Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of author Douglas De Bono

Welcome to DouglasDeBono.Com, the Cyberspace Home of
author Douglas De Bono.

The SARS Scandal

CLICK MAP TO ENLARGE
I know this is going to shock some of you, especially those of you who still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Easter Bunny: The People’s Republic of China (PRC) has understated the impact of SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). I chose the politically correct verb understated, because in the post what-is-the-meaning-of-is era it is still too shocking to say they prevaricated. All right I’ll spit it out: China lied, denied, covered up the truth and fibbed.

Consider the following:

1. SARS was first detected in southern China during fall 2002.
2. SARS became a major story in March 2003. Serious infections were detected in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam, Canada and the Philippines.
3. The initial fatality rate was pegged at 3%. Current estimates place it closer to 15% and for certain groups much higher.
4. A 10-day quarantine was believed sufficient, until re-infection rates began appearing 30 days after the initial onset.
5. According to the WHO (World Health Organization) SARS was spiking inside China between January 31, 2003 and February 20, 2003. It is spiking again.
6. Over 10,000 people are under quarantine in Beijing.
7. The economic impact as of May 10, 2003 is between $20-28 billion.
8. Of the 7200 known SARS case (as of May 9, 2003), 6500 originate in China and Hong Kong (90% of all cases).
9. SARS is capable of surviving (for an indeterminate period of time) on non-biological surfaces such as textiles.

Clearly, China does not have control of the situation. In recent days, we have heard that China is running out of drugs to treat the problem; a mad rush to exit Beijing (a truly extraordinary stupid idea that gathers people to train stations, bus depots and airports, resulting in whole lot more infected people); the Hong Kong based (PRC controlled) newspaper Wenweipo claims SARS is an American made bio-weapon (sounds like a page out of the left’s AIDS playbook when they blamed the CIA for creating AIDS).

Read the Drudge Report for a week, and there are daily headlines about the growing SARS crisis in China. Like all good communist governments, scapegoats have been found. The Politburo has fired Health Minister Zhang Wenkang and Beijing Mayor Meng Xuenong were fired (I wonder how you fire a mayor).

How does a police state miss the fact that people are dropping dead from an unknown viral disease?
How did SARS spread so fast and far so that it is a major health problem in Beijing and Hong Kong?
Do you really believe the infection numbers reported by China are even close to the truth?

I believe the answers to these questions are bundled together. Perhaps, the reason the PRC Ministry of Health missed the burgeoning SARS epidemic is because they have become accustomed to people dropping dead, especially in the rural provinces. This raises the next logical question: Why would the PRC be used to people dropping dead? Besides the obvious answer that they are very good at killing and suppressing dissident elements, there is a less obvious and far more embarrassing problem.

According to the United States State Department’s 1999 Narcotics Report on Asian-Pacific Regiion:

More than 90% of all Southeast Asian heroin seizures occur inside the PRC.
Burma and Hong Kong continue to be the main transit points for heroin, opium and related drugs.
The official number of registered heroin users is 560,000. No one believes this number, and the real number could be closer to 10 million.
80% of users are under 35 years of age.

Heroin addiction is a major problem inside the PRC. The communist government took great pride in stamping out opium addiction, while at the same time, it promoted the production of heroin in Southeast Asia as a form of asymmetrical warfare targeted against Japan, America and Western Europe. Suddenly, the PRC has millions of addicts, whole villages collapsing and out-of-control heroin production.

The heroin problem leads to the second major health crisis facing China. The United States National Intelligence Council estimates China will have between 10 and 15 million HIV/AIDS cases by the end of the decade. This would make China the second hardest hit nation (tied with Nigeria and right behind India). As recently as 2000, the PRC claimed to have only 10,000 HIV/AIDS cases! Heroin addiction and AIDS are related, since heroin addicts primarily use and reuse needles.

China has a firm grip on the problem. In June 2002 on the International Day against Drug Abuse, they executed 64 people accused of drug crimes [Editor’s Note: It is uncertain whether these folks had been convicted] and they are experiencing failure rates between 70 and 90% at their drug treatment facilities. Or to put it another way, the normal forehead-bludgeoning method of dealing with problems is not working.

Does anyone find it curious that the heroin trade route, the SARS infection route and the largest band of AIDS/HIV victims occupy the same geographical area? Fundamentally, these three problems travel a vector from the 2000-kilometer common border with Burma northeast towards Beijing. This is the same route used by China migratory population.

Are SARS, AIDS/HIV and heroin addiction problems related? If so, China’s recent track record does not suggest the PRC is capable of dealing with the problem. There continue to be stories leaking out of rural China that suggest whole villages are burning out due to AIDS and heroin addiction. SARS will probably join the rest shortly.

The economic impact of SARS is just beginning to be felt. I don’t believe anyone knows the extent of damage this wreaks on the PRC government and economy. Considering China’s inability to admit past problems, the number of SARS cases and deaths are probably much higher than currently reported.

Finally the worst-case projections are as follows:

Left unchecked a combined heroin / AIDS / SARS epidemic will continue to overwhelm China’s health care infrastructure.
The potential loss of hard currency transactions could significantly impact China’s military modernization programs (this is a good thing).
The combined infection rate could exceed 2% of the total population and this could lead to a break down in governmental institutions (there is ancillary evidence suggesting rural villages have already rioted and burned local government buildings).
A population crash over the next 20 – 40 years that reduces the current population of 1.3 billion to 800 million.

This problem could destroy the largest communist regime in the world, but at a tremendous human cost. Unfortunately this is not a new story.

**MAP COURTESY: World Health Organization.