The Blame Game

Inside the infamous laboratory

As anger and resentment mount, countries are looking for scapegoats to vent their frustration on.  The US is of course taking the lead, blaming China for not reporting the virus soon enough, hiding badly needed information and altering its figures.  Trump has even gone so far as to promote the popular conspiracy theory that the virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

To this point WHO has supported China, although it has said that Chinese authorities could have been more forthcoming as the virus wasn't officially reported until December 31, 2019, and then not viewed as being particularly virulent.  It wasn't until January 22 that WHO convened an emergency meeting in which Chinese health experts presented evidence that the virus was indeed being transmitted by human-to-human contact.  A three-week lag that might have gone a long way to helping other countries be better prepared for the outbreak, namely Japan, South Korea and Iran, which were initially the hardest hit.

Trump announced a task force to address the virus five days later on January 29, but it wasn't until February 26 that persons were named to head this committee, namely VP Pence as chairman and Dr. Birx as response coordinator.  That's quite a lag time for a virus that was already spiraling out of control and had hit the US shores!

Initially, Trump was effusive in his praise for China in bringing the virus under control.  He gave all sorts of false assurances that the virus would have little impact on the US.  However, that soon changed as cases began to mount.

While Washington and California could both trace their initial cases back to Wuhan, the outbreak in New York was traced to persons returning from Italy.  There was really no way to effectively manage the pandemic at this point, as it was everywhere in the US.  Airports were shut down and borders closed just the same, as the virus was affecting some countries far more than others.

Italy and Spain were particularly hard hit, and totally unprepared to deal with COVID-19, as it was now named.  We watched in horror as 100s of deaths were being reported each day in these two countries.  Still, much of Europe and the US was reticent to issue lockdowns as China, Japan, South Korea and Iran had done to isolate the virus.  Consequently, the virus quickly spread throughout Europe and the United States, virtually unchecked.

It wasn't until mid-March that European countries began issuing lockdowns in a last ditch effort to contain the virus.  The UK and Sweden were the exceptions, promoting a herd immunity theory whereby people would build up natural antibodies if exposed to the virus thereby preserving the population as a whole.  This may be true for approximately 85 percent of the population, but 15 percent would develop acute symptoms, and as much as 10 percent of this group would die.  That meant these countries were willing to sacrifice 1.5% of their population.  That changed in the UK when the virus spread wildly out of control and PM Boris Johnson had to be hospitalized for coronavirus.  However, Sweden stuck to its guns, still refusing to issue a national lockdown despite an exceedingly high number of cases, primarily in the greater Stockholm metropolitan area.

By late March, New York had become one of the epicenters of the virus, yet most American states continued to view the virus as localized and did little to contain it.  Only when the virus spread to other metropolitan centers in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Michigan and Illinois, did states start to worry and issue lockdowns.

The President, however, remained sanguine.  He finally did recognize the severity of the crisis but was now treating a potential 100,000 deaths as a net positive, after initially believing there would be no loss of lives in the US.  This did not sit well with governors who found themselves talking to a brick wall when it came to their requests for PPE's and ventilators.

Trump seemed to believe these states were inflating their needs and even went so far as to blame hospital staff for stealing medical supplies and selling them on the black market.  This when states were engaged in bidding wars for the relative handful of supplies available on the free market.  Making matters worse, FEMA was confiscating medical supplies that states had procured and putting them in a national stockpile.

It couldn't get any uglier, but Trump seemed to hit a new low bar each day at his press briefings. He used them as political rallies, openly chastising state governors, health care officials and now China.  After taking more than two months to recognize the severity of the virus, first reported on January 31, 2019, he was now trying desperately to find a scapegoat for his many failings.

Of course, he is not alone in his poor response.  European countries, particularly Western European countries, didn't handle the pandemic much better.  Italy, Spain and the UK are basket cases.  Belgium, France, Sweden and Germany have also been hit very hard.  Eastern European countries were quicker to react because they knew they didn't have the medical facilities and supplies to deal with the pandemic raging through Italy and Spain.  These countries closed off borders, issued lockdowns and have been aggressive in their testing and tracking.  As a result, they have much fewer reported cases and deaths than their Western counterparts.

Meanwhile, China has been providing badly needed PPE's and ventilators to countries in need.  Some call it a charm offensive meant to disguise their initial failings.  Fact is we had time to initiate a much more aggressive response to COVID-19 but chose not to.  We thought this virus would remain localized as was the case with SARS and Ebola.  If it did spread, it would be no worse than the 2009-2010 swine flu.  Hubris won out over safety.

Even if the virus abates during the summer, the CDC is warning that COVID-19 could be much worse this fall and winter as it makes a second round.  Fearing the worst, Germany has canceled Oktoberfest, and it is likely that major events will be suspended this year all around the world, including NFL and NCAA football, much to the chagrin of American fans.

This is the new normal.  We will not be able to go back to an open society any time soon.  We will have to take precautions.  We will have to avoid big crowds.  We will have to work at home as much as possible.  Schools will go online, as will many other public institutions and activities.  We will become a virtual society.

It's not all that bad when you think about it.  We have become a virtual society in many ways.  The retail industry already moves most of its products online.  We've seen massive closures of Sears and other retail giants over the past few years, and now we will see the small retailers similarly close down their "brick and mortar" shops.  The shopping mall will become one of the many casualties of the coronavirus.  No great loss.

We will probably be seeing more and more virtual vacations, concerts and sporting events.  We might see vacations the way Ray Bradbury imagined them in The Veldt, hopefully without the same macabre consequences.  As for sports, the NFL is considering games played in empty stadiums and broadcast to fans.  Maybe they can find a way to pipe in the fan reactions so that players feel the noise.  This virus will certainly force us to think outside the box.

My biggest concern is whether we will have an election this November.  Trump is already using the virus as an excuse to curtail immigration all together.  Why not use it to suspend the election until 2021?  After all, he felt he was cheated of at least a year with the Mueller investigation.

We are definitely in uncharted territory.  Some health experts don't see a return to normal until 2022 by which time we may finally have a vaccine for the virus.  Other health experts and pharmaceutical companies more optimistically believe we could have a vaccine by next April.

Given that China beat us to the punch in containing the virus, at least for the time being, I well imagine they are working 24/7 on a vaccine themselves.  The only question is whether the rest of the world will trust China, since so many seem to believe they engineered this virus to begin with.