A Journal of the Plague Year

Things have grown dark. I can no longer give eyewitness updates on local conditions, because I am not supposed to venture outside my apartment any more, unless to get food or medicine.

We are into what I would have considered an unlikely worst-case scenario only a few weeks ago.

Can it get worse? Latest report is of a cat catching the coronavirus in Belgium. You cannot get a cat to practice social distancing. Now we may be putting down pets.

Perhaps more horrifying: the Canadian authorities say they can approve a new faster coronavirus test “within a few weeks.” This sounds like murder by bureaucracy. The sick systems remain standing. Trump unveiled a five-minute test the day before yesterday.

Dr. Birx, who holds some leadership position in the US Administration response, shook everyone yesterday by giving a projected number of total deaths of 100,000 to 250,000 in the US “if we do everything perfectly.”

But the darkest thing is that Dr. Birx ended her talk by saying “there is no magic bullet, there is no treatment, no cure,” except for isolation.

I really was expecting a magic bullet, by about now. What happened to hydrachloroquine? She seemed to be expressly discounting it.

My guess and hope is that it does indeed work, they know it works, but there is a danger of hoarding if everyone knows it works. Supplies may also be insufficient. And if people know it works, they will not obey the orders to socially isolate. Perhaps they are being scared into staying in their homes.

If it works, the evidence will not be publicly apparent for some time either. Even if it starts to be used properly everywhere tomorrow, the death rate should continue to rise for weeks, because deaths do not happen until the second week after the onset of symptoms, and the onset of symptoms may be two weeks after exposure. And the studies suggest that it is too late to give hydroxylchloraquine after the symptoms have become serious.

I am seeing reports of food supply chains under stress. I did not expect this. I stockpiled food, but against quarantine, not against real shortages. Even aside from possibly disrupted supply chains, people’s money is going to run out. India is a nightmare. If people cannot eat, hell will break loose and roam the streets.

Epoch Times reports “mass demonstrations, bordering on riots,” in Hubei. It is worth noting that the 1911 revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty began in Wuhan; it has that heritage and that potential.

“People are not afraid of the Chinese Communist Party anymore,” says Epoch Times’ correspondent. Epoch Times, of course, has an agenda, but has also proven reliable in reporting on matters inside China. They have good sources.

Apart from internal unrest, China is now suffering in terms of international prestige. The UK government has declared that they do not believe China’s official figures on the virus; they believe it is an undercount of up to 40 orders of magnitude. They have censured China for lack of transparency, and apparently cancelled a contract with Huawei for 5G. Czechia, Spain, and other countries are saying huge shipments of test kits they received from China are defective.

Not great for Chinese PR. 

In a now-viral YouTube video, a reporter from Hong Kong asks a top WHO official about Taiwan being allowed to participate. The official pretends not to hear the question, then cuts off transmission. The callousness in the face of human misery will be hard to forget.

Now there are urgent discussions of China having subverted international bodies, and various popular apps, for their political purposes. It all as much as identifies China as itself a virus: the coronavirus is deeply branding this idea in everyone’s consciousness.

That’s bound to lead to prolonged economic troubles. Everyone is socially distancing themselves from China. Even if they weren’t, China’s external customers suddenly have less money to spend.

I have been predicting their fall for decades, but I can’t see China’s Communist Party long surviving this crisis. One prominent China watcher, Gordon Chang, predicts their fall within three months.

The more relevant question, perhaps, is who else will fall? All governments, and all organizations and social systems, are being stress-tested, and many are failing.

I think the demand in the US to pull out of the WHO will also be overwhelming; and perhaps too out of other UN bodies. The experience with the virus makes a strong case that the UN is not reliable, and more dangerous than helpful. There is perhaps a need, and will perhaps be a drive, for an alternative organization that admits only functioning democracies; perhaps built on the foundation of NATO. The UN may die, or fade into irrelevance.