At the beginning of March, a group of my family and friends departed for a tour of Easter Island and Patagonia. We were not paying much attention to the coronavirus sweeping Asia. Two weeks later, everything changed. We had to cut short our tour and hurry home — and none too soon: The Chilean government closed its border to foreigners a couple of days later.
Our experience was just one in a worldwide panoply during a dramatic two weeks of global turmoil caused by the novel coronavirus.
The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a world pandemic during that period. As the coronavirus spread to 80 countries in the blink of an eye, the stock market plummeted.
The disease hit Italy especially hard. At first, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte attempted to contain the disease to one region but changed his mind overnight and declared a national lockdown. He saw that any hope of containment would require following a protocol similar to that established by China in Wuhan, Hubei province. Thus, the world began to appreciate that the “Wuhan model” was the only way to defeat the epidemic.
Up to this point, China had been subject to ridicule and abuse by the Western media. They said that China was a police state that ran roughshod over the civil liberties of its people; that China was not transparent and suppressed the people's right to free speech; that the Chinese were dirty and lacked hygiene; that China was “sick man” of Asia — all over again.
Battling epidemics in the past has always been a collaborative international effort. This time the United States stayed on the sidelines but became active in the blame game. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, America's lead diplomat, insisted that Beijing had kept the true nature of the disease under wraps until it couldn't be hidden anymore. And he insisted that China's lack of candor had cost the U.S. valuable time in preparing to fight the disease — which he called the “Wuhan virus” until his boss trumped him by calling it the “Chinese virus.”
Thanks to reputable publications, it's possible to find facts to support or reject U.S. accusations. A most useful compilation of events comes from Nature magazine. An item from a March 19 post said, “By contrast, three weeks after the first known case of the disease now known as COVID-19, China had notified the WHO of a spike in cases of a pneumonia-like disease. Two weeks after that, the coronavirus had been isolated, genetically sequenced, and a diagnostic test developed, giving China the tools it needed to launch one of the greatest infectious-disease containment efforts the world has ever seen.”
When it was established that the coronavirus can be transmitted from person to person, Wuhan swiftly imposed a citywide lockdown that soon encompassed all of Hubei and its population of 50 million.
In retrospect, Dec. 8 has been identified as the date the first suspicious case appeared. Multiple cases of unusual fever appeared at Wuhan hospitals on Dec. 21. This raised the alarm of medical professionals and was reported to the district level of China's Center for Disease Control. Developments were reported up the line to the provincial center. The national CDC was notified on Dec. 30. The people of Wuhan were warned the next day as the contagion was reported on CCTV, and the World Health Organization were notified.
Bear in mind that at this point, the cause of the pneumonia and fever was not yet understood. The virus had not been identified and genetic sequencing and diagnostic testing were yet to be made available. Accusations of a Chinese cover-up seem farfetched, if not outright ludicrous.
Yet America's mainstream media can be most persuasive. They have convinced nearly everyone that something nefarious was going on in China. To this day, even after much more information has come to light, U.S. academics, pundits, talking heads and, of course, politicians across the entire spectrum continue to insist that China had covered up.
Robert O'Brien, the U.S. national security adviser, said that China “had reacted slowly to the coronavirus, probably costing the world two months when it could have been preparing.” In light of the timeline presented by Nature and other postings, some responsible member of the media should ask O'Brien for an accounting of how he came up with two months.
Time wasted
Finally, on March 13, the New York Times added a modicum of fairness by publishing the observations of its Beijing bureau chief. He compared the rigorous precautions taken at Beijing Capital International Airport with the lackadaisical handling of travelers arriving in London. His concluding lament: China, with its draconian measures, had purchased precious months for the world to prepare, and the West squandered the opportunity.
Let the record show that in the two months the novel coronavirus was known, the President of the United States, Donald Trump, did nothing. He proclaimed that the virus would go away when the weather warmed. Even as late as Feb. 25, he assured the American public that he had the matter “very well under control.” The first case in the U.S. was reported in Seattle on January 19. Since his assertion that all's well, Trump has taken to calling the pathogen the “Chinese virus,” as if that will ameliorate his having screwed up.
The same Nature post said: “The SARS outbreak went on for three months before being identified as a distinct disease. Then, for nearly two more months, it was a disease in search of a pathogen: the identification and genomic sequencing of the virus itself largely came from researchers outside China.” But China had learned from having to deal with SARS in 2003.
China's findings
China was prepared to slow the exponential expansion of this new contagious disease. As soon as the outbreak was detected, it launched an urgent investigation and research. Within nine days, the genetic profile of the virus had been mapped so that diagnostic tests could be developed. It was known how long the virus would survive on surfaces in public places, such as door handles or subway seats; and the public was warned to maintain social distance of about 2 meters to avoid transmission between people. There was zero evidence that sunlight would kill the virus, under Trump's wishful thinking.
One crucial finding of China's intense research was the discovery that a patient can be contagious for five days before showing any symptoms of the illness. On average, during this hidden period, a virus carrier could infect four to eight other people. Since those infected by the primary carrier would also be asymptomatic, each could infect another four to eight before knowing they have the virus. Thus, each original patient can cause the infection of a minimum of 4x4 =16 or as many as 64. This is just a simple illustration of the exponential transmission juggernaut.
Because of the explosive nature of exponential transmission, it became obvious and necessary that a total lockdown was essential to block the paths of transmission. It was the surest means of containment. Critics call the Wuhan lockdown draconian, but the epidemic could not have been stopped without that step.
Italy has recognized mathematical necessity of a lockdown, and soon the U.S. will have to face the same harsh reality, no thanks to the reckless frat boys on Spring Break who brush off the seriousness of the infection and who will contribute to the explosion to come.
It took Wuhan about one month from lockdown to reporting no new cases. As Pueho showed in his comprehensive analysis of the exponential nature of pandemics, the sooner transmission is halted and contained, and sooner new cases will stop appearing — what he calls “flatlining.” If you want to understand why early response is so important in minimizing deaths from the disease, you'll find the answers in his post. Someone in the White House needs to read it.
China helping others
Having shown the world how to contain the pandemic, China stands ready to help others. Teams are being sent to Italy and Spain to help with treatment and containment. The president of Serbia asked for help, and Beijing responded within 24 hours. Cynics like to call this a Xi Jinping victory lap. That's nonsense. China has learned, and apparently the U.S, has not, that pandemics affect everyone in the world — first at the site of the outbreak and in breathtakingly short time everywhere else. Helping others is in a nation's self-interest.
There are some loose ends to wrap up before concluding this discussion.
The World Health Organization first visited China in January to gain understanding and devise a plan to contain the disease. Since then, Washington and Beijing have been sniping at each other. U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross started it by expressing halfhearted condolences to China and saying out loud that maybe the coronavirus will encourage the return of jobs to America.
Then the mutual spitting contest intensified. A glaring example was when Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, speculated that the virus was man-made from a biological lab in Wuhan and accidentally leaked. He offered no proof or evidence to back his claim, but the media immediately picked it up and proliferated the story into a near virtual fact. As one commentator in Taiwan observed, when you are one of the 100 most senior legislators of the most powerful nation in the world, your statements are taken seriously by everyone.
Beijing's Ministry of Foreign Affairs responded in kind, saying that U.S. soldiers competing in multinational games in October seeded the virus, but the ministry didn't present much evidence to back up its accusations either. There were rumors in China's cyberspace alleging that the CIA was complicit and offered as evidence that the American team did poorly and did not dominate as its athletes usually do in international games. For two great nations to devolve into such a petty tit-for-tat contest has to be disheartening and embarrassing.
As if trying to keep the controversy from getting out of hand, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo held a news conference on March 17 in which he said, “Now is the time to solve this global pandemic and work to take down risks to Americans and people all across the world.” This is a fine sentiment, indeed, especially coming from someone accused of trying to take over a German company said to be on the verge of developing a vaccine against the coronavirus.
It was whispered that Pompeo's intent was to acquire the company, then move it to the U.S. and use the vaccine to serve Americans first. The alarmed German government stopped the process and kept the company in Germany. It's a matter of public record that Pompeo is proud of his self-proclaimed reputation as a liar. Perhaps that's why Chancellor Angela Merkel doesn't trust him.
Historically, international collaboration in fighting pandemics has been a given. The outbreak of SARS in 2003 caught China flat-footed. Up to that time, it had limited experience in dealing with infectious diseases. The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta sent teams to Beijing, first to help their Chinese counterparts contain the epidemic and later to discuss and plan how to collaborate and share data and experience.
In 2014 the Obama Administration reached out to China and invited its collaboration in fighting the deadly Ebola epidemic in West Africa that was concentrated in Sierra Leone. The team effort was highly successful, but it should be noted that many other countries joined in the effort to contain this frightening, high-fatality disease. Everybody has a stake in protecting the health of the people and in keeping such efforts above politics.
When we returned to California from our interrupted travels, we immediately complied with the “shelter-in-place” edict issued by Governor Gavin Newsom. Let's hope this and similar measures across the country will be enacted in time to keep the contagion from blowing up into another Italy, or worse.
In the event the Trump administration lets the COVID-19 pandemic run out of control, I am confident China, with the expertise and technology it has developed in the past few months, will be standing by to help. A change of attitude in the White House would help, along with a dinner or two of humble pie.
