On March 3rd in my video “The logic behind my vote“, I said that the Dow would drop below 15,000 before the election which I explain in this article from March 6 “the six reasons that the dow will drop below 15,000 in 2020“:
Many Americans are convinced that our country will not be affected like Italy or China but I say they are wrong and this hubris is very dangerous. I say coronavirus will hit us way harder than China for several reasons. First because we are a democracy where people have the right to be anti-vaxers even if it puts the public health at risk. We simply cannot use the authoritarian approach that has worked so well in squashing the epidemic in China.
I want to expound upon this now that a lot more information has become available over the last 11 days. Its 100% clear now that America will not be able to contain the spread of the coronavirus like China and South Korea have done so effectively. China has lowered new infection rates from 3500 a day to 17 a day and I want to explain why we will never be able to duplicate their success. Its worth looking at how both countries squashed this epidemic.
How China beat Coronavirus
In China, despite their big mistake at the beginning trying to sweep the disease under the rug, they quickly pulled out all the stops to stop this disease in its tracks and give the rest of the world time to prepare and for this, they are to be commended. Most Americans have heard that Wuhan is in lockdown but that does not explain the Chinese success. What they have done in a short time is nothing short of miraculous. Every apartment building, buisness, train station, and public space has people monitoring everyones temperature. If anyone has a fever, they are forced to go to a “fever clinic” right then. At the fever clinic which is often a big tent in a hospital parking lot, doctor in a hazmat suit checks the patient over and screens them. If there is any chance they might have coronavirus they are put into a catscan machine right then and have the result within hours. If they are negative, they go home, if they are positive for coronavirus they immediately go into a quarantine tent. One startling and overlooked statistic in China was that at the beginning they found that 75% of the new infections were between family members which is why this immediate test and isolate policy was put into effect.
Why America can’t duplicate the Chinese success in combating coronavirus
Such a solution is simply not an option in a democratic society. Even the first step which is temperature monitoring would probably be deemed unconstitutional as an invasion of privacy. Then, can you imagine forcing a single parent on the way to pick up their child from daycare to go immediately to a “fever clinic” and then go into isolation if they tested positive? Simply not going to happen in a democratic society. Clearly this strategy which has been so effective in China is not available to America.
How South Korea beat coronavirus
So how about the South Korea success story in fighting this epidemic? They had a dramatic and huge burst of cases surrounding the church members. What they then did is a heroic contact tracing effort and then tested everyone who might have been infected. The reason they were able to do this is that they used the same testing technology that China had developed which allows testing thousands of people a day. Unfortunately, this also is not a solution available to America at this point. Sad story of NIH, Not Invented Here. Why is it that this week in America the CDC only tested 77 people in the nation and test results still take days when in China they had the result in hours? Rather than use the Chinese tests which were offered by the government, the CDC decided to make their own tests. Months of bumbling and we still dont have testing capacity. Had we used the Chinese testing technology starting back in January then we could have done contact tracing and squashed this just the way South Korea has but its way too late for this.
Why America is using the failed Italian strategy for combating coronavirus
So how can America fight this? All that remains is the approach Italy has taken which unfortunately has been a total disaster resulting in the health care system being overloaded which forces doctors to make life and death decisions about who gets the hospital bed and who is going to be allowed to die. All that remains is to tell everyone to stay in their house and hope this slows down the spread enough that their is always sufficient numbers of hospital beds until everyone in America has been exposed to the virus.