The American public elected Donald Trump for his mouth, not for his Ph.D. in public administration, as has been amply fulfilled in the virus crisis.
The most unappreciated factor in our policy chaos may have been a series of early comments by scientists who should have known better, conforming to the Xi Jinping victory pageant by suggesting that China had shown that a highly communicable upper respiratory virus could be extinguished at a plausible cost.
In dribs and drabs, the reality has been leaking out of China.
China is bearing an extravagant and perhaps deeply irrational cost to make it seem like it has.
In most of China, international travel is all but impossible-globe-trotters and migrants are required to quarantine up to 35 days.
An exception is Shanghai, a city of 24 million and China's vital financial capital.
This compromise with reality also seems guaranteed to compromise the Communist Party's rhetorical goal of ridding China of the virus.
China, with 63 million visitors, was No. 4 on the list of countries with the most travelers in 2018.
Even China's top government virologist now admits when addressing a foreign audience: "This is very likely to be an epidemic that coexists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal, and is sustained within human bodies."
It might seem an unduly strong statement but the U.S. and China are in a contest now over which world power can emerge from this chaos with the most realistic policy toward the virus.
It won't meet anybody's idea of rational central planning, but it will allow us to move forward and it's not clear China has yet found a realistic way to do so.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-policy-chaos-11589927128?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
The most unappreciated factor in our policy chaos may have been a series of early comments by scientists who should have known better, conforming to the Xi Jinping victory pageant by suggesting that China had shown that a highly communicable upper respiratory virus could be extinguished at a plausible cost.
In dribs and drabs, the reality has been leaking out of China.
China is bearing an extravagant and perhaps deeply irrational cost to make it seem like it has.
In most of China, international travel is all but impossible-globe-trotters and migrants are required to quarantine up to 35 days.
An exception is Shanghai, a city of 24 million and China's vital financial capital.
This compromise with reality also seems guaranteed to compromise the Communist Party's rhetorical goal of ridding China of the virus.
China, with 63 million visitors, was No. 4 on the list of countries with the most travelers in 2018.
Even China's top government virologist now admits when addressing a foreign audience: "This is very likely to be an epidemic that coexists with humans for a long time, becomes seasonal, and is sustained within human bodies."
It might seem an unduly strong statement but the U.S. and China are in a contest now over which world power can emerge from this chaos with the most realistic policy toward the virus.
It won't meet anybody's idea of rational central planning, but it will allow us to move forward and it's not clear China has yet found a realistic way to do so.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-and-policy-chaos-11589927128?mod=hp_opin_pos_3
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