elite lulled us into an unrealistic future with the Beijing regime.  COVID19 is a slap that must sober us up.