bildt76_ANTHONY WALLACEAFP via Getty Images_chinacoronavirus

Why This Time Was Different

May 20, 2020 Carl Bildt

In 2003, the world contained the SARS epidemic to Southeast Asia and ended the crisis by that July. Based on the limited information currently available, four factors help to explain the difference between then and now.

STOCKHOLM – How will the COVID-19 mega-crisis end? I don’t know, and nor does anyone else. So, perhaps it would be more productive to reflect on how it started. By addressing that issue, we might be able to improve our chances of averting another pandemic in the future.

The current crisis is hardly the first of its kind. In early 2003, another coronavirus – SARS-CoV-1 – suddenly spread from southern China across Southeast Asia, but it ultimately remained regionally contained. Later, we learned that SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) had been spreading in southern China for some time, and that Chinese officials had been reluctant even to admit its existence and issue a warning, let alone take appropriate measures to contain it. Only after the epidemic had reached Hong Kong, a key global financial hub, did alarm bells go off.

Nonetheless, coordinated international action soon followed. There was a sharp drop in air traffic in the region, and many areas were cordoned off. The World Health Organization’s leaders at the time criticized China for its slow response, and the Chinese health minister was duly fired. By early July, the WHO was able to declare the crisis over, lifting its remaining recommendations for restrictive measures. The world returned to normal.

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Carl Bildt

Writing for PS since 2009
78 Commentaries

Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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j. von Hettlingen May 21, 2020

Carl Bildt says Covid-19 is not the first infectious disease to be declared a pandemic. Within weeks, it has devastated the global economy, infecting over 5 million people and killing more than 320.000. Governments around the world are scrambling to respond to the threat of Covid-19, despite the disease having a far lower mortality rate than other respiratory diseases like SARS in 2003, which killed between 14 and 15% of people it infected. SARS spread less because people typically displayed symptoms when they were infectious.
While Covid-19 seems “much more contagious than its predecessor,” the virus could go undetected, due to the mild symptoms that most of those infected experience. The author asks: “Why have we failed so spectacularly in 2020 after succeeding in 2003? Any answer to that question will be tentative, because there is much that we still don’t know about COVID-19 or the early months of the outbreak. Still, I see four factors that might help to explain the difference between now and then.”
The author says, “it took time for Chinese authorities to wake up to what was happening, sound the alarm, and start taking resolute action.” He also raises questions about whether China had been fully transparent when Covid-19 first emerged there in mid-November 2019. Many countries blame China for its initial secrecy. The virus “had been detected spreading through Wuhan by mid-December, when reports started circulating in Taiwan. Finally, on December 31, 2019, China alerted the WHO of a potential outbreak.” But it started to spread “much farther and wider than SARS ever did.”
"History doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes." Obviously Beijing had not learned from Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). Back in November 2002 the first cluster of SARS cases occurred in Guangdong, Southern China. In February 2003 the WHO was notified of deaths, which issued a global alert in March about the atypical pneumonia spreading in China. The WHO put out an emergency travel advisory, warning that SARS was spreading across the world by people using air transport, prompting travellers to be screened at airports.
From April onward, the WHO urged people to postpone all but essential travel to affected areas, which included Hong Kong, Toronto, several areas of mainland China, and Taiwan. On July 5 the WHO officially declared the SARS epidemic to be contained, by means of syndromic surveillance, prompt isolation of patients, strict enforcement of quarantine of all contacts, and in some areas top-down enforcement of community quarantine. As a result there were merely 8.439 cases and 812 deaths reported. Apart from four small outbreaks, there have been no new cases ever since, although the WHO warned that “the resurgence of SARS leading to an outbreak remains a distinct possibility and does not allow for complacency.”
The author points out “that the world of 2019-2020 is much more interconnected than the world of 2002-2003 was. Wuhan, an inland city with 11 million people, has sometimes been called the Chicago of China, owing to its wide-ranging integration into global supply chains. Over the past few decades, the city has developed into a major hub. Before the lockdown pandemic, there were six flights per week from Wuhan to Paris (as well as five to Rome and three to London), and frequent non-stop flights to San Francisco and New York. What happened in Wuhan did not stay in Wuhan.”
Covid-19 has laid bare the dimension of geopolitical power play. “The world was already falling into a persistent state of confrontation and disarray long before the COVID-19 crisis erupted. Back in 2003, it was only natural that the international community would come together quickly to coordinate a joint response. But in 2020, that scenario wasn’t even on the table. Even after the virus had gone global…. Trump’s administration remained in denial. And to this day, it has not made even the slightest gesture toward providing global leadership.”
Even if SARS had been as contagious as Covid-19 in 2003, it was doubtful whether the Bush administration would have led the fight against a global pandemic. Bush and his neocon hawks were preoccupied with their war in Iraq following their invasion in March that year. Had Trump not won the 2016 election, America’s “historic abdication of its traditional role” might have been averted, and “most of the established instruments of global cooperation” would still be in place. No one knows how the Trump administration fares ahead of the November election. If he loses his bid for re-election, there is hope for a return to stability.
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Remnant Remnant May 20, 2020

The number of deaths in Sweden ’s defeat is already in the top eight in the world, indicating that Sweden ’s strategy is a big failure. There is no scientific basis for group immunization, and the government does not act at tall. 3800 life already died in Sweden and it is still increased 100 per day. are you satisfied with this number or what you can do for it?
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Emanuel Müller May 20, 2020

I don't mean to state the obvious but if anything has to be globally relevant, it has to be non short-termistic as there is apparently a link between time and space and therefore short-termistic states and governance systems and other profit driven actors are bound to be also short-sighted. One possibility would be the make the political terms longer, e.g. 10 years for any head of state so that he or she can get some basic understanding of local governance let alone global governance, or to make the political actors impersonal e.g. in Switzerland there are seven yearly to be switched head of states.
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Alexey Tuzikov May 20, 2020

This comment was removed by a moderator. Replies to this comment may also be deleted. Please note that we moderate comments to ensure the conversation remains topically relevant. We appreciate well-informed comments and welcome your criticism and insight. Please be civil and avoid name-calling and ad hominem remarks.
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Godfree Roberts May 20, 2020

First, it took time for Chinese authorities to wake up to what was happening, sound the alarm?

No, the virus was circulating for months before it reached China. It's just that China was the only country looking for it, while the US banned Covid-19 testing until March 3.

Francis Collins, director of the US National Institutes of Health, said the virus might have been spreading quietly in humans for years, or even decades, without causing a detectable outbreak. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3077442/coronavirus-pathogen-could-have-been-spreading-humans-decades.

CNN host Chris Cuomo said he believes there will be revelations showing the novel coronavirus was spreading in the United States as early as October. “The kids now anecdotally, Cristina believes, that at least two of them have had it in the last few months. Why? We don’t know, but atypically long-duration sinus, fever, lethargy. I think we’re going to learn that coronavirus has been in this country since, like, October, that there have been cases,” Cuomo said. “And as you guys both know, and I hear all the time from all over the country, how many people do you hear saying, ‘I think I had it, I had this and this, I lost my sense of smell and this and that, but I never got tested’? Those cases are, like, abounding all over the country,” he added. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/chris-cuomo-predicts-evidence-will-show-coronavirus-was-spreading-in-us-since-october.

Belleville, NJ, Mayor Michael Melham said he has tested positive for coronavirus antibodies, adding that he believes he was sick with the virus in November — more than a month before doctors in China first reported cases of the new disease. Melham said he was sick toward the end of November and suffered from chills, hallucinations and a "skyrocketing temperature" after he left the League of Municipalities Conference in Atlantic City.Melham said it was the sickest he had ever been in his adult life. He did not take a flu test and said he did not travel overseas. Melham said he later suspected he had contracted the coronavirus in November but dismissed the notion because the earliest cases in the United States weren't reported until January. His November illness is what prompted Melham to ask his doctor for the blood test. He got the results Wednesday.The mayor said it is entirely possible he was exposed to the coronavirus later and was asymptomatic, but felt it was "highly, highly unlikely.The antibody in my blood is older as opposed to the more recent one showing you just finished fighting it off," Melham said.Melham believes he could potentially be an early, undetected case of the coronavirus.
https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/essex/belleville/2020/04/30/belleville-nj-mayor-tests-positive-coronavirus-antibodies/3057925001/

A Miami Herald analysis shows state health officials have documented at least 170 COVID-19 patients reporting symptoms between Dec. 31, 2019, and Feb. 29.Coronavirus was in Florida before we knew it
A Miami Herald analysis shows state health officials have documented at least 170 COVID-19 patients reporting symptoms between Dec. 31, 2019, and Feb. 29. https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/05/05/coranavirus-was-in-florida-before-we-knew-it/

Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s chief epidemiologist, said coronavirus may have been circulating in the country since November https://www.ft.com/content/aba67162-9129-41b9-b82b-d61a890e6589

Dr. Junya Fukushima (Gastroenterologist, University of Tsukuba). From fb, "In August 2019, the new coronavirus COVID-19 had invaded and spread in Japan." In Japan, this year's infection is the second wave. A large-scale antibody test is desirable in the future. #covid19. https://mobile.twitter.com/isaiah_sweetie/status/1257885191864897536

This week, French authorities announced that the first coronavirus case in France could have occurred a month earlier than official figures suggest, according to a professor from Avicenne Hospital, following the retesting of 24 patient blood samples. Professor Yves Cohen from the Avicenne Hospital in Bobigny said in an interview with local media that it appears that Covid-19 was already in France at the end of 2019 – rather than in January-February 2020 – as had previously been thought. A decision was made to retest 24 samples of blood from patients who were admitted in December with respiratory infections but had tested negative for the flu. Out of the 24 samples retested, one male patient came back positive for Covid-19. “We’ve reanalyzed all negative tests on people who were diagnosed with pneumonia. Of the 24 patients, we found one who resulted positive to Covid-19 on December 27 when he was taken to our Avicenne Hospital,” said Cohen. He confirmed that the patient in question has fully recovered and “is well.”https://www.rt.com/news/487707-first-covid19-france-december/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=RSS

French media report that military athlete Elodie Clouvel said she and her boyfriend fell ill with Covid-19 while participating in the Wuhan military games. ” I think that with Valentin ( Belaud, her companion, pentathlete too) we already had the coronavirus, the Covid-19, I mean” she said at the time. “We just weren’t talking about it yet” http://www.leparisien.fr/international/covid-19-des-athletes-francais-contamines-a-wuhan-en-octobre-05-05-2020-8311221.php
https://rmcsport.bfmtv.com/jo/coronavirus-des-sportifs-francais-s-interrogent-apres-une-competition-a-wuhan-en-octobre-1908001.html
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