Masks and bleach

On 6 February 2020 the Chinese president reported to his American colleague by phone on the coronavirus epidemic in his country. After a huge effort, it was now under control, How few Europeans understand how to smile; a couple of elderly French ministers, a couple of elderly Italian finance ministers, three English lords. Someone recently claimed he had never seen a German smile… But the Chinese people with their four-thousand-year-old culture receive splendid training in smiling. For it is neither more nor less than a discipline… Why after all make an angry or sad or disillusioned face? Why bare your soul in public? Yvan Goll, Die Eurokokke One feature of the usual script for plague: the disease invariably comes from somewhere else. Susan Sontag, Aids and its Metaphors Masks and bleach On 6 February 2020 the Chinese president reported to his American colleague by phone on the coronavirus epidemic in his country. After a huge effort, it was now under control, 148 pandemonium said Xi Jinping, and China's economic growth would quickly resume. President Trump expressed admiration for the rapid building of emergency hospitals by Beijing and said he was ready to send experts and assistance. A routine call.

Yet the implication of the conversation did not escape the American. The next morning he told a journalist, “This is deadly stuff, more deadly than your strenuous flu. You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed”. Whereas in European capitals at that moment only virologists saw orange warning lights flashing, in Washington news of the potential magnitude of the danger was quickly passed up to the highest political level.