Sixty-one years ago, Walter M. Miller Jr. published A Canticle for Leibowitz. The story spans thousands of years as humans rebuild civilization after a devastating nuclear war. Among the episodes is a conflict between warring nomads and a settled people who rely on cunning instead of arms and introduce hoof and mouth disease into the herds of the nomads. I was reminded of this as I read this account in RT of what appears to be a worsening situation with the coronavirus in China. China’s President Xi Jinping has described the situation as “grave” with the spread of infection accelerating.
Could this be an engineered virus or a weaponized one that got loose from Chinese biolabs?
Could this be biological warfare deliberately unleashed on China to destabilize the government or to leave the country in chaos so that it cannot respond to an attack?
Or is the story just media hype?
Would it be prudent to stop all travel to and from China and to quarantine recent arrivals from China to prevent the spread of something that could be difficult to control?
Globalism, a darling of neoliberals, endangers us all. The possible importation of pandemics is another external cost of the global economy.
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The global economy can kill us in more ways than one
Posted on January 27, 2020 by Paul Craig Roberts
Sixty-one years ago, Walter M. Miller Jr. published A Canticle for Leibowitz. The story spans thousands of years as humans rebuild civilization after a devastating nuclear war. Among the episodes is a conflict between warring nomads and a settled people who rely on cunning instead of arms and introduce hoof and mouth disease into the herds of the nomads. I was reminded of this as I read this account in RT of what appears to be a worsening situation with the coronavirus in China. China’s President Xi Jinping has described the situation as “grave” with the spread of infection accelerating.
Could this be an engineered virus or a weaponized one that got loose from Chinese biolabs?
Could this be biological warfare deliberately unleashed on China to destabilize the government or to leave the country in chaos so that it cannot respond to an attack?
Or is the story just media hype?
Would it be prudent to stop all travel to and from China and to quarantine recent arrivals from China to prevent the spread of something that could be difficult to control?
Globalism, a darling of neoliberals, endangers us all. The possible importation of pandemics is another external cost of the global economy.
Copyright © 2020 Paul Craig Roberts
Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost and The Neoconservative Threat to World Order.