The scope, impact and challenges associated with the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic seem to change not just daily but near hourly. There are three lessons that are already coming to light. We will need to heed these lessons, and others, once we successfully navigate our way through this trying chapter in our nation’s history.
Lesson One: Be Prepared.
They say that since World War II American presidents have had to fight wars with the military left to them by the previous president. The current situation, which has been likened to a war, is no different. When President Obama declared a national emergency for the H1N1 virus, he did so from a position of strength, having been left a strategic stockpile that had been built up under the post 9/11 Bush Administration.
In the years after H1N1, the Harry Reid-led Democrat majority in the U.S. Senate refused to pass a budget and ran our government by a series of continuing resolutions, rendering decision making on national strategic spending priorities non-existent, wherein previous year’s spending was simply and perpetually rolled forward to the current year. There was no painstaking analysis of what should be cut and what should be boosted. Under Obama, the national strategic stockpile of critically necessary personal protective equipment (PPE) for the healthcare system was never truly replenished after H1N1. Today, tens of thousands of frontline healthcare workers are paying the price for this significant neglect and failure of leadership.
Lesson learned: America must ensure that no matter who serves in the executive branch our emergency preparedness stockpiles are stocked and secure.
Lesson Two: Borders Matter.
After decades of being told by Democrats that borders are immoral, unethical, wasteful, cruel and backward, this pandemic has illustrated, more clearly than we could have ever imagined, how necessary secure borders truly are to Americans’ national security.
The media, academia and the Democrats have pointed to the European Union as a model for America, urging us to unite with the rest of North America and even South America into a borderless landmass. Even now, the New York Times is trying to say that border wall construction should be halted due to the coronavirus. They conveniently ignore the fact that the Mexican government is refusing to impose strong social distancing requirements—universally recognized as a key strategy in combatting the spread of the virus. Possessing the knowledge we now have, how could we possibly allow another caravan of thousands of migrants to converge on our southern border, not knowing who among them might be carriers of the virus.
Americans have President Trump to thank for both delaying and mitigating some of the more devastating effects of the virus. Not only has President Trump had a keen focus since day one of his administration on fixing America’s broken immigration system, he was one of the first major world leaders to enact a travel ban for China, and later Europe. His swift action to do so, even amidst the backlash from Democrats and cries of racism, has proven to have saved American lives and significantly reduced and delayed the spread of the virus, buying our healthcare professionals and pandemic response experts the time they needed to be properly prepared for the peak of the epidemic.
Lesson learned: Finish the wall, secure the borders and fix America’s broken immigration system
Lesson Three: The China Threat Is Real
Possibly most apparent throughout this episode is that communist China is an existential threat to all free people. The U.S., and the world, must reset our paradigm, not to mention relationships, with China.
President Trump has been out front on the China issue since before he was even elected and immediately started the process with trade deal negotiations upon taking his oath of office. Both historically and presently, the communist Chinese government has shown a ruthlessness when it comes to the lives of their own people and a willingness to lie, propagandize and hide the truth on topics ranging from intellectual property theft to the severity of the coronavirus pandemic. Lest we forget that the Chinese communist regime whose policies have killed more than 65 million of its own people and are currently “re-educating” millions of people in their own version of concentration camps. In terms of the coronavirus, it is now common knowledge that the Chinese government not only destroyed evidence of the virus as early as December 2019, but they jailed, kidnapped and silenced anyone attempting to inform the world about the severity of the outbreak the country was experiencing.
Thankfully, people are waking up to this threat and beginning to realize that the Chinese government cannot be trusted. Senators and congressmen are now rightfully rebuking China’s literal death grip on the U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturing market and calling for drug production to be brought back home as a national strategic priority. Doing so would be an exceptionally smart move and reflects the exact type of conversation and reevaluation that needs to be taking place right now.
Returning manufacturing and other jobs to the U.S. is not just a good economic policy, it is a national security imperative.
Lesson learned: communist China is not our friend, nor should it be viewed as an ally of any type.
As a nation, we can only pray that Democrats will set aside their incessant partisanship and Trump Derangement Syndrome long enough to learn these lessons. If as a nation we fail to require them to do so, we will find ourselves unprepared and scrambling when the next national emergency inevitably occurs—a chance we simply cannot take.
Jake Hoffman is a contributing columnist at Townhall, the President and CEO of Rally Forge, one of the nation’s top conservative digital communications and media strategy firms, and an elected official in Arizona. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
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