As you may have heard from the news, coronavirus is rapidly spreading throughout China and the world, infecting and killing many. But what is coronavirus, why are people so concerned, and what are some effects of coronavirus on society?
Coronaviruses are a family of viruses that can cause infections in the respiratory system. The Wuhan coronavirus is different from the seven known coronaviruses, and it has never been seen in humans before. The outbreak likely started from an incident when the virus was passed due to close human-to-animal contact, in markets where live and dead animals are sold for food. The new coronavirus can cause pneumonia, organ failure, and death, and especially those with weak immune systems, like the elderly or children. The current death rate of this disease is about 2%, which isn’t that high compared to the death rates of other coronaviruses (11% and 35%), but that 2% is subject to change, as there isn’t a clear idea of how many people are infected and how many deaths will occur.
Coronavirus is viewed as worse than normal influenza because scientists don’t know how dangerous or contagious the new coronavirus is. On January 30th, the World Health Organization declared the current Wuhan coronavirus outbreak a global health emergency. Their decision wasn’t due to the rapidly increasing cases in China, but because of the worry about the virus spreading to other countries, especially those with weaker health systems. The United States is currently not allowing non-US citizens who recently visited China entry (with a few exceptions) and all flights from China are being funneled to 11 airports.
Behind the coronavirus, there were discreet and questionable actions regarding the public awareness efforts made and alerting the local Chinese population of where the virus outbreaks started. On Chinese social media Weibo, there have been multiple postings and censoring of certain posts by the Chinese government due to the government wanting to keep a good public image of the efforts in containing the virus. Specifically, Dr. Li Wenliang and seven other doctors attempted to warn China about the deadly virus but were subsequently arrested under the charges of spreading rumors. Although the Chinese government has managed to build a hospital in 10 days and install 10,000 beds, many governments and media outlets have criticized the Chinese government’s efforts, claiming that the political organization was corrupt.
Developing a drug to treat a newfound disease, especially a supervirus such as coronavirus, which is in the same family as Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), is extremely difficult. The generic drug Chloroquine was found to be an effective treatment for coronavirus by the Chinese Science Institute. However, there has been one prominent foreign company, Gilead, that has pushed its clinical-stage drug Favilavir as a possible treatment. (The policy China has with foreign companies regarding drugs as treatment is that foreign companies must offer their drugs for free).
This rapid spread of coronavirus has led to a decline in the global economy and xenophobia, prejudice against people from other countries, towards the Chinese. For example, Adidas announced that its sales in China were down 85% in the same period last year, with the fall starting after it closed its stores for the Lunar new year on January 25; many stores remain stored. Britain’s biggest carmaker, Jaguar Land Rover, is flying over car parts from its Chinese suppliers in suitcases. JLR CEO Ralf Speth warned the firm would struggle to keep production flowing at its U.K. plants, which make 400,000 cars a year, because of supply chain issues in China. On January 27th, the US stock market had its biggest drop since October, which many analysts are attributing to growing concerns about the Chinese economy. Oil prices have been hit particularly hard due to decreased travel to and from China. Chinese restaurants have been losing business, as people claim the restaurants are dirty and fear to eat at those places. For example, Shark Fin House, a well-known Cantonese dim sum restaurant in Melbourne, closed last week after reporting an 80% drop in business. In Sydney’s Chinatown during late January 2020, a man had a heart attack and died because bystanders refused to give him CPR over fears that he had the coronavirus. People in Los Angeles and Toronto have experienced instances of xenophobic harassment, from racist comments made by TSA agents to verbal street harassment. Some South Koreans have been protesting for the banning of Chinese people from entering South Korea. An official UC Berkeley Instagram account went so far as to post a picture stating that xenophobia and fears about interacting with those who might be from Asia were common reactions. The Instagram account has taken the post down and apologized for the post.
I interviewed Ms. Kalinski, a US History teacher, regarding the politics and ethics in relation to the coronavirus outbreak. Some racist attitudes in 2016 related to diseases from Africa, such as Ebola, were displayed. In response to what she thinks that could have been done better to prevent this widespread outbreak from happening, she stated that “more awareness, resource allocation to treatment, and people working in hospitals and clinics quicker would help. Also, there should have been more people working on vaccines and testing different kinds of treatment as quickly as possible. San Francisco declared a state of emergency, which allows for the collecting of more funds that would otherwise be for something unrelated to coronavirus prevention. More people will be aware of and practice prevention methods for greater preparedness against the coronavirus.” Some problems of the United States’ government that could prevent them from doing as good of a job in outbreak prevention include “the Trump Administration is recognizing this as a crisis but is setting aside fewer resources, $2.5 billion, compared to the resources allocated for previous spreads epidemics, such as ebola or the swine flu, as $8 billion was allocated. It seems like America has the ability to do a better job of limiting and dealing with the outbreak but this administration has cut a lot of programs in these areas that would be necessary to deal with this issue, such as cutting some of the Science and Research Medical’s funding. Typically in situations like this, the administration would designate somebody to oversee treatment and vaccine trials but instead, they are claiming that the media is generating more fear and that this outbreak isn’t that serious. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is saying that this is serious and that the virus will spread,” Kalinski states. Some flaws in China’s current system that inhibits them from performing to the same capacity as the US can include “no admission or ownership on part of the Chinese government on what was happening a part of the reason why this virus was able to spread so rapidly. The authoritative government in China has so much control and created a lack of transparency, making it seem like they were trying to keep this situation under wraps, which caused the Chinese people to not be fully prepared for the risks of the virus.” In response to how fair it is that so many people are drawing criticism toward this developing nation, Ms. Kalinski also commented that she “thinks it’s difficult to handle a crisis on this level, but [she] would think that countries like the US and China would be more effective in handling situations like this. It’s important to be thoughtful about the way that countries handle these situations, especially because their choices have such a large impact and the efforts they are using to handle the crisis there is impacting us now. It’s fair to analyze what they’ve done so that we can either replicate or fix the problems in our own handling of the crisis. The point of being critical isn’t to insult them but it’s to help them or do things differently here.”