France: The Forgotten Nuclear Power That Could Kill Billions of People Paris might not have a massive stockpile of nukes, but they could do some serious damage if need be. by Caleb Larson

The French nuclear arsenal is pretty substantial, with air- and sea-based components. Here is a breakdown of French nuclear capabilities. 

Nuclear Dyad

Unlike the United States or Russia, who maintain a nuclear triad of land-based, submarine-launched, and air-launched missiles, France has a dyad of submarines that can launch nuclear ballistic missiles and a stockpile of air-launched nuclear cruise missiles.

M51 Ballistic Missile

The M51 is the heart of French nuclear deterrence at sea. Each missile has six to ten Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), and each of those MIRVs is guessed to be in the 75 to 110 kiloton range.

Its range is estimated at 8,000 kilometers, or just under 5,000 miles and the missiles are launched from the nuclear-powered Triumphant-class submarines.

Air-Sol Moyenne Portée

The Air-Sol Moyenne Portée is the air-launched component of French strategic deterrence. The missiles play a unique role in French deterrence, where their use would be considered a warning shot of sorts before the more widespread use of nuclear weapons would be used in a conflict. 

It uses a high-speed ramjet engine design and replaced earlier French free-falling nuclear bombs. According to CSIS, the missiles “accelerates to Mach 2.0 in five seconds, after which the booster cartridge is ejected from the ramjet exhaust nozzle. Then, the liquid (kerosene) – powered ramjet motor takes over and accelerates to a maximum speed of Mach 3.” Though not supersonic (Mach 5+), these speeds are nonetheless quite fast. CSIS estimates that only 40 to 50 missiles were ever produced.

Hadès

The Hadès missile system was at one point a land-based component of French strategic deterrence — though only at the tactical, not strategic level, due to the system’s relatively short 480 kilometer, or about 300 mile range.

The Hadès was created in 1975 as a road-mobile option to defend the borders of France in case of an invasion by the Soviet Union. Part of what doomed the program was the missile’s range, which would have put East Germany squarely in Hadès’ crosshairs.

After the reunification of Germany in 1990, it became politically untenable to maintain a stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons that could reach only as far as Germany, and the missiles and launchers were subsequently dismantled in the mid-1990s.

Prestige Factor

French nuclear deterrence is marked by a distinctly independent streak. France left the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1966, and returned only fairly recently, in 2009. One of the issues was French reluctance to place their strategic nuclear arsenal under the umbrella of NATO.

France is one of the world’s preeminent missile powers — in addition to a wide array of conventional and nuclear missiles, France is also a permanent member of the United Nation’s security council. There is indeed an aura of exclusivity in being one of the world’s few nuclear powers — an aura made even more exclusive by leaving the world’s largest military alliance. 

Thankfully, France is no longer going it alone.

Why Coronavirus Mass Burials Are No Surprise That's how people have been buried in poorer countries. by Vicki Daniel

The coronavirus is not only controlling how we live, but increasingly what happens after we die.

In early April, New York City’s Council Health Committee chair Mark Levine generated buzz after tweeting that the city was considering temporary burials in local parks for victims of COVID-19. News outlets and social media users eagerly circulated his tweets, which seemed to be an ominous sign of the disease’s toll.

Although city officials assured residents that such temporary burials had not yet taken place, aerial footage of workers in protective gear interring bodies on Hart Island, the city’s “potter’s field,” seemed to confirm that the epidemic was overwhelming both our health care and our death care industries.

For people who expect a “proper” send-off when they die, the images were shocking, but for thousands of poor Americans, the prospect of burial in such a grave is a growing reality. It also is nothing new.

Cost of dying

Burial on Hart Island has been the fate of indigent New Yorkers for years. The city purchased the island in 1868 and performed its first burial there the following year. With approximately 1,000,000 individuals interred there since, the island off the Bronx is one of the nation’s largest potter’s fields, but it certainly is not the only one.

Programs exist throughout the country to handle the indigent dead, a category that includes unidentified bodies or deceased individuals whose families cannot or will not claim their bodies. These programs vary by state and, in many cases, by county. Most allow for an extended period of time for family to claim the remains, then rely on various methods for disposing of the bodies left behind.

Chicago inters remains in plots donated by the Catholic Archdiocese at Mount Olivet cemetery. San Francisco contracts with a cemetery in nearby Oakland to dispose of cremated remains at sea.

Costs for handling these remains can range from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars per body, creating a financial burden for some cities and counties. Often, cremation is the preferred method of disposal because of its lower cost, but in some cases, counties donate the dead to medical science, which is free.

Rich and fulfilling death

As a historian of death in America, I have seen how socioeconomic standing has dramatically shaped the final disposition of the dead throughout time, especially after the rise of the funeral industry following the Civil War. By the end of the 19th century, the more affluent could afford to be embalmed, laid out in a casket, transported to a cemetery, and put to rest in a marked plot, all which might cost around US$100 – around $3,000 in today’s dollars.

But those without means have long relied on the community to properly dispose of their remains. In rural communities, where most residents knew one another, the poor might at least hope to receive an unmarked plot in the local churchyard – the primary burial site until the establishment of public burying grounds in the 19th century.

In cities, however, the indigent dead often became the responsibility of municipal departments, such as the board of health. As better wages drew laborers to urban areas in the late 19th century, officials worked to address perceived problems stemming from industrialization and rapid population growth: poverty, vice, crime and disease. Those who died in public hospitals, poorhouses, workhouses, orphanages or prisons were usually buried by the city with little ceremony. Bodies were placed in simple coffins and carted straight to the public burial grounds with minimal funeral service.

Sadly, burial in a potter’s field also sometimes rendered the poor more vulnerable in death than they had been in life. In an era before willed body donation programs, medical schools throughout the country often targeted the poor – as well as criminals and African Americans – for the dissecting lab. Medical students or professional grave robbers disinterred remains under the cover of night, sometimes with the explicit permission of bribed public officials or cemetery employees. What’s more, the practice of grave robbing eventually became legally sanctioned through the passage of anatomy acts, whereby states like Massachusetts and Michigan permitted medical students to dissect unclaimed bodies from poorhouses.

Even without the threat of dissection, the potter’s field – named after the biblical, clay-rich burial ground the high priests of Jerusalem bought with Judas’ 30 pieces of silver – was a place of stigma. As a result, many communities did what they could to protect their own from such a fate. For example, black churches, such as Baltimore’s African Methodist Episcopal Church, founded burial grounds for the city’s enslaved and free residents. Similarly, African American benevolent societies in the 19th and 20th centuries often paid funeral and burial costs for their members.

Permanently parked

Likewise, New York’s Jewish community had burial societies and immigrant aid societies that provided similar services, assuring individuals remained part of their community, even in death.

Such practices were difficult to uphold during periods of crisis. For example, during deadly outbreaks of yellow fever and cholera in the 19th century, New York officials – fearing that the dead were contagious – hastily interred bodies in local parks. In such instances, corpses were placed in large trenches with little ceremony or intimate care. Similarly, when the flu overwhelmed Philadelphia in 1918, bodies were buried in mass graves all around the city. Such graves were also common after mass fatality events, like the 1889 Johnstown Flood, especially before DNA testing allowed for the identification of unknown remains.

Recent angst about Hart Island allows us to consider why these mass burials trouble us. They serve not only as reminders of our own mortality, but also the fragility of our death rituals in times of crisis. We all hope that our deaths will be good deaths, surrounded by loved ones, but COVID-19 kills people in isolation and limits our rituals. Yet, this is already a reality for many Americans.

Indigent burials have been on the rise for years due to both the increase in funeral costs and the widening gap between rich and poor, now further exacerbated by the pandemic’s economic effects. We will likely see an increase in the number of people for whom such burial remains a real possibility even after the pandemic resides.

Is the Rumor of Kim Jong-un's Death Believable? Expert: "With a paucity of information, why speculate about the potential death of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un? Because the circumstances surrounding the death rumor fit a plausible story so perfectly, it’s hard to dismiss outright. An overweight dictator with a history of health issues fails to attend his country’s chief holiday, and an unnamed source sounds the alarm. It’s almost too perfect, raising the risk of confirmation bias. " by Devin Stewart

Sun Tzu’s most famous quote reads, “All warfare is based on deception.” North Korea, a military state on a constant war footing, intentionally makes it extremely difficult to know what’s going on inside its territory as a way of fortifying its security. Without human intelligence, intel on North Korea is notoriously unreliable. Whenever there’s a rumor about the country, it’s wise to be skeptical about its veracity. But it’s also important to be prepared for change as change is inevitable. 

With a paucity of information, why speculate about the potential death of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un? Because the circumstances surrounding the death rumor fit a plausible story so perfectly, it’s hard to dismiss outright. An overweight dictator with a history of health issues fails to attend his country’s chief holiday, and an unnamed source sounds the alarm. It’s almost too perfect, raising the risk of confirmation bias. 

If the near-cinematic quality of the coronavirus pandemic has taught us anything, however, it’s that scenarios that seem straight out of science fiction can’t be ignored. Last winter, weeks before the coronavirus broke out, I gave a speech in Tokyo on U.S. foreign policy and concluded that the biggest threat to the global order would be a pandemic, given the lack of international cooperation. I probably pictured something more like Contagion than hospital tents in Central Park.

A crisis on the Korean Peninsula during a global pandemic would be a perfect storm. But it’s important that we avoid letting the health emergency scramble our cognitive acuity. As Ryan Hass of Brookings astutely noted, predictions made in a fog of crisis tend to have little predictive value. Being holed up in an eerily quiet New York City, the pandemic’s epicenter, which now resembles a movie set, has given daily news a surreal quality. What brought about the speculation about Kim?  

Kim was absent from the April 15 anniversary ceremony of his grandfather’s birthday, the most important holiday in his country, a nation imbued with cultish beliefs about its founder. Kim has been missing from public view for weeks. Compounding that is the record of Kim’s health. In the past, doctors have noted Kim’s breathing difficulties, associated with heavy smoking, drinking, and poor diet. Kim is about 300 lbs, obese, especially for a man 5 feet 7 inches tall. He’s only 36 years old but moves about like an elderly man and has grappled with gout. 

Kim is thought to have undergone a heart procedure and may be resting in or near Wonsan. Since then, he was described as in “grave danger,” according to an unnamed U.S. official, who spoke with CNN. Health issues, including diabetes, heart issues, and obesity, run in the family. Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack in 1994. South Korean media have downplayed the possibility, and no unusual activity has been seen at the North Korean embassy in China or in North Korea itself. 

If Kim died, would the dynastic successor be his father’s 65-year-old half brother Kim Pyong-il, his 31-year-old sister Kim Yo-jong, or both collectively? Given the prominent appearance of his sister in recent events and the centrality of propaganda (she is vice director of the state propaganda department) in Stanilist dictatorships, my bet would be she would get the succession eventually. She’s said to be respected, gets along with Donald Trump, and has been groomed for leadership. 

At least three scenarios are possible for the regime’s future direction: to reform its economy and unify with South Korea; to collapse; or to stay the course (that is, to view the U.S. and the West as adversaries that need to be hedged against). The likelist direction, especially with the sister at the helm, is to stay the course. 

The weird good news from the coronavirus is that the pandemic crisis might strengthen the American tendency toward military restraint. Moreover, the United States and China will want to prevent regime instability as much as possible. Intel agencies regard collapse in Pyongyang as worse than the status quo. What we do know is this: Without an official statement from North Korea, we do not know what Kim’s status is, and we cannot predict the future. 

The War After Kim Jong-un Dies Much like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, the death of Kim Jong-un might be the spark that lights a devastating conflagration that encompasses the world. by Malcolm Davis

North Korea watchers are keeping a close eye on news reporting that Kim Jong-un may have died, or is in ‘grave danger’, possibly after a botched medical procedure, and speculation is increasing about succession arrangements. The greatest focus is on Kim’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, to be the logical heir apparent, hopefully in a smooth power transition. Yet this outcome isn’t assured.  Much would depend on how various factions around Kim Jong-un would respond to her rise, and whether forces seeking a window of opportunity to overthrow the Kim line of succession would see Kim Jong Un’s death as their moment to act. 

In that event, a worst-case scenario is suggested by Van Jackson, who considers the possibility of a dangerous power struggle inside North Korea escalating into a military clash between the U.S. and China if North Korea were to become destabilized. He notes the prospect of internal unrest – even civil war – within North Korea, must raise the issue of the security of North Korea’s nuclear weapons. If civil order breaks down, U.S. forces in South Korea, and the South Korean military, might be forced to intervene north of the DMZ to secure these weapons. A U.S. move closer to the Yalu could then easily trigger a response from Beijing.

Alternatively, China could move south of the Yalu to stabilize internal unrest in order to prevent waves of North Korean refugees – potentially with COVID-19 – heading across into China. How might the U.S. and South Korea respond as PLA forces headed towards the 38^th Parallel?

The key point here is that the situation on the Korean peninsula is not unfolding in a strategic vacuum. Potential events there – and any U.S. response to them – will be watched from Beijing closely, and seen in a broader context of intensifying U.S.-China strategic competition. Already China seems intent on exploiting U.S. vulnerabilities after COVID-19, and any unrest inside North would dramatically boost the risk of a wider conflict.

Beyond the peninsula, the PLA Navy is determinedly testing U.S. resolve, sinking a Vietnamese fishing vessel, and locking its fire-control radar on a Philippines Navy vessel in the South China Sea. U.S., Australian, and Chinese naval forces are operating close to each other around disputed areas and the potential for a clash could lead to a widening conflict very quickly. ASPI’s Peter Jennings has noted that China’s assertiveness is growing in the apparent face of U.S. reduced military readiness emerging out of the coronavirus pandemic. He highlights China’s increasing coercion against Taiwan and the prospect that Beijing would impose a military blockade as it senses the U.S. is turning inwards and might be unable to respond.

A rapidly destabilizing situation on the Korean Peninsula would add to these risks. Faced with instability in North Korea, and with the risk of naval conflict in the South China Sea, Beijing might calculate that now is the time to act decisively. Entering into their calculus would be the growing effectiveness of its anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities that have recently forced the U.S. to end its continuous bomber presence on Guam for the first time in sixteen years.

The scenario suggested above is certainly a worst-case one, and is not necessarily inevitable. But the absence of a clear succession process when Kim Jong-un does die dramatically boosts the risks that such a development will generate consequences not confined within the hermit kingdom. Much like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914, the death of Kim Jong-un might be the spark that lights a devastating conflagration that encompasses the world.

A rapidly destabilizing situation on the Korean Peninsula would add to these risks. Faced with instability in North Korea, and with the risk of naval conflict in the South China Sea, Beijing might calculate that now is the time to act decisively. Entering into their calculus would be the growing effectiveness of its anti-access and area denial (A2AD) capabilities that have recently forced the U.S. to end its continuous bomber presence on Guam for the first time in sixteen years.

Suing China For the Coronavirus? Sounds Good, But Here's Why It Would Be A Bad Idea Explicitly hostile measures toward a foreign power are especially likely to undermine U.S. foreign policy by raising the chance of a breach in relations or retaliation at a timing not chosen by Washington. by Walter Olson

“Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican, blames China for letting the coronavirus spread,” reports NPR. “So he’s suing China, three government ministries, two local governments, two laboratories and the Chinese Communist Party in U.S. District Court.” A suit of this sort by a state against a foreign sovereign would ordinarily be stopped in its tracks by the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, but never fear: “Last week, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley introduced legislation to strip China of its sovereign immunity.” 

As my colleague Ted Galen Carpenter observed on Monday, there are many and substantial reasons to blame Beijing for bad conduct during this pandemic, and American public opinion has taken note of that. Still, sovereign immunity aside, under the constitutional design laid down by the Framers states aren’t supposed to pursue their own foreign policies. As the Supreme Court put it in Hines v. Davidowitz (1941), “Our system of government … requires that federal power in the field affecting foreign relations be left entirely free from local interference.” In Crosby v. National Foreign Trade Council (2000) the Court unanimously struck down a Massachusetts law barring state entities from buying goods or services from companies doing business with Burma (Myanmar) on the grounds that it interfered with the power of Congress and the Executive Branch to make the most of the sanctions power by exerting unified control over it.

It’s not clear that the different circumstances here would trip the Crosby wire. Still, Missouri is treading a path here not unlike that of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, long deservedly criticized for sticking its nose into foreign policy causes whether good or bad. It is noteworthy that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who takes a somewhat broader view of states’ permissible involvement in this field than do her majority colleagues, has written nonetheless that the case for pre‐​emption is strongest “when a state action ‘reflects a state policy critical of foreign governments and involve[s] sitting in judgment on them.’” Explicitly hostile measures toward a foreign power are especially likely to undermine U.S. foreign policy by raising the chance of a breach in relations or retaliation at a timing not chosen by Washington.

Coronavirus Models Need Perspective—How Many People Die In Total? One approach that has not been explored in any detail is the examination of deaths from all causes in addition to deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. by James Enstrom

Policymakers need to scrutinize their epidemiological models.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the federal government has been heavily influenced by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation’s computer model, which has projected from 60,000 to 240,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. 

This epidemiological model is now being criticized as flawed and misleading as a source of public information and for government decision-making. Besides the institute’s model, all other COVID-19 models are grounded in important assumptions about which there is currently little knowledge. 

Approaches other than models are needed to properly understand this pandemic.

One approach that has not been explored in any detail is the examination of deaths from all causes in addition to deaths from COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. 

Two major databases that track COVID-19 cases and deaths in the U.S., but not total mortality, are WorldOMeters and the Johns Hopkins University Hub. These trackers show major variation in COVID-19 mortality risk.  

For example, as of April 22, WorldOMeters showed 47,681 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. (50 states and the District of Columbia) with a rate of 144 deaths per 1 million people. 

However, note that 71% of the deaths have occurred in six high-risk states (New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Louisiana, and Michigan) with 17% of U.S. residents and a death rate of 624 per million.

Ten percent have occurred in five medium-risk states (Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland, and Indiana) and the District of Columbia with 12% of U.S. residents and a death rate of 124 per million, and 19% have occurred in the remaining 39 low-risk states with 71% of U.S. residents and a death rate of 40 per million.

It remains to be determined, however, whether these COVID-19 deaths have actually increased the total U.S. deaths this year. The best data on both COVID-19 deaths and total deaths in the U.S. come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention‘s National Center for Health Statistics. 

During the five weeks ending Feb. 1 through Feb. 29, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 282,084 total deaths, which were 96% of the expected deaths based on concurrent 2017-2019 deaths. During the five weeks ending March 7 to April 4, the CDC reported 273,798 total deaths, which were 96% of the expected deaths.  

Of the 9,474 COVID-19 deaths reported during these 10 weeks, 78.5% were among people over age 65, 21.4% were between the ages of 25 and 64, and only 0.1% were ages newborn to 24 years.

Those death counts through the end of March are preliminary, but they do not indicate that the total number of deaths in 2020 is greater than the comparable number of deaths during each of the three prior years. 

Once the number of COVID-19 deaths and total deaths during the entire month of April are known, it will be clear whether there has been an increase in the total number of U.S. deaths this year.

One reason there may not be an increase in total deaths is because some deaths are being classified as COVID-19 deaths even when COVID-19 is not the underlying cause. 

Normally, mortality statistics are compiled in accordance with World Health Organization regulations specifying that each death be assigned an underlying cause based on the current 10th revision of the International Statistical Classification of Diseases (ICD-10). 

However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that COVID-19 deaths are being coded to ICD-10 code U07.1 when COVID-19 is reported as a cause that “contributed to” death on the death certificate, but is not necessarily the “underlying cause.” Also, some of those deaths do not have laboratory confirmation of COVID-19 infection.

Thus, it’s possible that the focus on COVID-19 deaths has resulted in a lower number of deaths from seasonal flu, pneumonia, and other causes, compared with the number that would normally occur this year. 

The CDC has stated that the number of flu hospitalizations estimated for this season is lower than total hospitalization estimates for any season since the CDC began making these estimates.

Furthermore, it’s possible that the lethality of COVID-19 is no greater than that of the seasonal flu.  

A new Stanford University survey indicates that the population prevalence of COVID-19 in Santa Clara County, California, ranges from 2.5% to 4.2% and that the number of infected persons is 50 to 85 times the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases.

This preliminary finding suggests that at most 0.1% of infected persons will die from COVID-19, comparable to the seasonal flu death rate. Several other new studies indicate similarly lower fatality rates for COVID-19.

Americans need clarity. The federal government response to the coronavirus pandemic should not be based on flawed models, but rather on a localized public health approach that focuses on the high-risk areas of the United States and also on the high-risk elderly and those with comorbid conditions. 

The emphasis should be on changes in personal behavior, such as staying at home for work or school if ill, covering coughs or sneezes, hand-washing, and avoiding those with respiratory symptoms. 

Above all, the pandemic and COVID-19 deaths must be put in proper perspective, given the unprecedented societal and economic disruption of the current national lockdown.

What a Diary From the Days of the Bubonic Plague Tell Us About Coronavirus There were eerie similarities between those times and our own. by Ute Lotz-Heumann

In early April, writer Jen Miller urged New York Times readers to start a coronavirus diary. 

“Who knows,” she wrote, “maybe one day your diary will provide a valuable window into this period.”

During a different pandemic, one 17th-century British naval administrator named Samuel Pepys did just that. He fastidiously kept a diary from 1660 to 1669 – a period of time that included a severe outbreak of the bubonic plague in London. Epidemics have always haunted humans, but rarely do we get such a detailed glimpse into one person’s life during a crisis from so long ago.

There were no Zoom meetings, drive-through testing or ventilators in 17th-century London. But Pepys’ diary reveals that there were some striking resemblances in how people responded to the pandemic.

A creeping sense of crisis

For Pepys and the inhabitants of London in 1665, there was no way of knowing whether an outbreak of the plague that occurred in the parish of St. Giles, a poor area outside the city walls, in late 1664 and early 1665 would become an epidemic.

The plague first entered Pepys’ consciousness enough to warrant a diary entry on April 30, 1665: “Great fears of the Sickness here in the City,” he wrote, “it being said that two or three houses are already shut up. God preserve us all.”

Pepys continued to live his life normally until the beginning of June, when, for the first time, he saw houses “shut up” – the term his contemporaries used for quarantine – with his own eyes, “marked with a red cross upon the doors, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there.” After this, Pepys became increasingly troubled by the outbreak.

He soon observed corpses being taken to their burial in the streets, and a number of his acquaintances died, including his own physician.

By mid-August, he had drawn up his will, writing, “that I shall be in much better state of soul, I hope, if it should please the Lord to call me away this sickly time.” Later that month, he wrote of deserted streets; the pedestrians he encountered were “walking like people that had taken leave of the world.”

Tracking mortality counts

In London, the Company of Parish Clerks printed “bills of mortality,” the weekly tallies of burials.

Because these lists noted London’s burials – not deaths – they undoubtedly undercounted the dead. Just as we follow these numbers closely today, Pepys documented the growing number of plague victims in his diary.

At the end of August, he cited the bill of mortality as having recorded 6,102 victims of the plague, but feared “that the true number of the dead this week is near 10,000,” mostly because the victims among the urban poor weren’t counted. A week later, he noted the official number of 6,978 in one week, “a most dreadfull Number.”

By mid-September, all attempts to control the plague were failing. Quarantines were not being enforced, and people gathered in places like the Royal Exchange. Social distancing, in short, was not happening.

He was equally alarmed by people attending funerals in spite of official orders. Although plague victims were supposed to be interred at night, this system broke down as well, and Pepys griped that burials were taking place “in broad daylight.”

Desperate for remedies

There are few known effective treatment options for COVID-19. Medical and scientific research need time, but people hit hard by the virus are willing to try anything. Fraudulent treatments, from teas and colloidal silver, to cognac and cow urine, have been floated.

Although Pepys lived during the Scientific Revolution, nobody in the 17th century knew that the Yersinia pestis bacterium carried by fleas caused the plague. Instead, the era’s scientists theorized that the plague was spreading through miasma, or “bad air” created by rotting organic matter and identifiable by its foul smell. Some of the most popular measures to combat the plague involved purifying the air by smoking tobacco or by holding herbs and spices in front of one’s nose.

Tobacco was the first remedy that Pepys sought during the plague outbreak. In early June, seeing shut-up houses “put me into an ill conception of myself and my smell, so that I was forced to buy some roll-tobacco to smell … and chaw.” Later, in July, a noble patroness gave him “a bottle of plague-water” – a medicine made from various herbs. But he wasn’t sure whether any of this was effective. Having participated in a coffeehouse discussion about “the plague growing upon us in this town and remedies against it,” he could only conclude that “some saying one thing, some another.”

During the outbreak, Pepys was also very concerned with his frame of mind; he constantly mentioned that he was trying to be in good spirits. This was not only an attempt to “not let it get to him” – as we might say today – but also informed by the medical theory of the era, which claimed that an imbalance of the so-called humors in the body – blood, black bile, yellow bile and phlegm – led to disease.

Melancholy – which, according to doctors, resulted from an excess of black bile – could be dangerous to one’s health, so Pepys sought to suppress negative emotions; on Sept. 14, for example, he wrote that hearing about dead friends and acquaintances “doth put me into great apprehensions of melancholy. … But I put off the thoughts of sadness as much as I can.”

Balancing paranoia and risk

Humans are social animals and thrive on interaction, so it’s no surprise that so many have found social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic challenging. It can require constant risk assessment: How close is too close? How can we avoid infection and keep our loved ones safe, while also staying sane? What should we do when someone in our house develops a cough?

During the plague, this sort of paranoia also abounded. Pepys found that when he left London and entered other towns, the townspeople became visibly nervous about visitors.

“They are afeared of us that come to them,” he wrote in mid-July, “insomuch that I am troubled at it.”

Pepys succumbed to paranoia himself: In late July, his servant Will suddenly developed a headache. Fearing that his entire house would be shut up if a servant came down with the plague, Pepys mobilized all his other servants to get Will out of the house as quickly as possible. It turned out that Will didn’t have the plague, and he returned the next day.

In early September, Pepys refrained from wearing a wig he bought in an area of London that was a hotspot of the disease, and he wondered whether other people would also fear wearing wigs because they could potentially be made of the hair of plague victims.

And yet he was willing to risk his health to meet certain needs; by early October, he visited his mistress without any regard for the danger: “round about and next door on every side is the plague, but I did not value it but there did what I could con ella.”

Just as people around the world eagerly wait for a falling death toll as a sign of the pandemic letting up, so did Pepys derive hope – and perhaps the impetus to see his mistress – from the first decline in deaths in mid-September. A week later, he noted a substantial decline of more than 1,800.

Let’s hope that, like Pepys, we’ll soon see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Coronavirus Is Making Russia's Demographic Disaster Even Worse And there is not much that can be done to stop it. by Lance Kokonos

Russia will soon be faced with a demographic crisis, and the COVID-19 pandemic could make it a lot worse. After years of a naturally declining population, the state will soon have a lack of young workers to both fund the government and care for the elderly. If the Russian government fails to provide youth with enough support during this pandemic, it may fuel a mass departure of young Russians that will accelerate the arrival of Russia’s age crisis. 

 

Even before the pandemic, Russia’s population projections looked bleak. By 2050, Russia could see its population reduced by nearly 7.5 percent to only 135.8 million people, and by 2060, pensioners will account for nearly half the total population. While the population deficit is caused mainly by natural deaths exceeding births, it is being exacerbated by an exodus of Russian citizens—many of whom are younger—and inward migration is no longer enough to compensate.

Authorities should be sweating: data published by the independent Levada Center in September 2019 shows that 53 percent of young people (ages 18-24) want to leave the country. Though this figure is surprising, it is understandable. Young Russians are among the most economically stricken, with an unemployment rate close to 15 percent—three times the national average—and half of all unemployed Russians are under the age of 34. Among Russian emigres, 54 percent believe the Russian economy is only going to get worse and a third cite it as the main reason for their departure. This is comparable with the Levada poll as 40 percent of the would-be emigres cite economics as their top concern (45 percent cited wanting a good future for their children abroad, which is bad news for a nation in need of childbirths).

These unemployment rates were collected prior to the collapse of oil prices in the Russo-Saudi price war and the impending economic recession from the pandemic. As a result, officials anticipate the loss of as many as 8 million jobs. This is sure to exacerbate the problems of the young and further dull the bleak prospects for their futures, encouraging their dreams of escape.

Putin himself is contributing to youth discontent with life in Russia. Just 46 percent of the population wants to see Putin as president after 2024, and less than half approves of the constitutional amendment that will allow him to even “participate” in the next election. Among Russians aged 18-24, this drops to just 35 percent wanting to allow him to run again.

Should Putin retain power after this term expires, it may prompt Russia’s young people to jump ship. After all, the majority of the nearly 2 million Russians who left the country during his rule emigrated after the start of his third presidential term. With Putin’s overall approval rating at its lowest since November 2013, it is likely even worse among younger Russians. The September 2019 emigration survey found that among potential emigres his approval was 14 percentage points below the national average at the time. If the same ratio applies today, among them his approval rate is already less than 50 percent.

But Putin has done little to gain favor with Russia’s youth. Instead of providing serious relief, Putin’s government has thus far opted to spend a meager $14 billion stimulus package with provisions that give businesses tax holidays and raise the maximum unemployment benefit to just more than the official minimum wage. While that sum of money goes farther in Russia than in the West, it is far from sufficient.

Russia possesses more than $560 billion in foreign exchange and gold reserves and nearly $95 billion remains in its National Wealth Fund, yet total contingency spending isn’t expected to exceed 3 percent of GDP. If national wealth is not engaged to support citizens during a crisis, then what is it for? Addressing problems that people face with feel-good symbolic gestures instead of actually solving them is much simpler if the authorities’ goal is pacification.

There are already signs that the Russian people are judging Putin’s handling of the pandemic a political failure. If current policies do not change, poverty overall will grow, and young people with less savings and fewer jobs will find themselves even worse off—likely increasing their desire to leave for more prosperous nations. Make no mistake, this will handicap Russia’s response to the demographic contraction. 

In spite of all of this, the government is unlikely to change things anytime soon. Putin stands to remain firmly entrenched in power, and people, following the words of former Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, are broke but told to “hold on.” But, that is not to say that they will. Borders are much more fluid in the twenty-first-century, even in Russia. After all, it was Dostoevsky who wrote that “it is terrifying to think how free in spirit a Russian can be and how powerful his will can be!” Without the curtailing of freedom of movement, they will continue to leave.

After Coronavirus, China's Relations With the World Will Never Be the Same Leaders of countries long friendly to China because of economic concerns—and willing to turn a blind eye to its atrocious human rights record and abuses like holding a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps—are demanding Beijing be held to account. by Keith B. Richburg

As the novel coronavirus has spread from its original epicentre of Wuhan into a global pandemic, China’s ruling communist party is pushing a new narrative. 

After some initial missteps by local officials, this narrative goes, the central government took charge and defeated the virus with tough, resolute measures. Western countries are now suffering because of their lax response and the inferiority of their cacophonous democratic systems compared with China’s one-party model. Other countries should learn from China’s success, and the Middle Kingdom is now generously sending expertise and badly needed equipment to the hardest hit places. China’s healthcare workers are heroes. And by the way, the virus may actually have originated with the US military, not in China.

It’s a message being slavishly promoted in the party-controlled state media, parroted by Chinese diplomats around the world, and perhaps even believed by a significant percentage of Chinese citizens subjected to decades of brainwashing by relentless propaganda and an education and indoctrination system that extols the virtues of party rule.

But around the world, this narrative is being met with derision and outright hostility.

The alternative narrative, gaining increasing currency, is that China’s central leadership in Beijing knew early on about the severity and extent of the mysterious new virus in Wuhan and lied to the world in a massive cover-up. In those early crucial days, China barred experts from the World Health Organization and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. President Xi Jinping received a grim assessment on 14 January about the Wuhan virus becoming a pandemic, according to reporting by the Associated Press, but the public was not warned until a week later. The late January lockdown of Wuhan came far too late, after more than half the city’s 11 million residents were allowed to leave for the Lunar New Year holiday.

Even now, according to this view, China’s leaders continue to lie and to obfuscate. Many believe China’s death toll from Covid-19 is far higher than the country is willing to admit, and that people with virus symptoms are simply no longer being tested. Most new infections are being blamed on ‘imported’ cases from abroad, even though the vast majority are Chinese nationals returning home from overseas.

The deliberate implication is that foreigners are now carrying the virus, stoking Chinese nationalism, xenophobia and racism, evidenced by the sickening scenes of Africans in Guangzhou being forced from their apartments or locked into forced quarantine. Some restaurants, including McDonald’s, displayed signs saying black people would not be allowed inside.

The coronavirus controversy, and Chinese diplomats’ ham-handed triumphalist tone, now threaten to disrupt the world’s relationship with China for years to come, long after the immediate crisis has abated. The country’s carefully cultivated global image, backed by huge infrastructure projects like its Belt and Road Initiative, will take a heavy blow.

Leaders of countries long friendly to China because of economic concerns—and willing to turn a blind eye to its atrocious human rights record and abuses like holding a million Muslim Uyghurs in concentration camps—are demanding Beijing be held to account.

Australia’s foreign minister, Marise Payne, called for an independent investigation into the Chinese origins of the virus and how it spread. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron called on China to be transparent about the virus.

In the US, President Donald Trump, already embroiled in a trade war with China, hinted the virus may have been spread purposefully while calling for a probe. ‘If it was a mistake, a mistake is a mistake. But if they were knowingly responsible, yeah, then, sure, there should be consequences’, Trump said. He had earlier announced a suspension of US funds to the WHO pending an investigation of its dealing with the early stages of the outbreak, when officials praised China’s response and advised against travel restrictions.

In Africa, Obiageli ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili, a former vice president for Africa for the World Bank and a former Nigerian cabinet minister, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post demanding China pay compensation to African countries for the virus, including a complete write-off of US$140 billion in debt. ‘China should demonstrate world leadership by acknowledging its failure to be transparent on Covid-19’, she wrote.

This came after several African foreign ministers summoned the Chinese ambassadors in their countries to decry the inhumane treatment meted out to black Africans in Guangzhou, something that prompted a tough video rebuke to Xi from a former African Union ambassador to the US and a warning from the State Department to black Americans to avoid Guangzhou.

China has spent decades and billions of dollars developing its ties with Africa, and the hard work of that dollar diplomacy now seems upended by a virus.

Meanwhile in the US, the state of Missouri filed the first lawsuit in federal court against the Chinese government, accusing Beijing’s leaders of an ‘appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance, and inaction’ over the coronavirus and claiming Chinese officials are ‘responsible for the enormous death, suffering, and economic losses they inflicted on the world’. Two Republican members of Congress have introduced legislation making it easier for private American citizens to file suits against China for deaths and economic hardship unleashed by the virus.

All of this comes without any evidence so far that the virus may have accidentally emerged from a virology laboratory in Wuhan, a suspicion initially embraced by conspiracy theorists.

Chinese officials have deflected the finger-pointing, blaming others for trying to ‘politicise’ the crisis and insisting that Covid-19 is a scientific and medical issue best left to the experts.

Beyond the blame game, the coronavirus crisis is likely to reorder global supply chains to China’s detriment. When China first began its lockdowns in January, multinationals—from South Korean car companies to American toy makers—were forced to halt or delay production because they relied on crucial components or parts from mainland Chinese factories. Many will not want to again be caught so dependent.

Countries worldwide now will become more cautious about allowing China to be their chief supplier of medical equipment like facemasks and pharmaceuticals. In the past, globalisation’s mantra was ‘build it where it’s cheapest’, and most often that was China. But post-Covid-19, for crucial medical supplies, the new motto is likely to be, ‘make it at home’.

There is little doubt the world is set for a reordering whenever the pandemic finally fades. China would like it to be one on its own terms, in the absence of American global leadership, where the country’s leaders can showcase the superiority of their authoritarian model.

But what seems more likely is a new world order with China increasingly cast as an international pariah, a regime that placed its own pride and prestige over transparency about a pending pandemic. The communist party’s cover-ups, suppression of information and dissemination of disinformation will likely have cost hundreds of thousands of lives and plunged the world into a colossal global recession. And its xenophobia and racism have been laid bare.

The virus will eventually be contained, either through a vaccine or more widespread infection that eventually builds herd immunity. But in the world’s post-pandemic relations with China, it will no longer be business as usual.