As this issue goes to press the world is gripped in fear over the spreading coronavirus. And for good reason. Reports are conflicting.

The World Health Organization (WHO) is trying its best to avoid panic and assure the public that the virus, which causes a disease officially named COVID-19, has not yet reached “pandemic” proporations. This is despite the fact that the virus has spread to at least 47 countries, with cases outside China in South Korea, Japan, Italy and Iran rapidly increasing.

At the same time U.S. health officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said current global circumstances suggest it’s likely this virus will cause a pandemic and told Americans to prepare for “severe disruptions” to their daily lives.

So if we’re to listen to the CDC, it’s not a matter of if, but when.

Who do we believe?

The CDC’s ominous prediction came on the heels of the first case of coronavirus in the U.S. involving a patient who neither recently traveled out of the country nor was in contact with someone who did. The N.Y. Times reported 60 cases in the U.S. and no deaths. To date there’s been more than 80,000 cases confirmed and nearly 3,000 deaths, the far majority in China, the epicenter of the outbreak.

The last time the WHO declared a pandemic was in 2009 due to swine flue, which was estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of people. In this issue Ben Locwin dives into the numbers to dispel some of the fear, comparing the current coronavirus to other global outbreaks and health crises.

Making the current situation murkier, the “poli” puck has officially dropped center ice. President Trump downplayed the risk, telling Americans not to worry about coronavirus and that it will be gone by April once temperatures start to rise. The liberal left “resistance,” led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took the opportunity to pounce, accusing the Trump administration of responding too late to stop the spread of China’s coronavirus in the U.S.

Behind the scenes of the political circus sure to play out over the next months, and of great concern, is the real possiblity of a pandemic cutting the pharma industry’s lifeline of raw materials from China. The pharma industry, like so many others, is hugely dependent on Chinese imports, which make up the bulk of APIs and intermediates that find their way into the drugs patients take across the globe, including the U.S. Our Mumbai-based columnist Harachand delves deeper into the impact coronavirus will have on the pharma supply chain.

Still yet, an even deeper cut exposed by the coronavirus outbreak and subsequent slowdown of China’s industrial engine and its impact on global markets, is what could be seen as China’s monopoly on U.S. drug supply—an issue that goes past patients all the way down to the marrow of the United States’ national security.
However, this is not a new topic.

The issue was discussed at a hearing before the U.S. China Economic and Security Review Commission back in July. Rosemary Gibson, a senior advisor at the Hastings Center, a bioethics research institute, and author of, “China RX: Exposing the Risks of America’s Dependence on China for Medicine,” warns against China’s increasing dominance in the manufacturing of medicine and it’s far-reaching consequences.



Tim Wright, Editor
twright@rodmanmedia.com