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Musings Report 2020-7 2-15-20 Trauma and Pandemic
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Trauma and Pandemic
I'm sure some of you are tired of reading about the coronavirus pandemic, and I promise that I'll soon return to a broader range of topics. But since the pandemic is the signal driver in this moment in history, and it is as yet early days in what promises to be profound and long-lasting, I would be remiss if I didn't take pains to cover the dynamics that are being under-reported or ignored in the conventional media coverage.
One of the biggest such omissions is an appreciation of the longer term consequences of the immense trauma being experienced by the Chinese people. Rather than being sensitive to the lack of comparable traumas in recent history, the American media--especially the financial media--is completely tone-deaf to this tragic reality.
The U.S. media is focused on "how soon can China return to normal," i.e. return to consuming imports and assembling iPhones to fatten Apple's profits.
To paraphrase a sentiment widely attributed to Stalin, One death is a tragedy but a million deaths is a statistic.
To say that the American media obsession with China's "return to normal" is self-interested and financial in nature is to state the obvious. But what's being overlooked in this cavalier, abstract reduction of the pandemic is the nature of human trauma.
People do not get over a trauma this profound in a few weeks. There can be no frictionless, quick "return to pre-pandemic life" in China, and this is painfully obvious if we attune ourselves even slightly to the impact of trauma on individuals and societies.
While the media reports official Chinese statistics--all clearly lies by omission and under-reporting--what few seem willing to recognize is the tremendous losses. For me, a photo (or perhaps it was a short video) of a young woman weeping inconsolably as the body of her mother was unceremoniously hauled away to the crematorium crystallized the cost, the losses and the national trauma.
For this was not the first tragedy of the pandemic to befall this young person; her father had also died 20 days earlier of the coronavirus. This young person lost both parents in the space of a month to the pandemic.
Yet our media is full of stories that the virus is "no worse than a bad cold" and "will all be gone by April."
As unlikely as that is, the trauma will not be gone by April.
The national trauma is unprecedented on a number of levels. Everyone is aware that the Chinese government uses statistics to fashion positive political optics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
But for secrets and lies in service of political optics to have unleashed the virus on the entire nation--that is beyond the usual official rigging of statistics to serve Party optics. It is a complete betrayal of the Chinese people, and betrayal has long-lasting consequences.
Once trust is lost, it cannot be recovered without much time and many small steps; even one further betrayal will destroy trust forever.
Once faith in institutions is lost, it cannot be recovered. Once confidence is lost, it cannot be recovered without much time and many small steps.
One reason for the tone-deaf media coverage in the West is financial self-interest; another is the dearth of comparable traumas in the West, a trauma that directly impacts hundreds of millions of people, not as onlookers viewing events on a screen but as the direct, lived experiences of individuals and families.
To expect everyone to act as if the trauma never happened is simply not realistic.
I have often written about the high expectations of the Chinese people built up over the past 35 years. Other than a brief wobble during the Asian Contagion in 1998, it's been onward and upward for 35 years, basically two generations. This trend has institutionalized unrealistically high expectations that there will never be a reversal of this break-neck trend of endless high growth in personal wealth and income.
But beneath the "positive news" of bogus GDP statistics, China's economy has stagnated for the past few years, and the trade war was not the primary cause: China's economy has subtly shifted from a dependence on increasing production and direct foreign investment (FDI) to a largely hidden dependence on speculation.
Companies don't have earnings from production, they have gains from speculating in debt and the stocks of other companies. Households aren't getting wealthier because they're producing more but because their real estate holding are rising in what appears to be a permanently expanding housing bubble.
This is one of the hidden costs of sacrificing reality to serve political optics: the average person may sense the stagnation, but they have little appreciation of the rising fragility or soaring risks built into the Chinese economy.
When our expectations are low, we tend to roll with the punches and take disappointments, failures and losses in stride because we had a realistic assessment of the difficulties in reaching great success.
But when our expectations are of easy, endless gains and a stable trend higher regardless of any other conditions, our shock and anguish at failure and loss is shattering.
Since this pandemic and the trauma it is creating are unprecedented, it is the height of folly to expect short-lived, limited events such as the SARS outbreak to provide the template for the coronavirus pandemic.
Not only are all those hoping / expecting the Chinese people to quickly return to re-pandemic life incredibly insensitive and greedy, they're also incredibly clueless about the deep, long-lasting consequences of trauma on this scale.
Highlights of the Blog
The Violent Collision of Market Fantasy and Viral Reality 2/14/20
Our "Come to Mao" Reckoning and the Next Cultural Revolution 2/13/20
China's Fatal Dilemma 2/11/20
Controlling the Narrative Is Not the Same as Controlling the Virus 2/9/20
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Personal revelation: what children want from parents are not words intended to foster a sense of security, but the living reassurance of the parents' being secure themselves.
From Left Field
The Ride-Hail Utopia That Got Stuck in Traffic: Uber and Lyft said they would ease congestion. Instead they made it worse.
Canadian energy giant 'funding' Oregon sheriff’s unit to thwart protests against one of its own pipeline projects (via Chad D.)
They Documented the Coronavirus Crisis in Wuhan. Then They Vanished. (via LaserLefty)
Printing Money--a graphic depiction of scale (via GFB)
Save our city: Why it's so hard to run a small business in NYC (via Thomas D.)
Costco Capitalism (via GFB)
Coronavirus Hits 15% Fatality Rate, 83% Infection Rate for Those Exposed; Lancet Publishes Early Study That Points to Alarming Consequences for Humanity
Professor Says Coronavirus is Infecting 50,000 a Day, and He May be Right: Ferguson's model estimates that China has only detected 10% of total coronavirus cases. Judging by the official infection numbers coming out of China, he may be right.
Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and its inactivation with biocidal agents--virus can remain contagious for 9 days....
Where's Xi? China's Leader Commands Coronavirus Fight From Safe Heights-- maybe safety will prove to be illusory...
America: Land of Make-Believe-- FantasyLand on multiple levels....
The American Life Is Killing You--sobering....
The State of the American Debt Slaves, Q4 2019 (via U. Doran)
"All money is a matter of belief." Adam Smith
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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