The coronavirus continues to spread, with many now seeing notable effects in the United States and the global economy at large.
The coronavirus, a deadly respiratory illness, has transversed several continents and has become increasingly deadly.
The most recent death toll accounts for 2,465 with 78,800 people affected across 23 countries outside of China.
The virus has resulted in extensive travel bans and even the quarantine of the entire cities in China, including Wuhan, home to more than 46 million people.
Quarantining efforts in China as a result of the coronavirus have grown to be the largest in human history. 16 cities in the nation have become as sealed off from other regions as possible, although approximately 5 million people fled before the quarantine efforts began.
Within these cities, all public transportation and airports have been closed in effort to prevent the spread of disease. Experts, however, have said that the efforts used in China may be ineffective or even counterintuitive because people are not able to access necessary resources.
It is also noted that people in the nation are staying put due to fear if the intensive surveillance efforts in quarantined cities.
The United States has also begun to quarantine travellers who have been to China recently, as the Pentagon has prepared facilities to hold 1,000 people.
The quarantining process in the United States will consist of health screenings at the most popular international airports across the United States, and a required two week quarantine will be implemented for anyone who has been to China’s Hubei province in the past fourteen days as it is predicted that the coronavirus will become a pandemic, per the Business Insider.
The Center for Disease Control has said that it is inevitable that the coronavirus will spread to the United States. Dr. Anthony Fauci, Director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease stated that due to the spread of the disease to areas in the Middle East and South Korea, and because there is virtually no way to stop disease spread entirely that spread to the U.S. is no longer a question.
President Trump has released statements on the issue, saying that the virus will be easily controlled and that a vaccine will be out in time to present spread. However, Fauci has said that this claim is incorrect and that while there is a vaccine being tested, it will take over a year to have the vaccine distributed to the public, per CNBC.
The United States and many other nations have resorted to banning travel to the region pretty much entirely.
The coronavirus caused travel bans has also resulted in a loss of $29 billion dollars in airline revenue, has caused Chinese auto sales to plummet by 92%, and has resulted in supply chains being disrupted for many industries in which corporations source supplies for operations from Chinese plants.
The virus has forced many of China’s massive manufacturing plants to suspend operations due to the hazard of contamination. Among these plants, Foxconn, a major electronics producer and Apple Inc.’s primary supplier, has ceased operations in its Chinese plants.
Apple CEO, Tim Cook, has said that the company will be using alternative suppliers for their needs, however, many products are just sitting in the closed factories including what could be 45 million pairs of AirPods, per Cnet.
It is speculated that not only will the virus essentially halt the Chinese economic growth for the time being, but that the fact that so much of China’s manufacturing has been forced out of gear may result in a hastened decoupling of our global economies with China as corporations are left to replace them in their supply chain.
This event has caused world leaders to call out corporations, particularly auto manufacturers and the pharmaceutical industry, for their dependence on China. France, in particular, which has centered one-third of their Chinese investment in the city of Wuhan, is now predicting their own economic shrinkage due to the virus’s effect on Chinese factories, per The New York Times.
The crippling effect of turmoil in one nation begs the question of whether or not companies will begin to diversify the origin of their imports to avoid another case of global economic shrinkage.
Dalton Powers
dmpowers@vwu.edu
