To my complete lack of surprise, a major new potential pandemic has reared its ugly head thanks, yet again, to the Chinese.

I was there in Singapore in the summer of 2003 when SARS hit. I saw firsthand exactly what that disaster did to the region’s economy in general, and Singapore’s in particular. Bankers and accountants became hawker-store sellers and taxi drivers practically overnight as the economy contracted at astonishing speed. Orchard Road and the major shopping centres went from “holy shit it’s as crowded as a f***ing Indian railway platform in this mall” to “where the Hell did everyone go?!?!” in the space of about a month.

The Singaporean government reacted with exceptional speed to impose draconian measures upon the economy. Travel was heavily restricted. Severe quarantines were imposed on anyone coming in from China. Anyone who even looked like he or she might be unhealthy, was promptly whisked away at ports of entry to be rigourously checked out. Anyone who showed signs of a bad fever was detained and kept in a hospital for observation.

I do not for one moment criticise the Singaporean government’s response, because there was nothing to criticise. That is precisely how a government has to respond in the face of a potential viral pandemic. You basically have to quarantine everyone with the plague, then everyone that those people came into contact with, then everyone that those people came into contact with, and if you really want to be thorough – which the Singaporeans absolutely were – you also quarantine everyone that those people came into contact with too.

That’s four levels of quarantine procedures. It is hugely time-consuming and extremely expensive to do. And it absolutely has to be done.

Yeah, the economy goes straight into the shitter the moment that this happens. Screw that. Screw the economy, screw people’s livelihoods, screw EVERYTHING until the slippery little sucker is absolutely exterminated.

By July of that year, Singapore had entered a very sharp and extremely painful recession. It was brutal, for about six months.

But the draconian measures and extreme quarantine procedures worked. Singapore was one of the first three countries in Southeast Asia to be declared SARS-free.

All of that would have been totally unnecessary, of course, if it were not for the Chinese government completely cocking things up – which they usually do in such situations.

To this day, the Chinese government still has not admitted that it bore, and still bears, responsibility for bringing that entire region of the world to its knees and wrecking their economies, as well as causing severe problems for everyone else.

And why? Because of the Chinese obsession with saving “face”.

In case you’re a Westerner and have no idea what this means, understand that the concept of “face” is absolutely central to the East Asian mindset. It is a matter of personal honour and social rank. East Asians take failures much more personally than Westerners do, because within their society, the failure of an individual is also the failure of the people closest to him. His family are shamed by his screwups, as are his colleagues, his mentors, his subordinates, and so on.

If you’ve never experienced what that kind of shame is like, imagine walking into a room after you’ve just screwed the pooch, and trying to find any sort of sympathy or eye contact from anyone.

If that room is full of Chinese, Japanese, or South Koreans, not ONE of those people will look you in the eye. It is literally as though you have no face at all.

Because of this extremely powerful and effective form of social shaming, there is a very strong pressure upon Chinese people in general to be seen as successful at all times.

So it was when SARS hit.

Like the current Wuhan coronavirus that is now spreading throughout China and the rest of the world, SARS was (and is) a member of the coronavirus family. Once you catch it, you manifest flu-like symptoms as your immune system weakens from fighting the virus. Its mortality rate is only about 10% – though that is actually pretty damned high for an infectious disease – and that mortality rate can be significantly mitigated or even eliminated entirely through good healthcare, because the primary infection isn’t what kills you. The secondary infections of lung-infiltrating diseases like pneumonia typically are what do you in.

In most countries with socialised healthcare systems and a severe lack of transparency – such as in China – SARS was a very scary disease and significantly overloaded the hospital systems.

In countries with private healthcare and proper systems for handling such things, SARS was basically nothing much more than a very nasty cold that went away after a couple of weeks.

In Canada – which has socialised healthcare – there were 251 cases and 44 deaths.

In Singapore – which has perhaps the world’s best healthcare system – there were 238 cases and 33 deaths. This was actually at the high end of the mortality spectrum for the disease; in China and Hong Kong combined, they experienced over 8,000 cases and 648 deaths, with another 24 deaths from other causes.

But in the USA, there were 27 cases and ZERO fatalities. In America, it was basically nothing more than an abominably bad cold.

We could go on and on for a while about the benefits of private healthcare versus the madness of socialised healthcare, but that’s for another time – and besides, John Ringo went into it all in considerable detail in his superb book, The Last Centurion.

The point that I want to look at is the fact that the Chinese have yet again completely screwed everyone over, simply by refusing to be transparent, safe, and clean.

Apparently this coronavirus strain spreading right now is a mutated derivative of two other strains – one of which is found in bats, while the other’s origins are unknown.

And that raises all sorts of scary questions, because it turns out that this coronavirus strain originated in an illegal meat market in the Chinese city of Wuhan that sold – get this – bats and snakes for consumption as food.

No doubt you have seen by now those horrible videos of “bat soup” and live mice being eaten by the Chinese. I am sorry to say that those are real things in Asia. Bats are consumed throughout East and Southeast Asia; dogs are butchered and sold on the streets in China and Korea; snakes are consumed in China, Vietnam, and Cambodia.

In case you are wondering – it is NOT a good idea to eat meat from such sources.

Those animals are well known for being transmission vectors for all sorts of horrid diseases to which humans are highly susceptible. This coronavirus is apparently another one of the same.

Quite apart from the fact – and it is a fact – that some cultures are simply better, and saner, than others when it comes to what should and should not be eaten, the worst part of this whole situation is that, once again, the Chinese have landed everyone else in the midst of a hot mess that could have been avoided.

This latest coronavirus does not appear to be anywhere nearly as deadly as SARS or MERS, but that is only if you assume that the Chinese numbers regarding infection totals are anywhere close to accurate. Given that this is China in question, the answer to that question is almost certainly, “Not only NO but F*** NO!!!“.

Right now, over 1,200 cases have been reported in China alone, with 41 deaths. It is probably safe to assume that the situation is at least twice as bad as what the Chinese report. And given the proliferation of fast and cheap global mass transit, the destruction of border controls and immigration checks, and the well-known propensity of Chinese travelers to bring, shall we say, exotic foodstuffs with them when traveling, it is probably fair to assume that the only way to stop this thing in its tracks is to enact a complete global lockdown of all flights and all travel into or out of China.

Once again, the very Chinese desire to save face, avoid humiliation, and preserve the power and authority of the central government, has condemned millions of other people to suffer.

Such is the selfishness and shortsightedness of a highly authoritarian and paranoid system of government that cares pretty much only for its own survival – everyone else be damned.

So we now find ourselves at the tender mercies of Corona-chan. Follow these simple tips, and hopefully you will be just F.I.N.E. – Freaked-out, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional, to quote a great line from the 2002 remake of The Italian Job:

• Follow the news, e.g. WHO, /r/China_Flu, visualizations, e.g. here and here.
• Don’t worry much if you’re not a boomer – for now.
• Once it lands in your region, try to minimize contacts with other people. Brush up on your hikikomori skills, they’ll finally come in handy.
• Obviously no idiot-tier things, like going to restaurants, cafes, concerts. Minimize public transport usage.
• Try to get a work-from-home arrangement.
• Be aware that face masks offer minimal protection (and this Corona can spread through the eyes).
• Keep hands away from face.
• Do the usual prepper things: Get supplies of grains, meat in bulk for the freezer, water, coffee, etc. Even better, get to an isolated rural retreat, if it’s a realistic option.
• Make sure any entertainment is strictly thematic:
• Stephen King’s classic, The Stand.
• Richard Preston on Corona-chan’s more bloodthirsty but stupider sister, The Hot Zone.
• Russian cult classic video games Pathologic and the more recent Pathologic 2.
• Plague Inc. video game.
• Zombie movies (my favorite is REC).
• Maintain positive outlook. At least we’ll get a temporary reprieve from cheap Chinese tour groups. [This is a big one. I can’t tell you how irritating it is to be around massed groups of Chinese tourists in the Moscow metro. They have even LESS civic sense in other countries than they do in their own.]
• Most importantly, follow the right protocols: Say a prayer to Papa Nurgle and poast “I LOVE YOU CORONA-CHAN!” in the comments.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering what Nurgle looks like – that’s him up top.

Much more of this sort of nonsense from the Chinese, and we can probably look forward to battalions of their Plague Marines marching forward in the name of Grandfather Nurgle to bring disease and pestilence throughout the world: