First reports on this coronavirus outbreak in early January gave the impression that it posed the greatest viral threat to human kind since the Bubonic Plague (a.k.a. the Black Death). Like this virus, the plague originated in Asia. The latter killed over 50 million people in Europe between 1346 and 1353. Reports suggested the former could kill even more here, but nothing could’ve been further from the truth.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said the risk of coronavirus in the US is ‘really very minimal because there really are only 15 cases now, in addition to those who were shipped here.’
(CNN, February 17, 2020)
Now, for a critical perspective, consider this:
Influenza has already taken the lives of 10,000 Americans this season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. At least 19 million have caught the flu, and an estimated 180,000 became so ill they landed in the hospital.
(U.S. News & World Report, February 7, 2020)
Incidentally, my feeble immune system is such that the flu has its way with me every year. And no, the flu shot never immunizes as advertised.
As a result, I’ve been more at risk of dying every year of my life than at least 90 percent of those who will get infected with coronavirus this year. This in part is why I’ve been so inured to all the hysterical reporting on this outbreak.
But Fauci’s calming assessment raises a question that all involved in the prevention of infectious diseases should be pressed to answer:
Given that influenza is so much deadlier, why aren’t you taking even greater steps to quarantine those afflicted with it than you are taking to quarantine those afflicted with coronavirus?
The U.S. government confirmed at least 14 [of nearly 340] Americans on the U.S.-government chartered planes had tested positive for the new COVID-19 disease [a.k.a. coronavirus] just before departing Japan, nearly doubling the number of confirmed cases in the U.S.
All the other passengers — who have already spent almost two weeks quarantined on the ship [in Japan] — were facing another two-week quarantine in the United States.
(CBS News, February 17, 2020)
Of course, the media are hyping this virus simply because the more viral the story, the higher the ratings … and the greater their revenues. But here in a nutshell is the inherent folly afoot: On the one hand, government officials are treating coronavirus like the Bubonic plague, when treating it like the common cold would do. On the other hand, they are treating influenza like the common cold, when treating it like the Bubonic plague should do.
And don’t get me started on the way Chinese leaders are quarantining millions of people in a misguided attempt to contain this virus. Of course, practice from quarantining millions of Uyghur Muslims for years in religious-cleansing camps means that they are doing so in this case with Nazi-like efficiency.
That said, it’s probably fairer to draw comparisons with the way government officials treated the far deadlier Ebola virus. Because it’s worth noting that coronavirus would not have commanded such immediate and viral attention if it originated in Africa and affected only Africans. This was the case during the early days of Ebola, so much so that I lamented “Ebola Killing Blacks in Africa Won’t Matter Until It Starts Killing Whites in America…?” May 27, 2019.
Sure enough, as soon as one white American was infected, the media and government officials began covering and treating Ebola back then the way they are covering and treating coronavirus today, respectively. Which brings me to:
Cruise-Ship-cum-Floating-Petri-Dish
As it happens, the most interesting part of this story is playing out on cruise ships. Because, with all due respect to the quarantined Chinese in Wuhan, China, the quarantined Americans on a docked cruise ship in Japan are being treated like patients zero.
In other words, they are to this outbreak of coronavirus what the first white American who contracted Ebola was to the outbreak of that virus.
Coronavirus has continued to spread among the passengers and crew of the quarantined Princess Cruises’ ship, Diamond Princess, which remains docked at the port in Yokohama, Japan. As of Tuesday, 542 cases of the virus have been identified among the 3,711 quarantined passengers and crew, making the ship the site of the most infections outside of China.
(USA Today, February 18, 2020)
But, given the apt petri-dish analogy, what do you suppose is going to happen to those not yet infected…? Truth be told, though, there’s really nothing else to say about that festering situation except to wish them all a full and speedy recovery.
Meanwhile, cruise liners are finding reputational damage even more difficult to control than this coronavirus. Except that I’m not sure why it has taken this to scare people off holidaying on cruise ships.
After all, nary a year has gone by over the past two decades without reports about one cruise ship or another suffering an outbreak of norovirus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention describes it as an extremely contagious gastrointestinal illness that causes vomiting, diarrhea, stomach pain, and nausea.
That explains this:
Passengers aboard the ‘cruise ship from hell’ vomited so much on journeys that the toilets and sinks overflowed – and now they could sue.
Lorraine Thomas was among more than 16,000 passengers impacted by back-to-back outbreaks of norovirus on eight Sun Princess voyages.
(The Sun, February 28, 2018)
More to the point, the seafaring reality of norovirus had to have been bad enough for business. But the viral hysteria of coronavirus must be plunging the bottom line for cruise liners way under water.
The latter might explain why Celebrity Cruises is now competing with Mike Bloomberg for ad time on TV. I’m sure you’ve seen its rebranding commercial. It features a woman (who looks fittingly like the pretty-trippy lead singer from Florence and the Machine) sunbathing on deck and having a Calgon daydream.
Except that her dream suggests you’d have to be on drugs to enjoy all the Alice-In-Wonderland treats on board – all of which this passenger appears to be missing out on by sunbathing and daydreaming. Nothing betrays this oxymoronic juxtaposition quite like the psychedelic opening lines of the theme song for this commercial:
One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you, don’t do anything at all
That should be enough to convince you that the PR folks for Celebrity Cruises must’ve been smoking mushrooms when they greenlit this commercial. But fans of Grace Slick know she could not have foreseen, even on one of her hallucinogenic trips, that her and Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit” would morph into a theme song to entice middle-aged folks to take holiday cruises.
For the uninitiated, it might help to know that this song also includes the following lines:
When the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go
And you’ve just had some kind of mushroom, and your mind is moving low
Go ask Alice, I think she’ll know
Then again, those lazy PR SOBs might’ve just been aping a scene from Mad Men. I’m referring to the one that had Don Draper telling the CEO of a car company that the best way to get through to 30-something knuckleheads is to use their own underground, anti-establishment music to sell old-fashioned products to them.
Granted, Celebrity Cruises is probably also hoping to exploit nostalgia by suggesting to middle-aged folks that, if they get on board, they can relive their halcyon, drug-taking daze of the 1960s and 1970s. Indeed, notwithstanding allusions to Lewis Carroll’s Alice… and Through the Looking Glass, this commercial smacks of a subliminal invitation to chase a more manufactured dragon. But I digress…
The point is that, by this time next year, coronavirus will have been long-relegated to the dustbin of history (to perish alongside the overhyped pandemics of swine flu and bird flu). But the seasonal flu will be continuing its annual scourge – killing tens of thousands and infecting millions; and this, with nary a thought given to quarantining anyone to limit its impact.
Unfortunately, this much ado to little effect with respect to coronavirus is just the latest manifestation of life in the age of Trump. Because nothing defines his presidency quite like making a show of dealing with problems that do not exist while willfully ignoring those that do.
[Note: Given the above, it follows that coronavirus isn’t impacting the (global) economy; hysterical reaction to it is Besides, from New York to Shanghai, “the markets” have shown time and again that they’re so fickle, one idle-minded tweet from President Trump can have far greater impact than any virus. But I fear that, with all of this scaremongering, prophecies of all strains will be fulfilled …]
[Endnote: Can the standard-setting New York Times please explain why coronavirus is not Corona virus given Ebola virus; or why Ebola virus was/is not ebolavirus given coronavirus?]