China's Campaign To Keep The Coronavirus Under Control
ZAKARIA: Now for our "What in the World" segment. Tens of thousands infected, hundreds dead, more than two dozen countries affected and counting. That is the damage inflicted so far by the deadly coronavirus that propped up in China in December and shows no signs of dying down. The WHO has called it a global health emergency. Many international airlines have stopped flying to China and governments have chartered flights to evacuate their citizens from that country. But the most fascinating part of this story is the Chinese government marshaling it's prodigious state machinery to enact it's believed to the largest quarantine in human city in centers around the city of Wuhan in Hubei Province where the virus first appeared and where the outbreak is centered. There most businesses and schools are now closed highways nearly deserted, public transportation has shut down. Routes to the outside world are all but cut off. Wuhan has about 11 million residents, but you would never guess that looking at the streets today. A mysterious disease began to come into public view in late December when a doctor messaged his friends that there was an infection in his hospital. The infection was believed to be tied to a seafood market. Wuhan authorities promptly shut down the market, but also called the doctor into the police station and reprimanded him for disrupting the social order. The central government didn't take control until January 20th when it ordered the quarantine. In the days that followed gymnasiums and exhibition centers were turned into makeshift hospitals. Workers and police were deployed to take people's temperatures as they entered public places and open shops. Workers sprayed down streets and hotels even people with disinfectants. The scale of China's lockdown is impressive, but it was also delayed which accounts in part for the widespread of the disease the crowding of the hospitals and the numbers of the deaths in Hubei as the Chinese news outlet reported. Between January 23rd and February 4th, the official death toll in Hubei Province grew by a factor of 20, and included in the death toll now is that doctor who first blew the whistle on the disease. Faced with the hospital crowding, the government devised an only in China solution. It set out to build two new hospitals in Wuhan in under two weeks, deploying thousands of construction workers using prefabricated units. According to state media both opened this week and each were staffed with more than a thousand military medical workers. The precautionary methods have spread beyond Wuhan almost 60 million people around the country are under lockdown. Many shops have shuttered in Beijing and Shanghai. Macao closed its casinos. The government had sent drowns around the country to tell people to wear masks. The response has become a matter the patriotism. This week an editorial in "The People's Daily" called for a people's war against the virus, entreating citizens to rally around the communist party central committee and Xi Jinping. Now this is an impressive response and could probably only happen in China but that doesn't mean it is always the smartest strategy. Some of the most stringent restrictions stigmatize the ill and restrict personal liberties. According to Shi Chin (ph) early last month Wuhan police "Punished" eight people most of them doctors for rumor mongering because they're actually just spreading news of the outbreak. Still these are uncharted waters. We should all watch closely what is going on in China and learn from it. The world is more connected than ever before, and so we are likely to see more of these kinds of crises in the future. Next on "GPS" the Trump Administration's Middle East peace plan was hatched without any consultation with Palestinian officials. I will talk with the Chief Palestinian Negotiator about what he thinks of the plan.