Disease is bad, but coronavirus has some positive aspects. It has exposed the frailty of the Communist Chinese regime, which reportedly is now sending some of the one million Uyghurs they have been holding in concentration camps to factories that have been vacated on account of the virus. No doubt Tom Friedman and other Democratic advocates for the Communist regime will hail this as one more sign of the superiority of autocratic states.
Most Americans, happily, don’t see it that way. Gallup finds that for the first time in 13 years, most Americans think the U.S., not China, is the world’s leading economic power. They are right, of course, and someday someone should write a book about how the opposite impression took hold among Americans.
To be fair, Gallup’s survey was conducted between Feb. 3 and 16, so it only partly reflects coronavirus hysteria. If the same poll were conducted today, it would come down more heavily in favor of the U.S. And appropriately so: one fallout from coronavirus is that a lot of manufacturing will be transferred from China to the U.S. Medium- and long-term, coronavirus will benefit the U.S. economy in relation to China’s.
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