That China let the initial spread of a new virus go unchecked is, ironically, symptomatic of its obsessive need for control.
President Xi Jinping’s insistence on secrecy and a facade of perfection has led to its mishandling of the coronavirus epidemic that has killed at least 425 and infected more than 20,000.
It was only after weeks of thousands of infections and scores of deaths that China’s leader admitted it had a public health crisis on its hands.
After its mishandling of the SARS outbreak in 2003, whose death toll reached 800, China had promised transparency and efficiency if and when a similar instance occurred. Sadly, it has done no better this time around. To date, more than three times the number of Chinese have contracted the new virus as compared to SARS.
Public officials have downplayed the spread of the virus in their communities for fear it would cast a negative light in their leaders’ eyes, who prize stability above all else. Because the initial stages are critical to its containment, that muzzled information has been costly to fighting the virus’s spread.
Citizen journalists who have posted information about those who have contracted the disease have been warned to stop posting “rumors” that would “spread panic” online.
Increasingly, Chinese authorities are cracking down on activists’ attempts to investigate the severity of the outbreak, according to Chinese Human Rights Defenders, a nonprofit coalition that tracks human rights in China.
ONCE THE World Health Organization declared the coronavirus is nearing pandemic proportions — meaning its spread exceeds two continents — China lost the upper hand on messaging.
Besides a health crisis, it’s also becoming an economic crisis. Countries are preventing their citizens from traveling to China and quarantining those returning. For the United States, it’s the first federally mandated quarantine since the era of smallpox in the 1950s.
The next shoe to drop is businesses cutting their orders from China. On Monday, Chinese stocks dropped 8%, signaling a major retrenchment, including its purchase of oil. Other signs of trouble are the cancellations of events. In Shanghai, a scheduled electronics convention that typically hosts more than 70,000 vendors was postponed.
THE GOOD news, is that the mortality rate of the pneumonia-like coronavirus is about 2% as compared to the 9.6% mortality rate for SARS. The coronavirus is thought to be a close cousin to SARS, which originated in bats which proceeded to infect animals.
Though there is no vaccine yet for the coronavirus, those of us in wealthy countries such as the United States have little to fear. That’s because the medications and public resources necessary to help combat such viruses are easily available. During the SARS scare, only eight cases were reported in the U.S., and all survived.
So the focus should not be on us, but on how we can help those in harm’s way.
— Susan Lynn
