Are Americans All-In for a Long Coronavirus War?
by Patrick J. Buchanan
Buchanan.org
March 19, 2020
Can mayors and governors of beach towns along the East Coast from Maine to Miami, and the Gulf Coast from Florida to Texas, keep tens of millions from gathering on beaches this summer?
“It’s a war,” says President Donald Trump of his efforts to contain the coronavirus pandemic, and likening his role to that of “wartime president.”
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo welcomed the president’s claim to his commander in chief role in the crisis and his resolve: “The president and I agreed yesterday… we’re fighting the same war — and this is a war.”
Some measures already taken do call to mind actions in wartime.
Commercial airline flights have been reduced or canceled. Schools have been closed. Universities have shut their doors.
Where Ford, Chrysler, GM and other great auto companies shifted production to jeeps, tanks and bombers in 1942, U.S. auto factories have today been shut down to prevent the spread of the virus.
Bars and restaurants are being closed.
This month, millions of Americans will be added to unemployment rolls, and millions of senior citizens and elderly have already followed government directives to “self-isolate” or “shelter in place.”
There is talk of quarantines lasting not days or weeks, as Americans knew in the days of measles, mumps, chickenpox, scarlet fever and polio, but months.
While a new social solidarity and spirit of self-sacrifice seem to be manifesting themselves in this pandemic, can it endure?
Is the country prepared for months, or years, of social isolation, if that is what is required to win this war?
It is a question that needs to be addressed.
Consider. The Chinese government, whose word is admittedly suspect, claims to have achieved a deceleration in the daily number of new coronavirus infections. The South Koreans say they, too, have broken and reversed the momentum of the spread of the virus.
On March 3, the number of new cases of the coronavirus reported across South Korea was 852. On St. Patrick’s Day, March 17, exactly two weeks later, the count was 85 new cases, a plunge of 90%.
South Korea appears to have “flattened the curve.”
We Americans, however, are far from that.
The Rest…HERE
