Category Archives: Germ Warfare

ZZZWAP! Take that COVID-19.

Dr. Marvel of Medicine, Amy Acton, is front and center in the fight against the coronavirus in Ohio.

Her cape, a white lab coat, represents her mission to conquer the mayhem of planet pandemic. Committed. Calm. Composed.

I have the honor of wearing this white coat, which I know has become a little bit iconic. But it became very clear to me that Im wearing a symbol of all my friends and colleagues and your family members who are out on the front lines, Acton stated at a recent press conference in Columbus, Ohio. Im thinking about you a lot more than I can express because Ive spent many years on the front lines and sometimes feel frustrated that I cant just come in there and work alongside of you in doing this bigger picture planning. But this white coat represents all of you.

Even with my back against the wall I dont give up! This quote by Captain Marvel (female superhero) sounds a lot like what Dr. Acton would assert.

Marvels superhero action sci-fi, set in the mid-1990s, follows the story of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, as she turns into a galaxy hero and joins Starforce, an elite Kree military team, before returning home with new questions about her past and identity when the Earth is caught in the center of an intergalactic conflict between two alien races.

Dr. Marvel of Medicine, an avenger to the virus villain, uses her knowledge, words and experience to educate Ohioans.

Amy Acton, MD, was appointed director of health for the Ohio Department of Health by Governor Mike DeWine in February 2019the first woman to hold the position of Director of Ohios Public Health Department. Go Amy! A licensed physician in preventive medicine with a masters degree in public health, Dr. Acton has more than 30 years of experience in medical practice, government and community service, healthcare policy and advocacy, academic and nonprofit administration, consulting, teaching and data analysis.

Posts on Twitter, Reddit and Instagram speak to her leadership. The Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club Facebook group has mucho members. Shes a modern fan-fave.

Kudos to Dr. Marvel of Medicine and Governor Mighty Mike the dynamic duo fighting germ warfare and keeping Ohioans safe.

Fear is not a choice. What you do with it is. Captain Marvel

Melissa Martin, Ph.D. is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She lives in Southern Ohio. Contact her at melissamcolumnist@gmail.com.

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Dr. Marvel of medicine comes to the rescue - The Tribune - Ironton Tribune

China is going to face "a day of reckoning" for the global coronavirus pandemic, not only killed Americans but damaging the economy, according to economist Stephen Mooreon Newsmax TV.

"It's a great question and it's being debated in Washington right now,"Mooretold "Saturday Report" about holding China financially responsible for America's health crisis and correspondingeconomic impact.

"Quite possibly, if we can actually find evidence that they acted in a devious and deception manner and it certainly looks to me like they have, but I am not an expert on that but if that is the case, then they owe the United States and the rest of the world reparations payments for this, essentially equivalent, a war that they started and this kind of germ warfare they spread throughout the world."

While it might be difficult for China to pay up for its negliance in containing the COVID-19 outbreak, the U.S. does have bonds held by China it can hold up in lieu of payment, Moore added to host Grant Stinchfield.

"There's going to be a big, big push in Washington when this is all said and done for the Chinese to have aday of reckoning," Moore added. "And I wouldn't be surprised if the federal government said, 'hey, you know what, that trillion dollars of bonds that you hold, maybe we're not going pay all those back. And we're going to use that money to get healthy the people that you helped get sick."

Even political oppositions are lining up against stimulus and relief funding right now, as Republicans and Democrats are digging in on what the next phases of coronavirus impact stimulus and relief should go to.

"What you see is, at best, the Democrats in Congress are saying, 'O.K., we'll go along with what you want, but we have this request, and this special interest giveaway, and this favor factory, and this other provision, and we want to nationalize our elections to boot,'" National Review's John Fund lamented.

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Stephen Moore to Newsmax TV: China Faces 'Day of Reckoning' - Newsmax

Though I have spent all of my adult life working in various areas related to foreign policy and consider myself a bona fide national security nerd, my secret dream is to have a career as a film critic. What possible better job could there be than to get paid to watch movies and tell people what you think about them? And so, since the New York Times and Washington Post arent calling about vacancies in their entertainment sections, I thought Id take a look at some films about pandemics and see how art does or doesnt imitate life.

First, a word about methodology. I consulted various lists online for recommended pandemic-related movies. I also crowd-sourced my Facebook friends for recommendations. The universe, depending on how you define pandemic-related, is rather large, so I had to narrow the field a bit. I looked for films that dealt with some kind of disease that hits a society recognizable as our own because what I am most interested in is how characters created by Hollywood would cope with that crisis, and how that might differ for good or ill with our own response. I eliminated a lot of post-apocalyptic films because while they pose a lot of interesting moral dilemmas and my family and I love gaming out what we would do in those situations, were not there yet. I also eliminated the entire zombie genre. I should note that World War Z, based on the book by Max Brooks, has a lot of insights and in fact Brooks has become quite an expert on pandemics, even lecturing at West Point. His interview on NPR with Terry Gross is well worth your time. But zombies, while often having their origins in some kind of virus, pose a different set of challenges from ones the CDC might deal with. Finally, a spoiler alert. I recommend watching the movies before you read this and making your own observations. Then compare yours with mine. Let me know if you think Hollywood can or cant teach us something about the predicament were in.

So without further adieu, going in chronological order, roll em (see Ive got the film critic lingo down. Are you listening NYT?).

THE ANDROMEDA STRAIN, 1971

This classic of the genre is based on the novel by Michael Crichton. In this story, a satellite lands on earth carrying a deadly pathogen that wipes out a small town in New Mexico. Only two people, the town drunk and an infant, miraculously survive. The film is introduced as a sort of pseudo-documentary of a heretofore top secret story of how the government beat the bug. The bulk of the film centers on a team of scientists working in a high-tech government lab created for just this purpose to figure out a way to beat the germ. While the military was in charge during the initial stages, scientists have now been pulled from civilian life to work the problem. As with every film I see with any military element, I had to suspend some of my disbelief regarding the uniform and haircut errors.

The key to defeating the virus, as it turns out, is finding what the drunk and the baby have in common that led to their survival. Along the way, the scientists discover that the pathogen may not have been an inadvertent passenger on the satellite but an effort by the military to retrieve potential biological weapons from space.

Two elements of the film seem relevant to todays situation. One is that the government in the movie, in contrast to our own, is pretty well prepared when the pathogen arrives. The key scientists in the civilian world have already been identified and are quickly retrieved by the military. The facility the scientists work in has been specifically designed for this eventuality. Much of the film shows the scientists going through extensive decontamination procedures just to get in the place to work. Some background is provided to show that building the facility was not a cheap endeavor, and again, very different from our current experience, there are no resource shortages. The other element which seems to be prescient is the tension between what the scientists recommend and what the politicians order be done. The president never appears on screen but the two forces are embodied in his scientific advisor and his chief of staff, and the tension between them. While the chief of staff openly states his distrust of the scientists and their sometimes contradictory advice, the president is ultimately persuaded to follow their recommended course. The film ends with the head scientist testifying before Congress and leaving us with the question, what do we do next time?

The biggest takeaway I found was preparation. When scientists and doctors were well prepared, things went better. Not just in terms of having sufficient resources and supplies but also knowing how to approach the problem and what questions to ask.

OUTBREAK, 1995

This film features an all-star cast including Dustin Hoffman, Morgan Freeman, Donald Sutherland, Cuba Gooding Jr., and Rene Russo. The story is very loosely based on the book The Hot Zone by Richard Preston, which tells the true story of a case of an Ebola virus outbreak at an animal lab in Reston, Virginia. In 2019, a non-fiction docudrama that closely adheres to the book aired on the National Geographic channel. But Outbreak is far more fiction than fact and, other than being about an Ebola-like virus and having a monkey play a major role, differs significantly from the book. Considering what really happened in Reston, Im not sure the film is scarier than actual events.

The film tells the story of a type of hemorrhagic fever, similar to Ebola, which breaks out in a small California town. Note that not all films show us to be lucky with just small towns being hit. In this film, the military is very much in charge from the outset. Dustin Hoffman plays a doctor and colonel working for the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRID) tasked with battling the outbreak and racing for a cure. His ex-wife, played by Russo, who becomes infected, is also a doctor who works at the CDC but she only recently left USAMRID and her marriage to Hoffman. The haircut and uniform errors are less evident in this film, though Gooding plays an Army major scientist who is somehow also an excellent combat helicopter pilot.

In this film, the central tension isnt so much between scientists and politicians but between scientists and the military. Sutherland plays the senior military officer in charge and like in The Andromeda Strain, this outbreak is not unrelated to a biological warfare effort that he, and Freeman, were intimately involved in. While Hoffman crisscrosses California, in a stolen Army helicopter piloted by Gooding, in search of the monkey host with antibodies for the cure, Sutherland just wants to blow the town up for the greater good. The tension plays out with Freeman as the officer subordinate to Sutherland but senior to Hoffman. Torn between the two perspectives, Freeman must decide which direction to go. After much back and forth, Freeman ultimately backs Hoffman. The film serves to highlight a question that we are asking ourselves today: Which is worse, the disease or the methods we employ to control it? Like in The Andromeda Strain, the government personnel are well prepared and supremely competent. An element that shows up in this film is the reaction of the public to the sometimes heavy-handed efforts by the military to control the outbreak. While we might be upset with those who refuse to social distance today, the townspeople in this film riot and even attack the military and police.

CONTAGION, 2011

Like Outbreak, this film features some pretty big names. Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Winslet, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Elliot Gould, and Jude Law. This film postulates a worldwide pandemic similar to the flu that has a devastating mortality rate. In a case of life possibly imitating art, we eventually learn that the bug originated with bats, spreading to pigs and then jumping to humans in the so-called Wet Markets of China. Paltrow plays patient zero in the US after coming back from a business trip in Asia. Damon plays an ordinary guy married to Paltrow who watches her die along with one of his children. Fishburne and Winslet work for the CDC and seek to track the virus and work on a cure. Gould plays an independent scientist who finds a way to grow the virus in order to develop a vaccine though in violation of CDC rules, perhaps foreshadowing questions about whether or not our own FDA rules have hindered vaccine or test development. We hear and learn technical terms from Winslet and Fishburne, including Winslets detailed explanation of how the R naught number is a measure of how infectious a disease is, and Fishburnes recommendation of social distancing. A quarantine of Chicago also occurs, though Fishburne uses his inside knowledge to get a loved one out before the gates close.

Jude Laws character introduces a new element not seen in the other films, but one that we see today: the snake oil salesman with a miracle cure. Law plays a blogger/journalist who cuts a secret deal with a hedge fund and hawks a so-called cure that people panic buy. Today, we see attorneys general sending cease and desist orders to those selling cures for Coronavirus on TV. Similar to both The Andromeda Strain and Outbreak, the government scientists are supremely competent and heroic. Winslet and another female CDC scientist risk their lives to find a vaccine. Also similar to Outbreak, when order begins to break down we see looting and rioting and some of the uglier sides of human behavior. Damon has to chase away his daughters boyfriend with a shotgun to avoid exposure.

THE FLU, 2013

This really well done South Korean film tells a similar story to Outbreak, except in this case a flu-like virus hits a suburb of Seoul with a population of half a million people. Again, some blame is leveled at China as the disease is brought by illegals smuggled into the city. Like the monkey in Outbreak, one of the illegals is a carrier with antibodies who must be found to develop a cure. Control measures get progressively harsher as the military seals off the city and then establishes camps to quarantine the sick. Mass graves are dug and the populace begins to panic, which escalates into defiance of the military-enforced quarantine. The heroes of the story are a South Korean doctor and an emergency worker who has a crush on her, who through a series of coincidences, end up having to find and save the doctors daughter, who also has the antibodies needed to save the city.This film does a great job of illustrating the tension between measures to control the disease and the economic damage caused to the city. When the scientists first recommend the quarantine, the politicians balk and one even expresses concern over what it will do to his re-election prospects. Similar to Outbreak, a decision must be made to destroy the city or continue to find the cure. While the film is Korean, the ultimate confrontation comes between the president of Korea trying to save his people and an undefined American civilian official standing in for the top US General in South Korea, who can sometimes exercise control of South Korean forces, and who possesses the authority to overrule the president and order the bombing of the city. Ultimately the Korean president wins out and the American official backs down. I have to admit I was a bit frustrated by this element of the story. Though the American military in wartime might exercise command over South Korean forces, the whole notion of an American civilian overruling the Korean president in a situation like this I found a bit unrealistic. But then again, this wasnt a documentary and it did make for added drama. In Outbreak and this film, and in real life, the virus originated in China, and this one takes a stab at the Americans as well. Nationalism is an ever present reality on screen and in our world.

One other interesting element was the notion of disinformation. The Korean government shuts down the cell phone network fairly early to avoid the spreading of rumors and false information, which make various appearances in the film. This is no small feat in South Korea since the film accurately depicts what I witnessed while stationed there in 2002: everyone over the age of three has a cell phone.

VIRUS, 2019

Though I went in chronological order, ending with this film is appropriate. Virus is a dramatization of a real-life outbreak of Nipah virus in Kerala state, India, in 2018. It is not too strong to say that this film should be mandatory viewing for any personnel involved in dealing with any sort of public health crisis. In this film, nearly everybody does everything right, and it is non-fiction. Despite relatively poor resources and hospital conditions, the medical personnel quickly recognize that they have a serious problem and contact the appropriate authorities for help so that they can employ effective control measures. A medical detective is sent out to track down contacts and find the source. CCTV footage and cell phone records are examined to figure out who exactly had contact with whom and who might have been exposed. When more resources are needed, the private sector jumps in to provide additional personal protective gear. When drivers tasked with transporting bodies get nervous, medical personnel calmly explain the risk to them and how vital their work is.

The most powerful performance in the film is the actress Asha Kelunni Nair, who plays the health ministerC. K. Prameela. Prameela was based on Minister K. K. Shailaja Teacher, the minister for health who was the senior official in charge of the effort in real life. What is most telling is that she spends most of the movie in silence, sitting in a series of meetings calmly listening to what the scientists and doctors are telling her and only occasionally asking highly pertinent questions. In one instance, the townspeople are complaining that they want to be able to bury their dead rather than cremate them in accordance with the religious tenants of this predominantly Muslim conservative and deeply religious society in this part of India. Some local officials want to let them but Nair, known by her stage name Revathi, asks the scientists if this can be done safely. When one relays how deep burials were safe in another country fighting Nipah and gave the data to prove it, she does let the burials, under strict supervision, go forward.

In every instance when officials are confronted with various challenges, they take a calm, deliberate, and data-driven approach to the problem. In one case, the police want to move a crowd that is blocking a vehicle carrying contaminated bodies, but the officials stop the police from using force. In another instance, some defense ministry personnel and media figures suggest that the virus might be a biological warfare attack. Rather than simply dismissing these conspiracy theories, the doctors, scientists, and investigators search for data and evidence and prove the natural origins of the virus, again in a bat.The film is a dramatization and some poetic license may have been taken with the course of events depicted. Given what we are witnessing today, some might find it hard to believe that in this instance so many people consistently made such good decisions. But the proof is in the pudding. This Nipah outbreak lasted barely a month and led to only 16 deaths.

SO WHAT DID WE LEARN?

Films are reflections of reality, not reality itself, so we cannot see them necessarily as indicative of what to do and not do when confronted with a pandemic. I do think Virus is very instructive, and if it were up to me Id airlift Keralas officials to the US and put them in charge tomorrow. But I still think using the more fictional stories as a mirror can be useful. The biggest takeaway I found was preparation. When scientists and doctors were well prepared, things went better. Not just in terms of having sufficient resources and supplies but also knowing how to approach the problem and what questions to ask. Eisenhowers adage Peace-time plans are of no particular value, but peace-time planning is indispensable, seems true for pandemics.

The other key lesson for me was the similarity between decisions in war and decisions in a pandemic. In most areas of public policy, whether you have chosen the best policy is often not readily apparent. It can take years to see if some policy or program achieved the desired effect. But in war and pandemics, the feedback loop timeline is very short and the consequences of bad choices will be paid for in blood. Leaders will likely always make some bad choices, but they should quickly recognize when they have and pivot as soon as possible. Waiting is costly. And along those lines, leaders need to listen to the experts and know their own limitations. The experts are the ones who can interpret the data and who are familiar with what happened in the past. They wont always be right, but they are in touch with those feedback loops and know how to realize quickly when they are wrong. In the end, both on screen and probably in the world we live in, it appears that science and data-driven decisions provide the most likely path to success.

Rob Levinson is a retired Lt. Col in the US Air Force with over 20 years of service as an intelligence officer. He is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and served in Latin America, the Middle East and South Korea as an intelligence officer, foreign area officer, commander and politico-military affairs officer.

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I Watched 5 Pandemic Movies so You Don't Have To - Inkstick

By Prakash Chandra

In recorded history, theres never been a worse time to catch a cold, as Covid-19 devastates populations and economies. Efforts to arrest the outbreak are hamstrung by the absence of definitive diagnostic tools as clinical symptoms like high fever, aches, and dry cough could also indicate other illnesses.

Pandemics usually occur every 20-30 years, the time it takes for a flu strain to change its genetic makeup so dramatically that people -- with little immunity built up from earlier bouts of flu -- would be most vulnerable. After the 1968 Hong Kong flu epidemic and the H5N1 bird flu in 1997, the last major outbreak was the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (Sars) -- whose causative germ shares more than 80% of its genome with Covid-19 -- in 2003.

So Covid-19 ties in with this strange timeline. That scientists managed to shut out the coronaviruses behind Sars and the 2012 Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (Mers) gives hope, although Covid-19 is much more infectious than either.

So, could this lethal microbe be a bioweapon? Some contend it is an experimental germ that accidently escaped from a Chinese lab. The Chinese, in any case, owe a big apology to the world for having kept a dark secret like Covid-19 for too long, making it too late for other nations to batten down their hatches. Others argue it is the handiwork of the worlds most powerful military, which used the planets most populated country as proving grounds for a new bioweapon.

Military experts, however, dismiss these concerns as conspiracy theories or propaganda in the absence of incontrovertible evidence. But one thing is certain: this is a grim reminder of the threat of weaponised pathogens and the pressing need to revise the 1975 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC).

BWC was written to outlaw biological weapons and prohibited the production or stockpiling of biological agents that have no justification for prophylactic, protective or other peaceful purposes. Ironically, militaries do not consider lab-created pandemic pathogens as good bioweapons, as their high transmissibility would also cripple the attackers.

BWC has failed the world on two counts. One is the absence of a monitoring mechanism and its dependence on signatory states having their own legal biosecurity safeguards. Voluntary adherence never works for international agreements, and BWC is no exception.

BWCs other omission is its silence on regulating academic research on bio-agents. The line dividing academic research (aimed at public health) and the development of bioweapons is thin. And even if most of such research is not aimed at building offensive bioweapons, it still leaves the field open for germ warfare science to develop dual use capabilities.

Many believe the odds of lab-created pathogens being accidentally released triggering a pandemic are actually higher than that of a natural pandemic. The double jeopardy here is that researchers who produce potentially pandemic pathogens seldom give the bioweaponry risk of their work top priority, and BWC cannot monitor the dual-use nature of such data to assess their public health benefits.

No wonder countries like the US, China and Russia have exploited this loophole to run their bioweapons programmes, often in the guise of civilian biotech research. There have been at least 15 reported instances in the last 40 years when germ warfare was actually used, and ten accidental releases of pathogens from biosafety level four (BSL)4 labs the highest level of biosecurity controls in the last 30 years.

In that sense, Covid 19 is the canary in the coal mine, warning humanity against trying to harness the destructive power of pathogens whose lethal nature is simply the consequence of their evolution. It is only when we mess with their natural design to fashion weapons that horrors visit the world.

Having let the germ war genie out of the bottle, none of the big powers can now disown responsibility. The least they can do is sit together and revise BWC, or write a new disarmament treaty with a global mechanism for verifying and ensuring strict compliance, including sanctions against violators.

Exemplifying the current chaos, the US Justice Department, last month, acknowledged Covid-19s potential for being weaponised and warned of action against anyone attempting it. There is even a private $20 trillion lawsuit in the US against China for allegedly releasing Covid-19 as part of a bioweapons project. Undoubtedly, a strong BWC is the need of the hour.

With a BWC review scheduled for next year, India has excellent credentials for steering the discussions on framing a new convention. Having never pursued an active bioweapons programme, Indias biodefence effort, which began in the early-1970s, is transparent and supported by its remarkable biotech infrastructure.

The time has come for a new world order that eschews bioweapons, where countries develop protective equipment, vaccines and pharmaceuticals all within the legal landscape of a robust global treaty that effectively addresses biosecurity concerns.

DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.

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Canary in the Bioweapon Coal Mine: The lessons of Covid 19 pandemic - Economic Times

ZZZWAP! Take that COVID-19. Dr. Marvel of Medicine, Amy Acton, is front and center in the fight against the coronavirus in Ohio. Her cape, a white lab coat, represents her mission to conquer the mayhem of planet pandemic. Committed. Calm. Composed.

"I have the honor of wearing this white coat, which I know has become a little bit iconic. But it became very clear to me that I'm wearing a symbol of all my friends and colleagues and your family members who are out on the front lines," Acton said at a recent press conference in Columbus, Ohio. "I'm thinking about you a lot more than I can express because I've spent many years on the front lines and sometimes feel frustrated that I can't just come in there and work alongside of you in doing this bigger picture planning. But this white coat represents all of you.

Even with my back against the wall I dont give up! This quote by Captain Marvel (female superhero) sounds a lot like what Dr. Acton would assert.

Marvels superhero action sci-fi, set in the mid-1990s, follows the story of Carol Danvers (Brie Larson), a former U.S. Air Force fighter pilot, as she turns into a galaxy hero and joins Starforce, an elite Kree military team, before returning home with new questions about her past and identity when the Earth is caught in the center of an intergalactic conflict between two alien races.

Dr. Marvel of Medicine, an avenger to the virus villain, uses her knowledge, words, and experience to educate Ohioans. THWAPP! Take that COVID-19.

Amy Acton, M.D., MPH was appointed director of health for the Ohio Department of Health by Governor Mike DeWine in February 2019 the first woman to hold the position of Director of Ohio's Public Health Department. Go Amy! A licensed physician in preventive medicine with a Masters Degree in Public Health, Dr. Acton has more than 30 years of experience in medical practice, government and community service, healthcare policy and advocacy, academic and nonprofit administration, consulting, teaching, and data analysis.

Posts on Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram speak to her leadership. The Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club Facebook group has mucho members. Shes a modern fan-fave.

Kudos to Dr. Marvel of Medicine and Governor Mighty Mike the dynamic duo fighting germ warfare and keeping Ohioans safe.

Fear is not a choice. What you do with it is. Captain Marvel

Melissa Martin, Ph.D., is an author, columnist, educator, and therapist. She lives in Southern Ohio. Contact her at melissamcolumnist@gmail.com

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Dr. Marvel of Medicine to the rescue - Pike County News Watchman

As a classical scholar, our prime minister will be all too aware of some uncanny parallels between the onset of coronavirus and the plague that beset Athens in 430BC.

The immortal historian Thucydides wrote: At the beginning the doctors were quite incapable of treating the disease because of their ignorance of the right methods In fact, mortality among the doctors was the highest of all since they came more frequently in contact with the sick.

Again: Among the symptoms were sneezing and hoarseness of voice, and before long the pain settled on the chest and was accompanied by coughing.

Sound familiar? The plague struck just after the Athenians leader, Pericles, delivered his great funeral oration over the dead from the war against Sparta. Alas, Pericles himself died of the plague, and not long after Athenss glory was in decline.

Most historians would no doubt say that Britains glory days began their decline after the second world war. But one of the lessons from that war was that, well before it ended, the coalition government under Conservative prime minister Winston Churchill and Labour deputy prime minister Clement Attlee was planning for the aftermath.

One of the main things on Attlees mind was that the poor social conditions of the interwar years should not be experienced again. Central to postwar planning was the formation of the NHS under the first Attlee administration of 1945-50, which was set up, amid fierce resistance from the medical profession, by Aneurin Bevan in 1948.

There was no NHS in ancient Athens, and there is no NHS in the United States. To put it another way: we have a health service, they have a health sector. That is an important reason why, for all the well-publicised mishandling of this crisis in the UK, the US, still the mightiest economy in the world, seems to be in for an even bigger shock from the virus than we are experiencing.

At this point as one who was born a year before the outbreak of the 1939-45 war I hope readers will forgive me if I point to an important difference in the dangers to the general public between then and now. Thus I confess that my initial inclination when asked what I felt personally about the virus as opposed to thoughts about the disturbing political and economic implications was to say something like: This is nothing like watching flying bombs overhead, listening as their engines switched off, and hoping they didnt land on you. In fact one did land on the church at the end of our road and shattered our windows while we were safe in the Anderson shelter in the garden.

The end of capitalism? I doubt it. The Tories suddenly becoming fully paid-up Keynesians? For how long, I wonder

The awful thing about this plague is that it is more like the Athenian one 2,500 years ago or the Spanish flu of 1918. It doesnt fly in or explode, it just hits people unawares that is to say, we are aware of the danger, but dont know if or when it will hit. A timely reminder of the horrors of germ warfare.

In common with most of the population, I feel as if I am under house arrest. But when I hear and read so many comments about draconian conditions, my classical background comes back to me. There is a breed of historians who say that the common understanding of the epithet draconian is a misrepresentation, and that Draco wasnt that bad: he merely codified existing civic practices.

On the other hand, lets face it: in ancient Athens, Draco prescribed the death penalty for petty theft even of cabbages, if you please. According to Plutarch, this produced the memorable comment that his laws were written not in ink but in blood.

So frankly, in the circumstances, I do not regard being asked to take precautions about the threat to my own and other peoples health indeed, lives as draconian.

But back to the economy. The unemployment and bankruptcy news is horrendous, and likely to get worse before it gets better.

There will be plenty of time in the coming months to examine the implications. But at this stage I should just issue a health warning (sorry) against taking some of the instant conclusions too seriously. The end of capitalism? I doubt it. The Conservative and Brexit party suddenly repenting of 10 years of austerity and becoming fully paid-up Keynesians? For how long, I wonder.

Finally, why are we in this mess? Could it possibly be anything to do with the fact that during 10 years of austerity, public spending on health was budgeted to rise by 1% a year at most (in real terms that is, after inflation) whereas all the professionals knew that it needed to rise by 4% a year merely to cope with the pressures of an ageing population and, especially, the cost of technological advance?

And could it also possibly be because this governments crazed obsession with Brexit means that it shut itself out of the joint ordering of vital medical supplies with the 27 members of the European Union? I merely ask.

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Plagues and wars alter economic policies: but not for ever - The Guardian

Key point:Underwater carriers would have been impractical had they ever come to fruition. Like Nazi Germany's many wonder weapons, a lot of these plans were too little, too late.

As soon as Colonel James Doolittles B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular.

It was not until early 1945 that the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) was ready to strike America even further than it already had on December 7, 1941. After considering, then ruling out San Francisco, San Diego, New York City, and Washington, D.C. as targets, the IJN chiefs settled on Americas vital Panama Canal. The plan to disable the canalthrough which the United States was funneling military resources from the Atlantic to the Pacific without the long voyage around the southern tip of South Americahad been the brainchild of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of Japans attack on Pearl Harbor.

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The plans called for an aerial bombing by specially designed attack planes launched from surfaced submarines. Those submarines, the Sensuika, or I-400 Series, would be the largest submarines the world would see for decades to come. Loosely translated as Secret Attack Submarine, Sensuikan was shortened to Sen Toku.

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In mid-1942, Yamamoto foresaw two things: how susceptible Japan would become to American aerial bombing and how Japan could reciprocate against American soil. From that he envisioned 18 huge submarinesbasically underwater aircraft carriersthat could ferry attack bombers to their targets. Although Yamamotos plan envisioned two planes per submarine to attack Americas shoreline cities, in actuality each I-400 was designed to ferry three Aichi M6A Seiran Mountain Haze planes.

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Construction on the Sen Toku behemoths began on April 25, 1943, one week after Yamamoto was shot down and killed by American P-38s over Bougainville in the Solomons. But with Yamamotos death and the fortunes of war turning against Japan, there was nobody to champion Yamamotos dream.

Delays plagued the project from the beginning. The I-400 prototype, built at Hiroshima Bays Kure Navy Yard, was not commissioned until December 30, 1944, while both the I-401 and I-402 were laid down shortly thereafter at the Sasebo Navy Yard Docks at Nagasaki. Further, the naval construction facilities at Kure and Sasebo were often targeted by American planes but the damage was insignificant; the American bomber pilots had no knowledge of the giant submarines being built beneath them.

On January 8, 1945, the I-401 was commissioned and, six months later, on July 24, 1945, came the I-402. Once completed and out to sea, these vessels would become Submarine Division One.

Of the planned 18 submarines, however, only three would be completed: the I-400, I-401, and I-402; numbers I-404 and I-405 were still under construction when the war ended in August 1945. The remaining proposed fleet of the I-Series403 and 406-417was scrapped before construction could begin. In their place came two new submarinesthe I-13 and I-14that were smaller but still held the same design aspirations.

The Sen Toku were beyond comprehension of any navy but that of Japan; they were 60 percent larger than any submarine America would put forth until the nuclear submarine age. The most important part of the I-400s were the planes they sequestered within their watertight forward hangars. Japan had long mastered the art of flying piggy-backed scouting planes off of their surfaced subs.

The sea beast I-400 series measured 400 feet long with a beam of 39 feet and a draft of 23 feet. It was a double-hull configuration that the Soviets would replicate 30 years later. It operated on four diesel engines of 7,700 horsepower with two electric motors as back up. The subs surface tonnage was 5,223 tons; when submerged, it weighed 6,560 tons.

Prior to their deployment, the I-400s had retractable snorkels fitted. When they were submerged for extensive periods, fresh air could be taken in while poisonous diesel exhaust fumes would be expelled. The sea-roaming range was a staggering 37,500 miles without refueling. Their fastest surface speed just topped 18 knots; submerged, the speed was reduced to 6.5 knots. The deepest they could safely dive was 330 feet.

The crew, which numbered from 140 to 220 sailors per sub, had the extravagant luxury of a walk-in freezer for storing their on-board rations. Still, potable water was limited to mealtime servings only, and latrine service was less accommodating, with just one head per boat available.

The I-400s were well armed. From their eight forward torpedoes tubes, 20 Type-95 torpedoes could be fired. On deck, three triple-barrel 25mm guns and one 25mm single-barrel gun were mounted. An even heavier guna 140mm/5.5-incherwas also part of the armament.

Another unique application was a slide. Once ordered to clear the deck for a dive, sailors rushed the hatch of the conning tower. Jumping inside, they slid down a funnel onto a cushioned landing spot, thus cutting the time it took to clear the deck by more than half that of regular subs.

In appearance there was an oddity in the I-400s structure. From the bows view, the conning tower jutted off-center to the right. This was done to facilitate the 115-foot-long, 12-foot-wide, watertight aircraft hangar that housed the three attack floatplanes specially built by Aichi Aircraft Company of Nagoya just for the I-400 Series subs. Adjoining the hangar was an 80-foot-long pneumatic catapult.

In 1942 the Aichi company was put to work designing these floatplanes that became known as the M6A1 Seiran Mountain Haze. Each plane required a crew of twoa pilot and a gunner. The gunner faced rearward in the back seat and manned a 12.7mm Type-2 machine gun.

To save room in the subs hangars, the planes wings and tail had to be engineered to fold in along the fuselage. Instead of wheels, the Seirans came with two detachable floats. The bomb load came in varied combinationstwo 551-pound bombs, one 1,764-pound bomb, or one 1,874-pound bomb. Once in flight, the Seiran could extend over 642 nautical miles/739 standard miles.

To expedite launch preparation, portions of the planes exteriors were coated with fluorescent paint, thus allowing the four-man teams readying the planes for flight to work in a minimum amount of light. Once the subs surfaced, a four-man deck crew could launch all three planes within 45 minutes. (After numerous delays, by July 1945, only 28 Seirans had come off the production line16 short of the intended goal.)

The sole reason for the planes existence: to attack mainland America. All that was needed now was a target. Various targets were considered: West Coast cities and even Washington, D.C., were discussed. The idea of attacking the Panama Canal was also considered.

Before attacks on any of those targets became operational, however, Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa set forth the I-400s first mission. For its short existence, it was known as Operation PX, based on the achievements of Special Unit 731.

Special Unit 731 was a large, permanent-structure complex established in Harbin, Manchuria, that was opened as soon as Japan gained control on the Asian mainland. The facility was disguised as a water-treatment plant, but its real purpose was to research the causes and effects of germ/biological warfare. Their test subjects were thousands of civilian and military prisoners of war. (See the sidebar.)

By the early months of 1945, Japan was hell-bent on bringing some form of warfare upon Americas citizenry. Ozawas plan was to have the four subs of Sub Division OneI-400, I-401, I-13, and I-14sail for Americas West Coast. Once in position they would launch their combined total of 10 Seirans with ceramic canister bombs filled with flea-bearing rodents infected with cholera, typhus, plague, and other pathogens designed to cause widespread illness in the United States. Previous attempts to launch such biological-warfare attacks on China had already been tried and found to be successful. The proposed target was San Diego, California.

Planning for the Panama Canal attack went forward. The birth of that plan came from two individuals with completely contradicting existences. One was a senior Japanese citizen who had once worked on the canal; he freely furnished to Japanese authorities hundreds of pages of personal notes, drafts, blueprints, and so on, that were in his possession.

The second source was less willing. He was an American soldier detained at the infamous Ofuna prisoner-of-war camp near Yokohamaa site that became well known for its excessively brutal, torturous treatment of inmates. This inmate had been stationed at the Panama Canal at the wars outbreak. With that known to his captors, he was tortured and grilled for all he knew of the canals defensive positions. He informed his interrogators that as the war progressed and Japan lost more and more ground, the attentiveness of those guarding the canal had dwindled by the time he left there.

It was easy, then, for the planners to move forward at that point. The ultimate Panama Canal target was its Gatun Locks.

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Genius or Insane? How Imperial Japan Wanted to Build Underwater Aircraft Carriers - The National Interest

Mea culpa. In "Coronavirus Lays Low the Military" (Antiwar.com, Apr. 2), I wrote that "its taken the military several weeks to realize whats going on" with Covid-19, and that "judging from the mixed messages sent by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, it still hasnt figured it all out."

This was way too kind since it implies that Esper was honestly wrestling with the problem when, as is now clear, hes not honestly wrestling with anything at all. Along with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser Robert C. OBrien, rather, hes part of a spooky cabal that is in full-scale denial about Covid-19 and, whats worse, sees it as an opportunity to take out longtime foes. In recent weeks, these mini-Dr. Strangeloves have:

In the 1340s, Mongols used catapults to hurl diseased cadavers into the besieged Crimean city of Caffa, now known as Feodosia, in order to spread bubonic plague. Today, the US blocks money for ventilators and prevents the import of lifesaving pharmaceuticals in order to spread Covid-19.

Strangelovian as all this is, we now have the curious example of an attack dog in human form named Thomas Modly, who has just gotten the ax for calling an aircraft-carrier skipper "stupid" and "nave" for trying to safeguard the health of his crew. A former Pentagon business consultant who was named acting Navy secretary last November, Modley is the best example in years of why the scariest people among us are not the toughest but the most cowardly. A relentless self-promoter, he was reportedly terrified of suffering the same fate as his predecessor, Richard V. Spencer, who wound up on the sidewalk after daring to oppose Trumps decision to let accused Navy SEAL murderer Eddie Gallagher off with a slap on the wrist. So when it came to a skipper who didnt mind sticking his neck out in behalf of his crew, Modly figured that the only way to deal with him was to go after him the way Trump would, only worse.

So he pilloried Brett Crozier, captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, as "too naive or too stupid to be the commanding officer of a ship like this" because he didnt realize that a four-page memo he wrote calling for quarantining the crew to combat a corona outbreak would likely be leaked. He called him disloyal for blabbing to the press, even though theres no evidence that Crozier sought to do so. And he described him as self-promoting even though theres zero evidence of that as well.

"I understand you love the guy," Modly acknowledged in the course of an unhinged fifteen-minute rant over the TR intercom on Monday. "Its good that you love him." But Crozier was guilty of a "betrayal" because he allowed his concerns to be "put it in the publics forum, and its now become a big controversy in Washington, DC, and across the country about a martyr CO [i.e. commanding officer] who wasnt getting the help he needed."

"I expect you never to do that to your shipmates either," he went on, "the ones on the shore right now who told me that when Captain Croziers email made it to the San Francisco Chronicle after working fifteen-hour days, they were demoralized because they knew what they had been doing for you guys since the 25th of March to get you guys what you need."

So thousands of sailors shown cheering Crozier in videos that quickly went viral werent cheering him at all, you see. All that lusty applause aside, they were actually complaining that that he was throwing them overboard and that real heroes like Modly werent getting the thanks they deserved.

"If I could offer you a glimpse of the level of hatred and pure evil that has been thrown my way, my familys way, over this decision [to fire Crozier]," the Navy secretary said, "I would. But it doesnt matter. Its not about me."

No, of course not, even though Modly or "Moldy," as hes known onboard the TR was really trying to save the day.

This is pure stomach-turning nonsense, of course, which is why Modly deserved the Order of the Boot more than anyone in recent history. But before we allow this creep to slink off into the sunset, we should give his Apr. 6 comments a bit more attention because of what they say about the uber-hawks who now dominate foreign policy.

One is that they dont just regard the press as biased, but as an outright hostile force. As Modly put it: "the media has an agenda. And the agenda that they have depends on which side of the political aisle they sit. And Im sorry thats the way the country is now, but its the truth. And so they use it to divide us. They use it to embarrass the Navy. They use it to embarrass you."

Which suggests what? That the press is the enemy, that the military and the media are on opposite sides of the battlefield, and that one will have to suppress the other if a real emergency arises, like the one were in now?

A second is that anti-Chinese rhetoric has reached levels that are truly dangerous. "One of the things about his [Croziers] email that bothered me the most was saying that we are not at war," Modly declared. "Well, were not technically at war. But let me tell you something. The only reason we are dealing with this right now is because a big authoritarian regime called China was not forthcoming about what was happening with this virus. And they put the world at risk to protect themselves and to protect their reputations."

So were not at war, except that Chinas behavior is so derelict that we might as well be. A seemingly passing comment about hypersonic missiles suggest that Pentagon fears about growing Chinese military prowess is not the least bit theoretical or abstract. "I tell you something," Modly said at one point, "if this ship was in combat and there were hypersonic missiles coming at it, youd be pretty fucking scared too." It was a Freudian slip that suggests that top brass is indeed "pretty fucking scared" about the threat that such weapons pose, especially to Americas eleven aircraft carriers, which are now as obsolete as a World War I-era dreadnought.

Finally, theres the suggestion that merely by disclosing a problem, Crozier "compromised critical information about your status intentionally to draw greater attention to your situation."

This is pure authoritarianism. Its the belief that merely airing a problem is disloyal because it provides the enemy with information he shouldnt have. "Loose lips sink ships" may be warranted in wartime. But thats not the case now, as Crozier pointed out in his Mar. 30 memo, and any suggestion to the contrary represents an effort to impose strict martial values in a time of peace.

This should be reason to pour yourself another scotch. Modly deserves to get the ax since hes a danger not only to the crew of the Teddy Roosevelt but to US naval personnel in general. But Pompeo, Esper, and other latter-day advocates of germ warfare are threats to the world at large and should not only be canned, but forced to stand before an international tribunal for crimes against humanity. As for Trump, not only has he thoroughly blown the anti-corona effort here in the US, but hes now pushing the same misbegotten policies on other countries as well. The world has a problem, and its not Covid-19. Its the United States.

Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He writes a weekly column for Antiwar.com. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique and blogs about the Constitution and related matters at Daniellazare.com.

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Mad Man Modly: The Secretary of the Navy Gets the Boot - Antiwar.com

The coronavirus pandemic is magnifying the cruelty of U.S. foreign policy. The economic collapse is showing the failure of neoliberalism and how the empire-economy is not working for the people of the world, including the United States.

The U.S. is losing its global dominance as it demonstrates its own incompetence in response to the pandemic and its viciousness in the midst of this crisis. Other countries are showing leadership and solidarity while the U.S. is escalating its attacks.

This is an opportunity to change direction. What seemed impossible in the recent past is now possible. We must seize the opportunity to create change that ensures the necessities of the people are met and the planet is protected. COVID-19 is one immediate crisis, but the climate crisis, nuclear war and economic insecurity all require solidarity between the people of the world.

No country can fully recover from COVID-19 or the economic collapse unless these crises are resolved for the whole world. Both the economy and pandemic are global and interconnected as are the looming crises of climate chaos and nuclear war.Rather than showing solidarity with other nations in the midst of the crises, the U.S. is escalating economic sanctions and threatening war while undermining a global response to climate and increasing the risks of nuclear war.

Black Alliance for Peace points out:The brutality and criminality of the colonial/capitalist system of state violence is reflected most graphically by the illegal and immoral policy of sanctions imposed on 39 nations by the U.S. and its Western allies.Venezuela, Iran and other nations are being denied the ability to import medicines and medical equipment to protect their populations from the COVID-19 pandemic.

On March 23, theU.N. General Secretary Antnio Guterrescalled for an immediate global ceasefire in all corners of the world sayingnations should focus together on the true fight of our lives the#COVID19pandemic.Fifty-three countriesimmediately agreed.Instead of heeding this call, the U.S. has threatened Iran and Venezuela with military attacks and continued the war with Yemen whileeliminating the majority of humanitarian assistance to Yemen.These actions were wrong before the pandemic, but in the midst of the pandemic, they are obscene.

China is sending medical supplies and assistance to 89 countries so far as part of itsHealth Silk Road.It is ignoring U.S. sanctions bysendingdrugs, test kits, and supplies to Iran and Venezuela. Hard-hit Italy noted thatthe other EU nations ignored their desperate plea for medical equipment while China responded. China is building positive relationships by providingessential equipment and expertisewhile theU.S. is tryingand failing to get other nations to sign on to a statement blaming COVID-19 on China.

Cuba hassentbrigades of doctors and nurses to Italy, as well as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Jamaica, Suriname, and Grenada. Russia has also sent medical supplies to hard-hit countries like Italy.Even Venezuela, suffering from a U.S. economic blockade and threats of a military attack, issending aid to its neighbors, including Ecuador and Colombia even though Colombia has joined the U.S. in threatening Venezuela.The U.S. blocked a shipment of coronavirus aidfor Cuba from Chinas richest man, Jack Ma, including 100,000 facemasks and 10 COVID-19 diagnostic kits, along with other supplies.

Europe is starting to break with the United States. The EU finally sent aid to Iran ignoring U.S. sanctions.France, Germany, and Britain have sentmedical goods to Iran through INSTEX a workaround to export goods to Iran that bypasses U.S.sanctions. This development could have major implications for the ability of the U.S. to unilaterally sanction nations as it provides a way for countries to trade without the U.S. financial system.Europe, led by Germany, also backed out of war gamesagainst Russia, which would have included a practice nuclear attack, due to the COVID-19 virus.

President Rouhani of Iran sent an open letterto the people of the United States saying, the war on this virus can only be successful if all nations can win this war together, and no affected nation is left behind. He urged us to change the direction of the U.S. government, writing, Future generations will judge the American people based on the actions of their government.

The zig-zagging incompetence of U.S. policy is evident.During the three months when the Trump administration did not take the virus seriously, the Interceptreportsthe United States allowed exports of medical supplies and equipment. After examining vessel manifests, the Intercept found medical equipment needed to treat the coronavirus [was] being shipped abroad as recently as March 17. This has led to a persistent lack of medical supplies in the U.S.

Now, the U.S. has angered allies by diverting medical supplies to the U.S.The Washington Post reportsthat Berlin expressed outrageover what they said was the diversion to the United States of 200,000 masks that were en route from China, while officials in Brazil and France complained that the United States was outbidding them in the global marketplace for critical medical supplies. They report the U.S. is also stopping the export of masks to Canada and Latin America.

Even worse, Trump took time from his daily press conference on COVID-19 to escalate threats against Venezuela bysending U.S. naval vesselsnear Venezuelas borders.AP reportsThe deployment is one of the largest U.S. military operations in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama It involves assets like Navy warships, AWACS surveillance aircraft and on-ground special forces seldom seen before in the region.

This followed aphony indictment of President Maduroand other Venezuelan leaders foralleged narcotraffickingthat included a $15 million bounty on Maduro. President Maduro wrote an open letterto the people of the world that decried the indictment as illegal and part of a U.S. coup attempt writing, the U.S. government, instead of focusing on policies of global cooperation in health and prevention, has increased unilateral coercive measures, has rejected requests from the international community to lift or make flexible the illegal sanctions that prevent Venezuela from accessing medicines, medical equipment, and food.The indictment was announced after Venezuela prevented weapons financed by the U.S. from being sent into Venezuela from Colombia for another coup attempt.

Venezuelans in the U.S. who want to fly back to Venezuela to escape the economic and health crises here are not being allowed to charter flights from Florida.The escalation against Venezuela also included the US-controlledIMF blocking a COVID-19 emergency loanto Venezuela.Venezuela has taken aggressive actions to stop the spreadof the virus and has been more effective than the U.S.

The U.S. also shows disregard for its own people, including those in the military, byfiring aU.S. Navy Capt. Brett Crozierafter he sought help for sailors on the U.S.S. Roosevelt aircraft carrier. Crozierwrote his superiors about hundreds of COVID-19 cases and when the letter was leaked, he was fired. As he left the ship,the crew cheered himfor standing up for their health and risking his career. The first government official fired over the virus was one trying to protect people from illness. The U.S. has also directed that reports onCOVID-19 in the military be kept secret.

The actions of the U.S. are leading tothe reshaping of global leadership.Patrick Coburn describesCOVID-19 as aChernobyl momentand concludes nobody is today looking to Washington for a solution to the crisis.

The people of the United States have been sold a false definition of national security. The pandemic shows that mass military spending on bombs, weapons, bases, and troops does not provide security. The coronavirus is expected to kill between 100,000 to 240,000 people in the United States if our response goes well and could be more than one million if it is inadequate. Deaths have already passed 9/11 and Pearl Harbor and could exceed the Vietnam War and World War 1.

We need to redefine national security.David Swanson calls for a real Department of Defensethat would prioritize the twin dangers of nuclear and climate apocalypse, and the accompanying spin-offs like coronavirus. He points out it would be less expensive to providefinancial security and top medical care to everyone on the globe than to fight wars.

Gareth Porter writes,For decades, the military-industrial-congressional complex has force-fed the American public a warped conception of U.S. national security-focused entirely around perpetuating warfare. The cynical conflation of national security with waging war on designated enemies around the globe effectively stifled public awareness of the clear and present danger posed to its survival by the global pandemic. As a result, Congress was simply not called upon to fund the vitally important equipment that doctors and nurses needed for the Covid-19 crisis.

The Pentagon was well aware of the threat of a pandemic and anticipated the lack of ventilators, face masks, and hospital beds, according to a2017 Pentagon plan.Intelligence agencieswarned about the threat from influenza viruses for two decades at least and warned about coronaviruses for at least five years.Luciana Borio, director of medical and biodefense preparednessat the National Security Council in May 2018warned that aflu pandemicwas the countrys number one health security threat and that the U.S. was unprepared.

In January 2017, Anthony S. Fauci, MD, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, saidthere is no doubtDonald Trump will be confronted with a surprise infectious diseaseoutbreak during his presidency. In 2019, HHSorganizeda month-long simulation involving multiple federal offices that demonstrated the U.S. was seriously unprepared to cope with a pandemic. Despite all of this,the president claimedthe virus surprised the whole world, and nobody knew thered be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.

The White House created a National Security Council office on pandemics, but in 2018 that wasdisbanded by Trump. The Trump administration also ignored apandemic playbookthat would have ensured a more effective response. The Strategic National Stockpile has not been maintained for years, as it competes with the military budget, whichshoveled $15 trillion into wars. The unreplenished stockpile is one reason the U.S. does not have sufficient ventilators and other necessary equipment. The U.S. is also weakened by theshortcomings of the for-profit health systemincludingthe closing of hospitals.

First and foremost, the U.S. must cease its drive to be the dominant power in the world and recognize we are part of a community of nations that must cooperate to take on the many crises that will define the 2020s. This means ending military aggression and regime change efforts by respecting the sovereignty and integrity of other countries, large and small. It means ending our occupation of other nations in the form of hundreds of military bases and outposts and ending our support for other occupiers such as Israel until it stops its colonization of Palestine. Instead of international war games, we could hold international exercises on disaster responses to save lives. And it means respecting and obeying international law and joining the International Criminal Court. The U.S. must stop behaving with impunity.

Second, the U.S. must scale down the military to what is required for protection, an actual defensive approach rather than being offensive. This means cutting the military budget by at least 50% and converting all production of military equipment, supplies, and weapons into public entities to remove the profit motive that drives conflict around the world. These resources can be used for social uplift instead of causing death in a peace economy.

Third, the U.S. must move quickly to eliminate threats to human extinction.TheBulletin of the Atomic Scientistsreset the Doomsday Clock to100 secondsto midnight, putting the world closer to destruction than at any point since the clock was created in 1947. As Alice Slaterwrites, we have avirus of nuclear proliferation asnuclear arms control agreements collapse. The U.S. is spending more than a trillion dollars to upgrade nuclear weaponswhile placing low-yield nuclear weapons on submarines.

Its not only superpowers that are engaged in a nuclear arms race, countries like North Korea, which is threatened by the U.S., and allies likeGermany and Saudi Arabiabelieve they need their own nuclear weapons.The U.S. must commit to the rapid disarmament of all nuclear weapons in cooperation with other nuclear nations and disband the Space Force, which violates the treaty that makes space a global commons.

While COVID-19 isalmost certainly a zoonotic disease,David Swanson points outat least some diseases, such asLyme Diseaseand Anthrax, have been spread by military labs.Germ warfare is a criminal enterpriseand so labs disguised as being for our defense but that create bioweapons need to be closed.

Foreign policy includes trade, which has been designed for corporate profit since NAFTA. The coronavirus collapse shows corporate trade creates weak supply lines. It also hollowed out U.S. manufacturing for cheap labor in Mexico, China, and other nations, creating economic insecurity and leaving us ill-prepared for a crisis. Trade must be remade into fair trade that serves the people and planet, supports industry at home, ends factory farming andcreates a balance with naturethat will help prevent future animal-based viruses.

A new foreign policy must also confront the climate crisis. This is a global challenge and nations of the world must work together to confront it. The U.S. has been playing a counterproductive role by building fossil fuel infrastructure, becoming a leading oil and gas producer, and holding back global climate treaties.Next week, in our series on The Decade of Transformation, we will focus on the environment.

The global economic collapse and COVID-19 pandemic are causing widespread suffering and death but will result in change. What that change looks like, positive or negative, is up to us.We must create the new normal that provides for the necessities of the people and protection of the planet. The world must unite in solidarity to confront not only COVID-19 but other crises too.

We applaud countries that are beginning to stand up to U.S. sanctions and work around the U.S. financial system to help countries like Iran and Venezuela. These are positive steps to end U.S. hegemony. We agree with President Rouhani of Iran, it is our responsibility to remake the government so it reflects the best of us.

An immediate step is to end U.S. sanctions.Join us inthe Sanctions Kill campaignwhere the coalition will be organizing webinars and other events to end illegal unilateral coercive measures. There will be aninternational week of action against imperialism and sanctions from May 25 to 31. We will need to be especially creative to build an effective campaign with tactics that work in this time of physical distancing.

We must alsotake action now to stop the war on Venezuela. Join the webinar with Carlos Ron, vice foreign minister of Venezuela on Monday night at 6:00 pm Eastern.Click here for information. Sign ontothis demandthat the U.S. drop its charges against President Maduro and other Venezuelan officials who have been falsely charged with narco-trafficking. We must be ready to mobilize quickly if the U.S. moves to attack Venezuela, or Iran or any country for that matter while the government believes we are distracted by the pandemic.

We are living in a time of crisis and that can be unnerving. But we have the power to get through this if we mobilize together with a clear vision of the world we wish to create and show our solidarity with each other through our actions. We are one human community and we need each other to get through the rough times ahead.

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The decade of transformation: Remaking international relations - NationofChange

When the novel coronavirus first emerged in Chinas Hubei Province, foreign reactions to the countrys handling of the epidemic swung between extremes. At a press conference held in Beijing in late February, Bruce Aylward, who co-led the World Health Organizations (WHO) joint mission with China on the disease now known as COVID-19, praised what he described as probably the most ambitious, and I would say, agile and aggressive disease-containment effort in history. Pointing to a graph that showed a steep decline in cases, he commented, If I had COVID-19, Id want to be treated in China.

Others have been far more critical. In a Wall Street Journal opinion piece titled China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia, Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College, suggested that Chinas less than impressive management of the crisis would reinforce a trend for global companies to de-Sinicize their supply chains. The use of the term sick man of Asia in the headline caused particular umbrage and provided a pretext for the expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters from China. Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang condemned the use of racially discriminatory language, to which U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responded with a defense of the free press.

The rapid politicization of the new coronavirus, and particularly of Chinas role in containing it, has historical precedents. From the bubonic plague at the end of the nineteenth century to HIV/AIDS in the 1990s to SARS in 20023, Western observers have long viewed Chinas responses to epidemic crises as indices of its relative political and economic openness. Chinas management of disease has also been crucial to how Chinese citizens have viewed their nation and how the Chinese state has reaffirmed its authority.

Between 1894 and 1950, an estimated 15 million people died of bubonic plague in a pandemic that began in China. The disease spread from Yunnan, on Chinas southwest border, to the Pearl River Delta, with Hong Kong serving as its global launch pad. Many Western commentators were convinced that the plague germ had incubated in Chinas crowded cities. These critics took the absence of modern sanitation as an indication that the Qing dynasty was incapable of governing. Disease, they concluded, had revealed the political system for what it was: moribund and in need of fundamental reform.

The plaguehit China at a time when rival imperial powers were competing to enlarge their spheres of influence. In 1894, Japan went to war with the Qing over control of the Korean Peninsula. Chinas defeat and its loss of Korea as a vassal state exposed the countrys inability to modernize; the Qing army and navy were simply no match for Japans remodeled forces. Then, in 1899, U.S. Secretary of State John Hay published his Open Door Note, which attempted to create a framework for competing foreign interests in China and protect Chinas recently weakened territorial integrity. But the proliferation of imperial networks and the push to open up Chinas markets had an unintended consequence: they provided the conditions for infections to globalize and a rationale for further foreign intervention in Chinese affairs.

Disease had revealed the political system for what it was: moribund and in need of fundamental reform.

The term sick man of Asia was coined in this postwar context. There was much soul-searching in China as to what had caused the countrys ignominious defeat in the Sino-Japanese War. Many reformers pointed to a pervasive cultural and political malaise, drawing on social evolutionary ideas to emphasize Chinas moral and physical atrophy. Foremost among these critics was the Chinese scholar Yan Fu, an esteemed translator who was educated in the United Kingdom. In On Strength, an article published in a Tianjin newspaper in 1895, he likened China to a sick man in need of radical therapy. The Chinese needed to jettison debilitating habits, including opium smoking and foot-binding. The nation was a living organism locked in a competitive struggle for survival; citizens were the cells that formed this vital whole, so their physical and moral well-being was paramount.

Calls for reform grew louder in the late 1890s. The intellectual Liang Qichao reiterated Yans claim that as a country inhabited by sick people, China was a sick nation. Ground down by an autocratic and incompetent state, the Chinese had become sick not only morally but also physically: rampant diseasesamong them plague, leprosy, tuberculosis, and smallpoxwere sapping the people. Reformers called for restoring the health of Chinas citizenry and rejuvenating the decrepit body politic.

Sickness and health thus provided the basis for justifying reforms that extended from the susceptible Chinese body to the enervated state. In 1923, Sun Yat-senthe first president of the Republic of Chinavisited Hong Kong to give a lecture. Describing his graduation from medical school some 20 years before, Sun told his audience, I saw that it was necessary to give up my profession of healing men and take up my part to cure the country.

A portrait of Yat-Sen in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, April2005 Jason Lee / Reuters

Efforts to reform Chinas political and public health would outlast the Qing dynasty and the bubonic plague. In 1910, as Qing rule crumbled, the British-educated, Penang-born physician Wu Lien-teh was sent by the Chinese government to curtail the spread of pneumonic plague across Northeast China. He enacted stringent containment strategies based on modern scientific teachings: postmortems, bacteriological investigations, and mass cremations, to name a few. Wus program was markedly different from the response to the bubonic plague just two decades prior, when endeavors to halt the contagion were left to local charitable organizations or to the foreign officials who staffed the Imperial Maritime Customs Service with minimal oversight from the viceroy at Canton.

Just as before, however, Chinas handling of the outbreak within its borders would have geopolitical implications. During the pneumonic plague outbreak, China, Japan, and Russia vied for political and economic dominance over Manchuria. With Japan rapidly modernizing and Russia bullishly expanding eastward, Chinas management of the disease was an opportunity to showcase its newfound efficiency and reinforce its territorial claims. But reform came too late. In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty. Coincidentally, the springboard for the rebellion was Wuhan, the city that would become the epicenter of the COVID-19 epidemic.

The relative openness of Chinas republican period, from 1911 to 1949characterized by freer markets, a flourishing press, newfound liberties, and lively engagement with the worldwas also reflected in the countrys health sector. Chinese scientists took part in international meetings, new opportunities opened for women in health care, medical schools expanded, and a Ministry of Health was established in 1928, in part to address the rural-urban disparity in health.

That age came to an end with the communist seizure of power, led by Mao Zedong in 1949. Although the Peoples Republic, like previous governments, focused on disease prevention, health, and national strength, it acted upon these concerns altogether differently. The communist government viewed health through a statist lens and as an important rationale for one-party rule. Maos war on disease was a case in point. Ostensibly a health campaign, the war was actually part of an ambitious social program that sought to extract undesirables, promote unity, and fight against capitalist imperialism.

The communist government viewed health through a statist lens and as an important rationale for one-party rule.

During the Korean War, for example, North Korea and the Soviet Union alleged that the United States was using biological weapons to spread infectious diseases. China supported the charges, claiming that U.S. planes were dropping insects and other disease vectors to spread plague, cholera, encephalitis, and anthrax. Mao responded with a Patriotic Hygiene Campaign in 1952, admonishing citizens to root out and destroy invading pests: flies, mosquitoes, rats, fleas, and even dogs. Anti-bacteriological warfare measures were put in place, including quarantine stations. Although the veracity of the biological warfare allegations continues to be debated, compelling evidence suggests that the charges were fabricated as part of a concerted propaganda campaign. The accusations provided the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party with a pretext for pushing a domestic political agenda under the guise of biosecurity.

Mao continued to leverage health as a political tool during the Cultural Revolution, which was initiated in 1966 as a war against bourgeois institutions, including modern medicine. In 1964, Mao had attacked the Ministry of Health as an elite establishment; during the Cultural Revolution, he proceeded to persecute doctors and starve hospitals of support. The Cultural Revolution also created ideal conditions for infectious diseases to flourish. An outbreak of meningitis in Beijing in the late summer and fall of 1966 was soon spread across the country by the student paramilitarythe Red Guardstraveling on the railways. Chinese authorities made no attempt to contain the epidemic, since doing so would have put the brakes on the Cultural Revolution, which depended on the mass mobilization of the Red Guards to purge society of recalcitrant bourgeois elements. The United States offered assistance, which China flatly declined. By the spring of 1967, more than 160,000 people had died.

A Red Guard reenactor in Beijing, China, April 2006 Jason Lee / Reuters

And yet, even as his government cracked down on bourgeois medicine, Mao pursued an antidisease program directed at schistosomiasis, or snail fever, an infectious disease caused by a species of parasitic flatworm. The anti-schistosomiasis campaign involved rallying large numbers of rural workers to laboriously collect and destroy snails in central and southern China. In his poem Farewell to the God of Plague, Mao celebrated the campaigns success with a vision of restoring to life ghostly villages choked with weeds. Ultimately, however, the campaign failed to live up to Maos expectations: schistosomiasis remains endemic in China.

The communist state offloaded its responsibility for health onto the collective. In 1968, the barefoot doctor program became national policy. Villagers were recruited as part-time paramedics and underwent basic health-care training. They were given access to vaccines but otherwise received minimal state support. This putative from-the-ground-up vision of health helped inspire a global shift: in 1978, the countries that gathered at the WHO International Conference on Primary Health Care adopted the Declaration of Alma-Ata, which upheld health as a basic human right and emphasized community-based health care for all. Ironically, this affirmation of Maos legacy took place precisely as his successor, Deng Xiaoping, was introducing economic reforms. Chinas health-care system would be one of the first areas earmarked for change.

Chinas reform era coincided with the rise of new infectious diseases, such as HIV/AIDS. The first indigenous cases of HIV/AIDS in China appeared in Yunnan among heroin users, but by the early years of this century, infection was increasingly sexually transmitted. A booming plasma economy in the 1990s further fueled the epidemic. Third parties paid donors in impoverished rural areas for blood, from which they extracted plasma to sell to biotech companies. The residual blood was then returned to donors. As a cost-saving practice, blood from different donors was often mixed in the same centrifuges. The result was a sharp increase in infectious diseases contracted through cross-contaminated blood. More than one million people in China are estimated to have contracted HIV/AIDS.

The blood contamination scandal set the pattern for future infectious disease crises: rumors of an epidemic, attempts at a cover-up, an expos by a medical whistleblower, followed by an official admission of the problem and draconian containment measures to mitigate the damage. In the case of the plasma scandal, the whistleblower, medical researcher Shuping Wang, brought contamination to the attention of officials in Henan, the worst-affected province. The officials attempted to deny and cover up the crisis, but news soon leaked to the international media. The plasma collection centers were finally closed for rectification in 1996.

The Western media, however, had already portrayed the contamination scandal as illustrative of Chinas poor regulation and endemic corruption. Moreover, the episode exposed the awkward cohabitation of rampant capitalism and authoritarianism in post-Mao China: a toxic mixture of unregulated markets, patchy provincial oversight, and overregulated governance.

A travel checkpoint during the SARS outbreak in Xinjiang, China, May 2003 Alessandro Digaetano / LUZphoto / Redux

Similar concerns about the state greeted a different health crisis in November 2002, when the deadly SARS virus was detected in Guangdong Province. The SARS outbreak also played out on the public stage through leaked information, cover-ups, and crackdowns. Jiang Yanyong, a physician in Beijing, revealed the states efforts to conceal the true number of SARS cases in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. That same day, the reporter Susan Jakes published a searing expos in Time magazine, based on a signed statement by Jiang, under the headline, Beijings SARS Attack. These reports catalyzed a policy U-turn in China. The mayor of Beijing and the minister of public health resigned, and the government embarked on a concerted and much-publicized campaign to contain the epidemic.

SARS was a major test for Chinas leadership. The outbreak threatened to derail Chinas export economy. And at least initially, Beijings bungled response set off a panic that undermined the governments international aspirations. China had joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and that same year, Beijing was chosen to host the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Membership in the WTO and hosting the Olympics were both viewed by the Chinese leadership as important platforms for promoting Chinas role as a global player and for ensuring foreign investment. SARS jeopardized that. As Premier Wen Jiabao declared, the health and security of the people, overall state of reform, development, and stability, and Chinas national interest and international image are at stake.

Not surprisingly, many commentators have drawn parallels between SARS and the current epidemic. As with SARS, officials in the province where COVID-19 broke out first downplayed the problem, and the public accused them of a cover-up. The government cracked down on whistleblowers, such as Li Wenliang, a doctor who had tried to share information about the virus. Li was hounded by the police and died of the disease.

Chinese President Xi Jinping has set out to contain the epidemic through a campaign strikingly reminiscent of the one against SARS. The Chinese government has marshaled tens of thousands of health-care workers and military personnel in what Xi has described as a total war. Ding Xiangyang, the deputy secretary-general of the State Council, has called the epidemic a battle for China and a risk to the nation unprecedented since the founding of the Peoples Republic.

This war has challenged Xis authority in some respects, but it has also provided an occasion for Xi to reaffirm his credentials as Maos heir. By emphasizing the scale of the crisis, Xi can affirm his reputation for resourceful and clearheaded leadership when he overcomes it. For the moment, at least, Xis strategy appears to be working, bolstering his support in many parts of China, if not in Hubei Province, where the disease first emerged. As Chinas citizens watch the chaotic scenes of COVID-19 panic across Europe and the United States, Xis response to the virus suddenly looks proportionate.

Paramilitary containing the spread of coronavirus in Beijing, China, March 2020 Carlos Garcia Rawlins / Reuters

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Past Pandemics Exposed Chinas Weaknesses - Foreign Affairs Magazine