a despicable choice

let’s state it up front

Five years ago today, the world was only beginning to absorb the reality of a global health emergency comparable to one that so few people alive had ever faced. Virtually all of us resisted recognizing its magnitude but the corona virus was already on the move but some decisions are inexplicable to me.

Debate within the United States over the origins of the virus still reverberate—and likely always will as I strongly doubt we will ever know for certain whether it was a natural phenomenon known as spillage from bats to humans or whether alternate, more nefarious actions led to the pandemic. The Central Intelligence Agency assessed repeatedly over these years that the bats-to-human transmission was far more likely but less than twenty-four hours after John Ratcliffe’s confirmation as Director of Central Intelligence, his agency reversed that assessment, albeit with “low confidence”, to blame the CCP for malfeasance in its Wuhan laboratory facility.

I don’t know where the virus began any more than anyone else. I prefer following the science, that replicable evidence-based process to validate hypotheses, but I don’t have perfect knowledge. Too many seem to stake assessments based on beliefs about China’s motives, about perfidy of the head of the Centers for Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the phases of the moon. While it may be a wonderful historic study, I am not sure it matters as much as others do but perhaps I will be convinced down the line.

What most clearly is demonstrable, despicable, and never forgivable is that the CCP, by evidence we now have, did not cancel the 2020 Spring Festival travel. China’s deliberate choice to maintain social stability by allowing the traditional travel by hundreds of millions of people, obviously dramatically expanding the virus’ reach, was an unconscionable act.

I remember commenting to my husband as the event approached that allowing the massive internal migration sounded crazy because this illness (as we still called it) could spread like wildfire by people coming in contact with others previously unexposed. Pandemics interest me, particularly since reading John Barry’s, The Great Influenza: the Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History, because of the medical mysteries they present and policies they force us to enact. But this just sounded so weird that any hint of such a risk would go forward.

I read somewhere in late 2019 the many China sources I come across that an unsettling illness was popping up in Wuhan. According to the Centers for Disease Control, my memory must have been associated with reports, on about 12 December, of a number of citizens of Hubei province with a novel type of flu. I have no idea where exactly I saw these reports but I vividly recall not being totally surprised when the number of cases began climbing early January. The PRC notified the World Health Organization on new year’s eve of this abnormal illness, thus providing documented evidence that PRC health authorities knew something was amiss or they never would have contacted the WHO. We now know that doctors in Wuhan tried to raise alarms about the contagion but Xi Jinping’s determined efforts over the years, unsurprisingly for a head of any government, focus on accentuating the positive rather than the negative for his country. Bringing attention to global heath authorities meant the Chinese health community recognized this was both new and potentially quite dangerous.

Social stability, however, remains the supreme concern in China under this or any other administration. Fear of luan or societal chaos is as ingrained in that culture as “freedom” is in our own. Social stability relies on several mechanisms. Some are state-imposed, such as controlling materials on the internet or assuring that popular assembly does not morph into criticizing the government. Alternatively, allowing the population now living in urban areas to fulfill their family obligations and desires to celebrate the new year in rural ancestral areas is another way. In 2008, peculiarly heavy snowfall prevented millions from making their way home in the southern part of the country. Chinese government concern about the implication of that tragedy led to a personal appearance at an absolutely overflowing but snowed in train station by the Premier Wen Xiaobao as evidence of how seriously this mattered. Beijing needs Chinese to believe the government prioritizes everything possible to assure they meet their family obligations, for fear of blowback towards the Party.

This deliberate choice to allow normal migration that strikes me as supremely and unquestionably irresponsible. The Lunar New Year celebrations began on 25 January 2020, traditionally the single largest annual migration anywhere. Perhaps 170 million people travelled home for the Spring Festival that year, meaning vectors of the disease expanding within China (much less around the globe) were astronomical. And government officials knew the virus was dangerous because they had notified the WHO.

China’s officials could have chosen to abort travel under extenuating circumstances, had they chosen. The CCP regularly takes draconian steps (Tian’anmen in 1989 certainly was) where it deems a threat high enough but they did not in 2020.

The CDC website makes clear that health officials elsewhere were already detecting coronavirus cases well before late January, though the numbers were low. But to not prevent further contamination by any regime was inexcusable.

Wuhan, the vast city of 11 million which is the eight largest in the country, went into lockdown on 23 January. Surely travel was already underway but the decision to isolate 11 million people in a political system like China’s, with its stove-piped, hierarchical system was hardly made over a fifteen minute tea break. Beijing knew it had a problem, notified the WHO (and surely through informal internet conversations with scientists around the globe), and yet they did not prevent the spread of the virus by curbing the migration that winter.

Evidence is, of course, that coronavirus was already appearing in Italy, Thailand, and even the United States by the Spring Festival. I don’t pretend to be qualified to judge how much of what became the global scourge was already abroad versus how much the millions of migrants exacerbated the problem. But common sense tells me that a society so anxious about maintaining control over so many aspects of personal lives ought to have focused on that probable threat. Instead, things went blithely along.

Eventually, Beijing imposed lockdowns of entire cities but not before the Festival.

Coronavirus formally became a worldwide health emergency on 11 March 2020 following 118,000 infections, 4291 of which were deaths, according to the WHO.

China reluctantly discusses Covid, even today. As early as April 2020, the death statistics for Hubei province containing Wuhan doubled to 3800; it seems likely those numbers underestimate the truth. Infections in the Middle Kingdom in that same month were again suspiciously low at 84,000. The health emergency and rolling lockdowns of entire cities of multimillions of people only ended in late 2022.

As of May 2023, the world formally recorded 6.866 million deaths resulting from the virus. The largest number acknowledged in any country was in the United States where 1.161 million perished, followed by Brazil, India, and Russia. China, curiously, gave 5272 deaths, a seeming preposterously low number.

While I know the government in Beijing maintains archives on many things, I am dubious anyone knows the true death count because Xi Jinping’s penchant for only wanting to hear good news prevents honest reporting. Accountability through transparency is vital to good governance in any country but insecure leaders almost inevitably discourage those who work for them from bringing truth when it upsets the preferred narrative.

China wants to be a global leader but with leadership comes responsibility for actions taken—or not pursued.

Perhaps we will ultimately find out beyond any doubt what the source of the virus was but I remain deeply angry that Beijing knew as much as it did, then would not take common sense steps to address it. It’s quite a lesson for all of us.

Millions of people died and those who survived often still feel effects. Perhaps this was not entirely avoidable but it certainly could have been handled better.

I welcome your thoughts, observations, and questions. Please feel free to circulate this column if you find it valuable. Thank you for your time. I also deeply appreciate the subscribers who fund this newsletter.

Be well and be safe. FIN

John Barry, The Great Influenza: the Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History. New York: Penguin, 2003.

“Chinese New Year—statistics and facts”, statista.com, retrieved at https://www.statista.com/topics/5156/chinese-new-year-in-china/#topicOverview

“Coronavirus: China outbreak city Wuhan raises death toll by 50% “, bbcnews.com, 17 April 2020, retrieved at https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-52321529

“David J. Sencer Museum CDC Covid Timeline”, CDC.org, retrieved at https://www.cdc.gov/museum/timeline/covid19.html

“Number of novel coronavirus (Covid-19) deaths worldwide, by country and territory“, statistica.com, 23 May 2023, retrieved at https://www.statista.com/statistics/1093256/novel-coronavirus-2019ncov-deaths-worldwide-by-country/