From Der Spiegel, February 4:
The new coronavirus in China has spread at an alarming rate, unsettling citizens and epidemiologists alike. It poses substantial challenges for our modern way of life – and threatens our globalized world where it is most vulnerable.
On the evening of Dec. 30, a young doctor in the Chinese city of Wuhan sent a short text message to a group of colleagues. "Seven cases of SARS have been confirmed at the seafood market in Huanan," he wrote. SARS, the viral disease that broke out in November 2002, claimed 774 lives.
"It was clear to me that we were dealing with a public health issue," the doctor said.
The name of the doctor and the hospital where he works have not been made public. But the story that he told the Beijing Youth Daily newspaper has been shared tens of thousands of times online in China. At 1:30 a.m. on Dec. 31, the municipal health commission summoned the doctor and questioned him several times throughout the day.
Where did he get his information, officials wanted to know? Did he realize he was breaking the law? Did he understand that spreading that kind of information was a punishable offense? "Understood," he wrote on a form, signing his statement with his fingerprint.
But the doctor never got punished. Instead, he got sick.
"On Jan. 10, around noon, I began to cough. The next day, my fever rose. That was when I knew I was in trouble," he said. On Jan. 16, he started having trouble breathing. On Jan. 24, he was transferred to the intensive care unit. From there, he typed out his story on his phone on Jan. 27. He couldn't speak and could only breath with the help of a respirator.
Extreme Measures
The coronavirus, the viral disease the doctor had warned about at the end of December and which he ultimately contracted himself, has spread from the Chinese city of Wuhan around the world. As of Tuesday, Feb. 4, there have been more than 20,630 confirmed cases in 24 countries, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). China has reported more than 420 deaths so far. That's more than during the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003, which claimed 349 lives in mainland China.
The epidemic is worrying scientists, politicians and entrepreneurs alike. Chinese markets reopened Monday after being closed since Jan. 23 for the Lunar New Year and stocks immediately plunged. The virus has also begun to change people's everyday lives, the way they do business and how they travel. The fear of new infections has made its way around the world. Sports events have been postponed. British Airways and Lufthansa were the first airlines to cancel all flights to China. Cathay Pacific stopped handing out pillows, blankets and magazines in its aircraft to prevent the virus from spreading. What's next?
China, the world's most populous country and its second-largest economy, is facing a "complicated and serious" crisis, according to a group of Chinese officials headed by Prime Minister Li Keqiang. The country exports more than $2.3 trillion worth of goods annually and is responsible for about one-third of global economic growth.
What if, now that the first airports have been closed, China also shutters its ports? This would disrupt countless supply chains around the world, both big and small. And what if, after the initial coverup and subsequent quarantine of cities with populations in the millions, the Chinese lose confidence in their government?....MUCH MORE
The epidemic has already shown just how vulnerable our interdependent 21st century economy really is. China boasts the world's largest manufacturing industry. Yet many of the assembly lines aren't running. The government extended the Lunar New Year holiday by a few days in an effort to combat the spread of the virus. Meanwhile, preschools, schools and universities remain closed indefinitely. This suggests that factories in China will also remain closed for the time being.
A Globalized Virus
Experts are divided on when the virus will reach its peak. China's best-known epidemiologist, Zhong Nanshan, has said he expects new infections to reach their high point in early February, whereas experts in Hong Kong and London say they think it will be closer to April or May. Manufacturers of everything from electronics to textiles are likely facing shutdowns of several weeks.
Tech giant Apple, which has a production facility in Wuhan, quickly began looking for alternate suppliers "to make up any expected production loss,” CEO Tim Cook said last week. The French carmaker PSA, which has several factories in Wuhan, is facing a similar situation.
China exports more than 80 percent of that which it produces -including industrial and consumer goods, raw materials and food – by sea. If the ports were closed, it would lead to a massive disruption of global trade comparable to a stop in oil deliveries from Saudi Arabia. To a certain extent, China has "swing capacity" in the manufacturing industry. An interruption in production could bring a large part of the global economy to a standstill, although this still seems a long way away.
Globalization has lifted millions of people in countries like China, Indonesia and Vietnam out of poverty. It has provided people in industrialized nations with cheap televisions and laptops not to mention clothing and textiles, yet at the same time, it makes the world more vulnerable to all sorts of disruption, from terrorist attacks to natural disasters – and epidemics.
A panel of experts from the World Bank and the WHO wrote of a "world at risk" when they examined the economic consequences of a serious global health emergency last year. A pandemic like the Spanish flu, which killed as many as 50 million people between 1918 and 1920, would depress global economic output today by around $3 trillion (2.7 trillion euros), the experts calculated. Even a comparatively mild epidemic could cause damages adding up to more than 2 percent of GDP. "The world is not prepared for a fast-moving, virulent respiratory pathogen pandemic," the report states....
