“the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

Victor Davis Hanson writes in part in American Greatness,

Donald Trump was ridiculed for taking on the Chinese juggernaut in 2017, even though he was not wrong that China was a serial world trade cheater—manipulating currencies, dumping products below the cost of production, appropriating technology, infringing on patents and copyrights, and running up huge asymmetrical trade surpluses.

...But either by design or accident, the Trump standoff tore off the China scab. The exposed putrid wound beneath has terrified the world: lying, deceit, and subterfuge surrounded the mysterious COVID-19 contagion that emerged from Wuhan late last year and now has spread worldwide and panicked the globe. The coronavirus helped remind the world that the Hong Kong democracy protests, the creepy 1-million-person reeducation camps for Uyghur Muslims, and internal Chinese Orwellian surveillance were characteristic, not aberrant.

...When the virus peters out and the panic fades, China may be permanently rebranded and recalibrated by the world at large. Its trading partners will trust it far less to honor any commitments or to abide by any international agreements. Supply chains will be diversified. Tourism will be reduced in fears another such coronavirus will follow SARS and COVID-19—and be hushed up. Countries that had particular close commercial and cultural ties with China—Iran, South Korea, and Italy—were hurt most during the epidemic by Chinese silence and duplicity.

...Iran may be the biggest loser of the current chaos. U.S. sanctions already had cut Iranian oil revenue by about 90 percent. The remaining ten percent of sales, and in addition whatever income Iran received through smuggling and illicit sales, may be worth about half of what such reduced revenue garnered just a few months ago.

The theocracy has lost all credibility with the financially strapped Iranian people, 1,500 of whom it recently murdered in the streets. The mullahs lied to Iranians both about the shooting down of the Ukrainian jetliner and the extent of the COVID-19 infection sweeping through their country. The U.S. policy of “maximum pressure” replacing the flawed and appeasing Iran nuclear deal, will be seen as especially more effective each week.

...That more positives come back from far more testing does not necessarily mean a pandemic in the tens of millions of cases is certain, but perhaps reflects that the continuing ripples of the initial outbreak. In the two to three months when China did not apprise the world of the outbreaks and 10,000 and more a day were flying into American airports from China, lots of Americans were exposed and became carriers, and either had no symptoms or attributed their illnesses to the flu or bad colds as still more were infected. After all, it is hard not to concede that hundreds were not coronavirus positive of the million or so Chinese visitors who arrived in the United States during that critical time frame between November and January.

...Let us relearn that at times of crisis our country is singularly resilient and self-sufficient, and we have only ourselves to save ourselves, or as FDR said in 1932 at the height of the Great Depression, “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

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