Asia now looks safer than America.

[spin_dry]

Thanks Trump 

 

'A mess in America': Why Asia now looks safer than the U.S. in the coronavirus crisis

March 20, 2020, 6:14 PM CDT

Commuters pack a subway train in Taipei, Taiwan, on Wednesday. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)

In January, as Singapore racked up the highest numbers of coronavirus infections outside China, an alarmed Shasta Grant searched for flights back home to Indianapolis.

The 44-year-old American writer, who moved to this island city-state with her family eight years ago, worried that their adopted home would be ravaged again by a runaway disease and that the school where her husband teaches and their 12-year-old son studies would be closed. She feared food shortages, overwhelmed hospitals and travel bans.

But her husband persuaded her not to flee. Two months later, Singapore and other Asian nations have largely corralled their outbreaks while the virus roars across North America and Europe, leaving Grant dumbstruck by how quickly the U.S. went from a distant spectator of the epidemic to one of its primary victims.

“It feels very strange to say that I feel safer here than in my home country,” Grant said. “That sinking feeling that it was really going to get awful, that we were all going to get infected, that just didn't happen. Things never really got bad in Singapore, and obviously they’re a mess in America.”

In Asian countries that initially faced the gravest risk from the coronavirus, the shambolic U.S. response to the pandemic has elicited confusion, horror and even a measure of pity. Suddenly, it seems, the U.S. is the basket case, an aloof, inward-looking power that had already weakened its alliances, failed to lead on global emergencies such as climate change and shrunk in a crisis.

The U.S. was quick to restrict travel from China in the early weeks of the outbreak; now travelers from the U.S. are exporting a "second wave" of infections to China, Hong Kong and Singapore. President Trump, who once said the virus would disappear “like a miracle,” has watched it explode in California, Washington state and New York while vigilant testing and contact tracing brought it under control in Taiwan and South Korea.

People walk past the Marina Bay Sands resort in Singapore on Feb. 3. (Roslan Rahman / AFP/Getty Images)

As commercial shutdowns and shelter-in-place orders grind life to a halt in the United States' biggest cities, restaurants, bars, shopping malls and subway trains have operated virtually without interruption in Singapore and Taipei, Taiwan — the occasional mask and thermometer gun the only obvious signs of a pandemic. Emerging outbreaks in India and Indonesia, huge populations where little testing has been done, now worry experts more than China and its immediate surroundings.

Though the number of confirmed infections in the U.S. now exceeds 17,000 health experts warn that many more coronavirus cases are going unrecorded because of a scarcity of tests. Hospitals nationwide lack enough ventilators, beds and medication to treat an expected onslaught of critically ill patients.

Hervé Lemahieu, an Asia expert at the Lowy Institute, an Australian think tank, drew comparisons to Hurricane Katrina,another calamitous emergency response that laid bare the cracks in the U.S. political system and the widening inequities in American society.

“That was the first time that the world saw images broadcast from the U.S. that resembled those of a developing country, and that’s something that for most of us was surprising,” Lemahieu said. “These kinds of moments have a psychological impact on the way the U.S. is perceived abroad.”

They are having a financial impact, too, as fears of a prolonged U.S. slump drag down Asian stock markets, threatening to plunge some of the world’s fastest-growing economies into recession.

“This stock market fall is serious,” said Freddy Lim, a legislator in Taiwan, where the stock exchange has lost 20% of its value over the last month. “So we hope the U.S. will get this under control as soon as possible.”

Stock markets across Asia, including in Tokyo, have plunged during the coronavirus pandemic. (Clive Rose / Getty Images)

That the U.S. would look riskier in a pandemic than parts of Asia would have been unthinkable not long ago.

In 2002 and 2003, an outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, killed almost 800 people — nearly all in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore — and erased an estimated $40 billionfrom the global economy. Aggressive public health measures helped stop the disease before it spread in the U.S., while chastened leaders in China and Singapore pledged to invest in health infrastructure and epidemic surveillance.

Although China initially concealed the extent of this coronavirus outbreak — as it did with SARS — the Communist Party swiftly blanketed the epicenter of the virus, Hubei province, in a draconian lockdown that the World Health Organization praised as “extraordinary” in slowing the virus.

Through a mixture of strict quarantining, contact tracing, temperature checks and diligent testing, Singapore, South Korea,Taiwan and Hong Kong also bought time for other countries to prepare.

A man crosses an empty highway in Wuhan, China, on Feb. 3. (Getty Images)

Health officials say the U.S. and other Western governments failed to anticipate the coronavirus reaching their shores.

“Just because Singapore or Hong Kong experienced SARS while other places didn’t, there’s still lessons to be learned,” said Dale Fisher, a Singapore-based expert on infectious disease who traveled to China last month as part of a WHO-led mission. “You don’t have to be in a car accident to know that car accidents happen. I’m saddened that the world couldn’t use that lead time to prepare better.”

Others were blunter.

“Trump was saying this virus is no big deal, and now suddenly he’s changed his tune,” said PN Balji, a veteran Singaporean journalist and commentator. “It shows a callous disregard for your own citizens — and, to a certain extent, the world.”

Taiwan, less than 90 miles from the Chinese mainland and visited by as many as 2,000 Chinese tourists daily, had recorded 135 infections as of Friday — or roughly 1 of every 170,000 people, among the lowest rates of any of the more than 150 countries affected by the virus.

Compare that with the U.S., where 1 in 23,000 Americans has tested positive for the virus, add universal healthcare, and it’s easy to see why Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, urged her citizens this week to “stay in Taiwan” because it was safer than traveling overseas.

“Taiwan has a very robust health system,” said ruling party lawmaker Lo Chih-cheng. “This is one area where I think the U.S. can learn from Taiwan.”

Students enter Taipei American School in Taiwan on Wednesday. (Paula Bronstein / Getty Images)

Sean Kramer, a 32-year-old from the Seattle area who teaches at a junior high school in Taiwan, said friends and relatives messaged him in January to ask whether he’d be safe there. For a while, he considered flying home.

But then he watched the numbers of infections in China skyrocket while those in Taiwan stayed flat. He saw people on the street instinctively don masks, the Taiwanese administration roll out a succession of helpful messages and authorities quickly decide to extend Lunar New Year holidays for three extra weeks in February.

All the steps that appeared to Kramer like overreactions seemed to keep a lid on the epidemic. As the virus spreads across his home state, he tries to do his part for his family by logging on to Amazon from Taipei to buy masks and hand sanitizer for his sister in suburban Seattle.

“We never got the whole lockdown status, so seeing everyone react at home now, I can’t relate to their emotions or their fear,” Kramer said. “That’s the scary part for me as an American.”

The U.S. stumbles have also thrown a lifeline to Chinese President Xi Jinping, who was facing a rare spasm of dissent at home following his government’s initial attempts to paper over the outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei.

As the number of infections in the rest of the world has soared past those in China, Beijing has gone on a diplomatic and humanitarian offensive, pledging masks and medical equipment to dozens of countries — including the U.S. — in a bid to regain its global standing. This week, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma sent a shipment of 1 million masks and 500,000 coronavirus test kits to “our friends in America.”

 

Jack Ma

 

✔@JackMa

 

 

The first shipment of masks and coronavirus test kits to the US is taking off from Shanghai. All the best to our friends in America.

 

485K

10:09 PM - Mar 15, 2020

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Such moves — and Trump’s repeated references to the “Chinese virus” — highlight how the outbreak has become yet another arena of competition between the two leading global powers. Both countries appear to be covering up their mishandling of the crisis, said Lemahieu of the Lowy Institute, who called the war of words “pathetic and unappealing on both sides.”

Yet many Asian leaders retain faith that the U.S. will get a handle on its outbreak once social distancing orders and ramped-up health measures take hold, allowing it to resume a position of leadership in the global response.

“The United States has got enormous resources at its disposal,” Singaporean Foreign Affairs Minister Vivian Balakrishnan told CNBC last week. “It’s a matter of getting it organized and getting it delivered. So let’s wait and see. You know, I would never count the Americans out.”

 

 

[Anler]

I think it's time to nuke China and Thailand and any other country with wet markets. 

[Jimmy Snacks]

Yah I was really surprised to see how well Hong Kong has fared in all of this...good job. 

[Zambroski]

LOL!

Retards.

[spin_dry]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Yah I was really surprised to see how well Hong Kong has fared in all of this...good job. 

They didn’t fuck around. America and Canada will be the last to recover. 

[Jimmy Snacks]

2 minutes ago, Zambroski said:

LOL!

Retards.

 

1 minute ago, spin_dry said:

They didn’t fuck around. America and Canada will be the last to recover. 

Hmmmm...wonder why.

[Zambroski]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

 

Hmmmm...wonder why.

 

[Matt]

The tone of the article is spot on, but this picture is bullshit. Red is good on the Asian markets. That confused me the first time I was there before my now mother-in-law explained that red is a color of luck and prosperity. 

[Matt]

My wife has friends who have left the US to return to Taiwan to hunker down there. They have a handle on things because they were decisive. Here we were fucking around with a bullshit impeachment while the storm was gathering. 

[washedupmxer]

Who loves to pass anti American propaganda? 

Pouts and his pops spun gay that's who! 

[Jimmy Snacks]

9 minutes ago, Zambroski said:

 

Hardly but continue on with your bullshit.

[Zambroski]

2 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Hardly but continue on with your bullshit.

Oh, there’s no “hardly” about it.  You, Spinner and a few others have turned this place into a half-witted, TDS, Corona, pants-shitting theater.

My god.  You are all emotional women!  

[spin_dry]

17 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

 

Hmmmm...wonder why.

The used car salesman in the White House? That guy gets stranger at every presser.  its become entertainment. 

[washedupmxer]

21 minutes ago, spin_dry said:

They didn’t fuck around. America and Canada will be the last to recover. 

Just quoting so it's in the record

 

[Jimmy Snacks]

5 minutes ago, Zambroski said:

Oh, there’s no “hardly” about it.  You, Spinner and a few others have turned this place into a half-witted, TDS, Corona, pants-shitting theater.

My god.  You are all emotional women!  

Look around dumbshit...it’s you and Buttcocks against the world....go get ‘em tuff guy!!!!!! 
 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Jimmy Snacks

[snoughnut]

13 minutes ago, Matt said:

My wife has friends who have left the US to return to Taiwan to hunker down there. They have a handle on things because they were decisive. Here we were fucking around with a bullshit impeachment while the storm was gathering. 

Be careful with the word “we”...... it was the Dementedcrats that were fucking around with a bullshit impeachment.

[Zambroski]

5 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Look around dumbshit...it’s you and Buttcocks against the world....go get ‘em tuff guy!!!!!! 
 

Awwww....poor Pouty!  “Be afraid if I am!!!”

Woman.

[Snake]

Some certainly seem to take pleasure with bad news and its effect on the country.

[Rigid1]

NYC needs to hire a bunch of crop dusters load them up with bleach and have them start spraying like they did in China. 

[Jimmy Snacks]

20 minutes ago, Zambroski said:

Awwww....poor Pouty!  “Be afraid if I am!!!”

Woman.

Put your wife on a plane...all is well. Apparently they are shutting down the country because everybody in charge is a scared woman. Your phony badass act is so lame and weak. 

8 minutes ago, Snake said:

Some certainly seem to take pleasure with bad news and its effect on the country.

No pleasure taken here whatsoever. 

Edited March 22, 2020 by Jimmy Snacks

[spin_dry]

9 minutes ago, Snake said:

Some certainly seem to take pleasure with bad news and its effect on the country.

You have an odd, almost paranoid perspective. 

[Zambroski]

9 minutes ago, Snake said:

Some certainly seem to take pleasure with bad news and its effect on the country.

Misery loves company isn’t a new term.  It’s just that now, hating others because they won’t join in is part of the game.

Just now, spin_dry said:

You have an odd, almost paranoid perspective. 

You are just a sad person.

3 minutes ago, Jimmy Snacks said:

Put your wife on a plane...all is well. Apparently they are shutting down the country because everybody in charge is a scared woman. Your phony badass act is so lame and weak. 

No pleasure taken here whatsoever. 

we are taking extra precautions but we aren’t paralyzed and scared to death....and certainly don’t associate with those that are.  They are usually the ones whose lives are a bit of a mess and can’t wait to latch on to anybody to suck the happiness out of them too.

Life suckers.  That’s what you and Spin are.

[bladefever]

50 minutes ago, spin_dry said:

The used car salesman in the White House? That guy gets stranger at every presser.  its become entertainment. 

Used car salesman from a back alley run down car lot.