The Coronavirus is a Test of our National Character

The Pentagon created the Office of Net Assessment in 1973 to forecast the United States’ strengths and weaknesses relative to its main adversaries after a nuclear war. What would a similar “net assessment” tell us about how America and the world will look after the coronavirus pandemic?

At the heart of such a post-pandemic assessment is the question of where the United States will balance out relative to China, our greatest competitor and co-dependent, after all the death and disruption of the year(s) ahead. This issue is especially important now, as China and the United States trade insults about who’s to blame for the spread of the virus that emerged three months ago in Wuhan, China.

Let’s start with costs. Any assessments are wildly uncertain, but we know there will be many thousands of dead, hundreds of billions in lost production and national income, and immeasurable losses in human capital, as studies and research are disrupted. The United States and China will both be weakened, initially, but it’s unclear exactly how much.

Numbers are guesstimates. As of Thursday afternoon, China has reported 81,155 cases of covid-19 and 3,249 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States still measures quite low, with 11,274 cases and 157 deaths as of Thursday. But the U.S. numbers will go much higher. Researchers at Imperial College in London made a dire forecast that as many as 2.2 million Americans could die if social distancing and other mitigation measures aren’t successful.

Then there’s the economic cost: Goldman Sachs’s latest forecast is that China’s gross domestic product will decline 9 percent during the first quarter, a loss of more than $1 trillion in production and income and an unprecedented reversal for modern China. Goldman is predicting a 5 percent decline in U.S. GDP during the second quarter, when the pandemic effects hit hard. That would also represent a loss of over $1 trillion in output.