India locks down, Italy has a bad day, U.S. still debating

Photo by visuals on Unsplash 

Dear readers,

First we want to bring your attention to an interview with David Ho, the renowned AIDS researcher who is now trying to fight COVID-19. It is the best, most understandable summary of all the factual, scientific information we’ve seen on COVID-19 to date. (Note: He was a speaker at our 2019 NEXTChina Conference last November, and you can see an interview we did with him at that time on the state of U.S.-China affairs.)

After yesterday’s note about how to help, we wanted to announce our own campaign:

Many hospitals across the U.S. are running low on or are already out of face masks and other personal protective equipment for nurses, doctors, and other front-lines medical workers. Meanwhile, China manufactures almost 50% of the world supply of such things.

As a gateway between China and the Western world, and a New York-based company, The China Project is going to procure face masks from China, and deliver them ourselves to hospitals in the U.S. You may ask yourselves why the hospitals don’t just buy these things directly. The fact is that for whatever reasons, they’re unable to or are being forced to wait, and hospitals across the U.S. are actively seeking donations. We have spoken with trusted companies in China who already supply U.S. hospital systems, and have found that there are masks that can be shipped with no delay.

We will be providing you a way to donate in tomorrow’s newsletter, and we will match every dollar donated up to $25,000 (for a total of $50,000 in masks).

If we only worry about ourselves, we’re in this alone. If we each do one small thing for someone else, we’re in this together.

There is no shortage of news today, so let’s get on with it.

The U.S. continues to (try to) find its footing

The U.S. looks set to finally pass its major fiscal stimulus bill this morning, but it has not yet been announced as of the sending of this email. The passing of this or some similar financial aid package is critical to financial markets, small businesses, large businesses, and pretty much anyone around the world, but especially in the U.S.

Meanwhile, President Trump continues to send mixed messages on…pretty much everything.

• On social distancing:
  • Trump only began to endorse social distancing about a week ago. Yesterday he already began pushing to end it.
• On racism:
  • Throughout much of the past few weeks, Trump has insisted on calling the coronavirus the “Chinese virus”, and photos showed that it was entirely intentional.
  • His words have stoked wide-ranging racist behavior across the U.S. targeting Asian Americans.
  • But Trump still wants you to know he is a good guy, is not racist, and has lots of Asian friends.
• On cures:
  • Trump has repeatedly made reference to various potential cures or vaccines, despite no endorsement of such messages by his own medical experts.
  • He even went so far as to name a specific drug — chloroquine — and took it step further by saying that as chloroquine has been around for a long time, “we know no one will die from it.” Yesterday, someone died from it, after self-treating for the disease due to the misinformation he had received.
  • For the record, there is officially no cure or vaccine for coronavirus, yet.

Local leaders time to shine: Where Trump and the federal government have foundered, local leaders are stepping up. Watch this video of New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo addressing the public. He says that while New York has more cases than any other city in the U.S., that’s only because it was among the first cities hit and because it’s done a better job of testing. “New York is just the test case. You will see what we are seeing across the country in the coming weeks.”

China updates

After months of lockdown, China’s Hubei Province — the likely origin of the virus and the most-infected region globally — is finally lifting travel restrictions and encouraging people to get back to normal life and business as usual.

But wait: It is difficult to say conclusively that China is in the clear. As The China Project reported yesterday, China may be manipulating its COVID-19 numbers in various ways, and there are even (mostly unverified) reports of sick people being denied coronavirus tests so as to suppress the official case count.

In other news, similar to Trump’s repeated use of the phrase “Chinese Virus”, many Chinese officials have been publicly and officially endorsing conspiracy theories that the U.S. army deliberately introduced the coronavirus into Wuhan, China, where the outbreak began.

But China’s Ambassador to the U.S., Cui Tiankai, distanced himself from these other officials’ messages, saying that such theories were “crazy”. It is exceedingly unusual for Chinese government officials to make differing claims and statements about critical topics, although most of the rest of Cui’s interview was on-brand for the Chinese Communist Party, deflecting difficult questions about human rights, the virus, Xi Jinping, and so on.

Our take: Perhaps both governments have agreed on a rhetorical climbdown: Trump has refrained from using the phrase “Chinese Virus” since Cui’s interview.

Around the world in 30 seconds

• India has ordered a lockdown of his country of 1.3 billion people for 21 days. Prime minister Narendra Modi said: “To save India and every Indian, there will be a total ban on venturing out of your homes.” The country has so far reported 469 cases, and 10 deaths. (CNBC)
• Italy has reported 602 new deaths, bringing the total to 6,077, with reported 63,928 infections. In theUK, the death toll has reached 335 among 6,650 cases.” (Al Jazeera)
• Germany’s coronavirus anomaly: high infection rates but few deaths (Financial Times)
• The Tokyo Olympics were postponed yesterday, and today it was announced that the delay will be for one year and the games will be held in 2021. (Bloomberg)
• Hong Kong has barred all non-residents from visiting the island territory and has disallowed bars from serving alcohol, in a bid to prevent the “second wave” of new cases that have appeared in recent days (Caixin $$)
• Japan “has recorded a mere 49 deaths and 1,140 infections. Why are the numbers so low despite an apparent lack of preparation? It’s not entirely clear. (Asia Times)
• In Brazil, which now has 1,965 reported infections and  34 deaths, citizens are turning against president Bolsonaro “for his government’s handling of the coronavirus crisis.” (LA Times)

Cure and vaccine radar

• Famed AIDS researcher is racing to find a coronavirus treatment (Bloomberg Businessweek)
• COVID-19 pandemic may come and go for up to 2 years: Chinese expert (FocusTaiwan.com)

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Take care, and don’t forget to wash your hands!