Stopping Future Pandemics

Vincent J. Curtis

8 June 20

The People's Daily today ran an article on how to stop present and future pandemcis.  The article was slugged the short and the long game of pandemic control, or some such.  A "tell" was that the author failed to mention China.

One of the tests of the validity of a theory is internal consistency.  Is the theory able - without contradicting itself - to account for the facts?  The theory offered by clinical oncologist Simon Sutcliffe on controlling future pandemics does not.

Sutcliffe lists as causes of future pandemics: deforestation, expansion of agriculture, climate change, and wild animal markets.  He lists as causes of the spread of pandemics: poverty, hunger, overcrowding, limited education, poor hygiene, social distress, and others.  He concludes that leadership on social and environmental discussions will help reduce the prevalence of future pandemics.  His peroration was a call for standing squarely with those choices necessary for pandemic control.

Not a word of his theory accounts for the development and spread of the Wuhan pandemic.  The coronavirus came from a “horseshoe” bat in a cave hundreds of kilometers from Wuhan.  A contractor was sent to these caves by a Wuhan virology lab to obtain new viruses to study.  In capturing a bat, the contractor got bat blood and urine on his skin, and despite quarantining himself for 14 days passed on the virus to his girlfriend, who became patient zero.

The pandemic took root in Wuhan because the Chinese Communist Party was embarrassed and corrupt.  When the health effects became undeniable, the city of Wuhan was shut down, and Wuhan residents were prevented from leaving the city for other parts of China.  They were, however, permitted to fly out of Chine to other parts of the world, like the U.S. and Europe.  Being in the pocket of the CCP, the World Health Organization was late in warning the world about the coming danger.

Sutcliffe’s theory accounts for neither development nor spread.

The call to stand squarely with those choices necessary for pandemic control has truck-drive-through sized holes in it.  The word necessary creates one hole, since that which is necessary is often a matter of opinion, and in the present case highly contentious opinion.

Stripped of its details, Sutcliffe’s argument is a rehash of boilerplate progressive ideology: the growth of mankind is bad, the evils that attend the human conditions, and we must do as the experts tell us because they know best.

If you want to prevent the development and spread of future pandemics, first stop China from experimenting with dangerous things.
-30-