*The global economy has suffered and enormous punch to the gut, and the economies of many nations are coughing and wheezing while dozens of their citizens perish. The culprit in this calamity is the Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19. The origin of this pandemic (empowered by the global economy) has been traced to the city of Wuhan, in Hubei province, China, where it emerged in December of 2019.
Actually, according to Helen Davidson of “The Guardian,” COVID-19 was first detected on November 17 of 2019, and by March 13, 2020, had killed 4,702 people. The Chinese government only admitted that there was human-to-human contact on January 21 of 2020. Doctor Ai Fen of the Wuhan Central hospital lost four of her fellow doctors to the virus and is guilty of “criticizing hospital authorities for suppressing early warnings of the outbreak.” To further add to the global mayhem, Dr. Fen and whistleblower ophthalmologist Li Wenliang were risking their jobs as well as detention to reveal to the public about the conditions in Wuhan. The global economy advances (and kills) everyone equally, if not for the preparations by their nation.
China’s track record regarding viruses isn’t very good. The coronavirus SARS originated in Guangdong province in 2002, and infected 8,000 people of the global economy in 26 countries by 2003. It turns out that the Chinese who have become enriched by the global economy like to dine on exotic foods, such as tiger, bear, civet cat, bats, and other wildlife. The drastic decline in the populations of tigers and rhinoceros, are a result of the demands from Asian markets, where their various body parts are used in “traditional medicine” while the global economy sits on the sidelines of traditional Chinese medicine. Body parts of tigers are considered to be an aphrodisiac in China, which is a first-class boner when one realizes that Viagra has been around since 1998.
We face a danger created from the incompetence of two nations’ leaders.”
The regulation of wild animal consumption in China has been a rollercoaster whose rises and plunges would take up more room and more details than most of you would care to read. Amid the flourishes of the global economy, the Chinese population would rather shop at traditional “wet markets” where the foods are in the open-air, and some produce even still alive.
Please bear in mind that there is a distinction between “wet markets” and “wildlife markets” in China, where a “wet market” may or may not sell wildlife and poached foods.
In the interim of COVID-19, many nations are realizing the dangers of the global economy. Iran has lost 237 people to COVID-19, and that is only if you believe the statements of a government that sponsors international terrorism (or global terrorism if you wish) while insisting that it does nothing of the sort.
While China seeks world economic domination of the global economy, it only has a few obstacles, such as a diverse population, four different variations of the Chinese language, the fact that it has one-quarter of the global economy’s population while only slightly more than one tenth of the global economy’s arable land comes to mind. While all governments make mistakes, the Chinese government can boast more than average in this area.
Open borders means the spread of viral infections”
The Hundred Flowers Campaign of 1956 began when Chairman Mao encouraged freedom of thought and lifted restrictions on thought and speech, a program which lasted a very short time when Chinese intellectuals actually spoke their minds and were quickly fired from their jobs, sent to labor on farms out in the hinterlands, or incarcerated. Next was the Great Leap Forward, beginning in 1958, which forbade farming and starved their population resulting in 56 million deaths. Not to be outdone, the Cultural Revolution of 1966 resulted in civil chaos which turned to martial law, along with Communist Party purges, and 1.5 million dead Chinese.
In a much smaller scale, if you still believe what the Chinese government decides you should know, only 300 were killed in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, where Chinese youth protested for freedom of speech, freedom of the press and more. The three-hundred from Tiananmen Square is the “official” number according to the Chinese government, known for their honesty. Or not.
Since the outbreak, the global supply of antibiotics has been strained, with China, one of the prime suppliers, being unable to meet demand. Not to mention several other factors, such as since China’s population dwarfs the rest of the world, and if they have a mass infection, it isn’t too hard to believe that they would be inclined to use the drugs to save their own population first, global economy or not.
One can only hope that many participants in the global economy have learned a few things from this mess. Open borders means the spread of viral infections; several nations have closed their borders due to this crisis. Whatever savings the global economy brings can whipsaw into drastic, even deadly plunges in a supply chain that is only as strong as its weakest link. Good luck with that. Some nations of our praised global economy have cultures that embrace dangerous practices, and much to the detriment of unsuspecting citizenry of other countries, dining on bat soup can kill many more than just those who consume chow from wildlife markets found in some distant province halfway around the world.
At some point in time, the ability to produce in-country certain products essential to the safety of a nation will come under consideration; that is, of course, if said country has any leaders with intelligence. At this point, given the events that have preceded this pandemic, said intelligence is not a fact in evidence. Companies driven by profit margins with shareholders who value nothing but dividends have moved critical operations to countries who can, at whim, decide to deny us those products. Politicians whose campaigns were funded by those same dividend-loving firms have left the United States quite vulnerable to the whims of other, often envious nations; this is your wake-up call.
We face a danger created from the incompetence of two nations’ leaders. One of those nations can murder millions of their citizens because of their incompetence, with the only repercussions coming from their tyrannical single party. The other nation expects intellect-driven leadership, with the option of removing the incompetent via the democratic process. It is likely that many Americans will survive this crisis. The politicians who fostered it might not be so lucky.
Jeffrey Neil Jackson is an
Educator & Literary Mercenary
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