Anyone knowledgeable about medicine — or history, for that matter — is taking very, very seriously the coronavirus outbreak in China, and its subsequent spread across the globe, including to the U.S.
More than 70,000 Chinese have been diagnosed and over 1,700 have died, along with one death in each of France, Japan, Hong Kong and the Philippines.
Over the weekend, Taiwan — the independent island nation a hundred miles off the coast of a hostile, threatening People’s Republic of China (PRC) — announced its first fatality. The deceased Taiwanese taxi driver, whose health was already compromised by diabetes and hepatitis B, likely caught the virus from customers traveling from China.
Last week, China finally allowed the World Health Organization to allow Taiwanese experts to participate in discussions about containing the virus. Unlike China, Taiwan boasts one of the best medical systems in the world.
Also over the weekend, news broke that Chinese President Xi Jinping had mentioned the coronavirus in a speech given many weeks before officials first alerted the public.
That’s how the totalitarian PRC rolls. At all levels. One victim of the virus is Dr. Li Wenliang, who warned back in December that the disease was spreading. First, he was reprimanded and then “apprehended by Wuhan police for spreading ‘rumours,’” reported Aljazeera.
“As more information leaks out from Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak,” a recent Taipei Times editorial argues, “it is clear that Beijing was unable to prevent the virus from spreading out of control precisely because it lacks the accountability, freedom of speech and free flow of information that form the bedrock of democracies.”
Yet another way that freedom affirms life and totalitarian tyranny kills.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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