I wonder if Tung-yi Kho has been reading the news. For the last several months, mainstream American newspaper, blogs, and journals have appropriately heaped criticism on the coronavirus response in the US, singling out Donald Trump and his gutting of expertise at every level of government (as well as his nepotism, most recently putting his unqualified son-in-law Jared Kushner in charge of virus response—Kushner’s first appearance has been widely criticized), the severely lacking health insurance system, the radical right’s rejection of scientific knowledge and their ability to influence the president, the failure to stockpile protective gear for hospitals and medical workers, the inability to test—which makes it very likely that the number of infected people are in fact much greater than those verified—and the overall incompetence and inability to take organized and concerted action. Every day I read twenty or so articles along these lines, in common publications such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and even the Wall Street Journal. They also come up on my google news feed with great regularity, and there I can see that even minor venues are publishing similar critiques. Articles on the coronavirus and the failures of the US government in addressing it are available free of charge at most major publications. In other words, no one is in the least distracted from the dire American response.
There is no doubt that China was able to effectively institute lockdowns much better than authorities could in the US, once the reality of the virus took hold (for recent reporting on this success by well-known US news agency, see https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/04/01/coronavirus-covid-19-china-radical-measures-lockdowns-mass-quarantines/2938374001/). At the same time, when we look at the situation in Italy and Spain and now in the US, we can see that there are good reasons to be suspicious of the Chinese numbers, just because of the sheer number of those affected. In the Wuhan area, 60 million people were put into lockdown, and that was after 5 million left the city. Many in China also have expressed doubt. However, because the government is intent on showing only how effectively it has managed the crisis, critical comments or exposés are eliminated from social media, and their authors reprimanded. The lack of any outlet for criticism means we may never know the true extent of virus infections and deaths.
What has struck me is the similarity in the early narratives in China and the US. China silenced doctors and suppressed early knowledge of the virus, resulting in a delay of action that could have significantly reduced virus transmission. The authoritarian Chinese state relies heavily on the spectacle of success and tightly controls information, a situation that has grown worse under president-for-life Xi Jinping. Donald Trump is a wannabe authoritarian president, stopped only by a relatively free press and his inability to fully concentrate power at the top. He also wants above all to present himself and his rule as successful, which meant that early on, when it could have made a difference, he refused to listen to experts warning him about the dangers of the virus.
There is no contradiction between questioning the Chinese numbers and critiquing the response of the US to the virus, nor is it “shameless” to do so. The virus now exists all over the world, and the poorest countries will surely suffer the most. We all should demand transparency from our governments and from authorities across the world.
Wendy Larson <walarson@uoregon.edu>