Dakota Beacon

As recently as 2017, South Korean President Park Geun-hye was impeached and subsequently charged and convicted of abuse of power due to negligence in an emergency where 300 teenagers were killed when a ferry boat sank.  The event revealed massive failures in the system. President Park was AWOL following the event. Instead of taking needed action to repair the system and show some kind of solidarity with the people, she was nowhere to be seen. This brief period of time when she held herself unaccountable was known as her “golden time” - the time in which she could right things and redeem herself and her administration.  We will know where she is for the next 25 years - the length of her prison sentence. In the wake of this political disaster and human tragedy, the nation’s present chief of state, Moon Jae-in was elected on the basis of a promise to respond to emergencies appropriately.  

Two years later Moon had his “golden time” - the time when he could show the leadership his predecessor lacked, the time to step in and act to protect his people.  He did not. South Korea has a very chummy relationship with China. So while Chinese people became sick and died and Xi Jinping shut doctors up who tried to give warnings, tried to control the news rather than the epidemic, flights in and out of China went on apace.  It went from the single case in South Korea to hundreds very quickly and President Moon Jae-in acted as though it were business as usual. Now, South Korea is the second nation in terms of Coronavirus, schools are closed, parliament is closed.  The nation is in an economic vacuum and where was Moon at the time of the leaping numbers of cases and the first death?  He was hosting a party for the film crew and celebrity stars of the Oscar-winning movie Parasite. Instead of acting with decisiveness in the interest of his people, Moon put relations with China at the top of his priorities.  Instead of listening to the warnings he was getting from experts in the medical field, he was content to simply blame this or that religious cult. If the religious cult was exposed in Wuhan it is his fault they returned to South Korea.  But to cut to the chase, Moon missed the “golden time” when making the responsible decision would have saved lives and saved his economy at the same time. Instead, he cast blame on others, helped China in its immoral cover-up of the epidemic and partied with the glitterati while people died miserably.    A million-and-a-half South Koreans have signed a petition to impeach him.

One advantage people have in a free country when a disaster strikes is that those responsible can be held to account.  In an intelligent leader this fosters mature, responsible decisions and caution when it is demanded. Park was removed and severely punished.  This should act as a guideline for Moon or any other leader in any free country. Moon appears not to have been mature either. He, too, undoubtedly will pay a steep price.  In China none of this matters because its leaders are not accountable to anyone . If someone speaks out in warning, dispose of him before he is heard. If you have a massive disaster on your watch, just keep it covered up while people die as long as you can.  More will die, but you won’t look bad as soon.  You can mobilize your slave press to make you look good in print.  

Here the "golden time is called “the clutch”.  How someone behaves “in the clutch” determines for us whether he is leader material.  We have an opportunity now, to assess our various leaders. President Trump was getting advice of all kinds from different people.  Wall street, epidemiologists, political hacks, everyone. He looked as though he was going to make some right decisions. He began with the stopping of flights in from China.  But common sense should have told us that first of all, all flights and other kinds of travel from all of Asia should have stopped. How would stopping flights from China help if thousands of people fly into South Korea every day from China? We would need to say no South Korean flights.  And then, while he was traveling (as he was telling others not to do) in Asia, he discovered that his “orders'' had been countermanded by an underling in the State Department, who, like the bird on the dung-hill, crowed about his success in bringing over a thousand sick Americans into the country.  This was Trump’s “golden time”.  We have not even heard that this underling has been fired yet. In the clutch, he has not looked good.

Meanwhile, customs is flagging people through at every airport in the nation.  Flight, like cash, is fungible. Someone who cannot fly in from China will go to South Korea and fly in from there.  Someone who can’t fly in from Milan could as easily go to Paris and fly from there. So international flight should have been stopped, including Air Force One, whose passenger’s job it was to be at home to manage the crisis that was developing. Instead, we hear that the president doesn’t “think” the numbers are “right” or “as high as they say”.  Do we really care what anyone thinks who has no expertise in this area? Is wishful thinking going to get us through this situation? 

A young woman studying in Italy flew home from there.  Her plane took her to O’Hare Airport. How many people flew in on that one plane alone from Italy, which has quarantined a large portion of the entire nation?  O’Hare Airport is the fourth busiest airport in the world, a major hub. How many people could have been exposed from this one flight? Then the woman took a cab, presumably, to Union Station in Chicago, where she got a ticket and boarded the Amtrak for St. Louis, another major railway terminal.  

At St. Louis, the family all gathered to welcome her home.  Then she developed symptoms of the virus. She tested positive and her family was quarantined.  Her father decided that public health concerns were not as important as taking his younger daughter to her school’s father-daughter dance.  He broke the quarantine and they went.  

Now all the families whose daughters were at that dance have been exposed.  Maybe some of them have a pregnant mother or eldely grandparents, maybe someone with a pre-existing medical condition or a challenged immune system.  Some parents might now lose their employment or at least paid hours of work. Maybe some of them have gone on innocently to infect people they have come into contact with at work, shopping, at the gym.  Maybe the kids went to dance classes. Maybe they all went to church. The school had to be closed for cleaning. The train had to stop for cleaning, the airplane was grounded for cleaning. There really is no way to disinfect Union Station or O’Hare Airport.  There need to be consequences. The original carrier, the student flying in from Italy, might not have known she was exposed or sick. But why was a plane allowed to land at O’Hare from Italy? Why is travel into this country not restricted?  

This girl was the first in her region to test positive for the virus.  Prior to her arrival it was not in the community. It could have been kept out for who knows how much longer?  The longer we can keep this to a minimum, the less damage will be done to our people and our economy here. Caution at the outset and vigilance from then on might have given experts time to develop treatments, cures and preventative measures for this, and thus more than made up for any losses caused by that caution.

The man who broke the quarantine to take his daughter to a dance should be subjected to a severe punishment.  The honor system is not working in a society where the social compact has been destroyed. This could not have happened in a society where adult, responsible decision-making was the norm.  An adult father’s judgment and sense of moral responsibility would have overruled a disappointed youngster’s desire to go to the dance. Instead they could have watched a special movie on Netflix, had a nice dinner of her choice and a promise to do something special when the quarantine was lifted.  It should have been a moment in which to teach responsibility and concern for others.  But in a society where selfishness is encouraged and instant gratification has taken the place of responsible behavior, this kind of thing happens. The only way forward now is to enforce  self-quarantine by arrest and a felony charge. Who will ever know how many lives were put at risk just by this father’s actions?  

And why was the elder daughter permitted to enter without quarantine?  It might be time to re-fit Ellis Island for quarantine on the East Coast and the Aleutians and others on the West Coast.  People coming here should spend 14 days at least in quarantine. Ted Cruz, possibly exposed at the CPAC event, put others first and quarantined himself, even though he has had no symptoms and has not been tested positive.  We could hope for this kind of example from others in high office and from the celebrities people follow. Why the president did not act immediately upon his return from his trip to cut off travel, especially as Europe is now in the throes of the pandemic, is difficult to imagine.   It should be noted that Italy was free of the disease until a Pakistani national who went there and was tested positive, refused to obey the order to quarantine. His evil act has caused the shut-down of ¾ of Italy’s economy and the quarantine of ¼ of its population - none of which will be enough.

It is possible that the spread of this epidemic, caused by China’s initial cover-up, followed by irresponsible decisions around the world, up and down the line, could, like the sequential fall of dominoes, end up toppling President Trump as well as President Moon.  He had the lousy judgment to retweet a picture of himself playing a fiddle - definitely a bad image, hardly reassuring or constructive.  Is it fair to blame Trump for the virus?  No, obviously not. He didn’t create it. The Chinese in all likelihood did, in their bioweapons lab in Wuhan.  But he has failed utterly to slow it spread in the U.S. Eventually it would be impossible to stop it entirely but its effects on people’s health and the nation’s economy could have been significantly diminished.  At the very least, all precautions should have been taken to ensure that. His lack of decisive action to halt incoming plane travel and allowing cruise ships to dock and passengers to disembark has been a terrible mistake - let’s hope not a fatal one for his next term.  Where the Democrats have failed to bring him down, this failure in judgment and glib and arrogant response might well do their job for them.   

Planes flying into our airports from all over the world - stop them.  Borders with Canada and Mexico - close them. Order 14-day quarantines just as Britain does for dogs to protect their own canine population.  When someone is quarantined due to a positive test print their names, print their photos, make sure there is a notice on their door (this used to be standard practice with diseases such as smallpox) and if the person breaks the quarantine charge him with a felony.  Assess fines and costs - which could be considerable - the stopping and cleaning of an airplane, a cab, a train and their lost revenues, and jail time. It is sad to miss a father-daughter dance, and depressing when a quarantine causes the loss of income. It is a tragedy when exposure to the illness results in someone’s death.  There just is no forgiveness for that.

As the Koreans put it, there was a “golden time” for our leaders.  They have largely failed us in that golden time. There may be a “golden time” coming for others now.   The father in St. Louis failed in his golden time. It is to be hoped that others will do a better job in theirs.

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