By Steve Brawner, © 2020 by Steve Brawner Communications, Inc.

Feb. 4, 2020

Sen. Tom Cotton, the ex-combat infantryman, tends to see the world – and describe it – in terms of threats and adversaries: Iran, terrorists, illegal immigrants, legal immigrants who take Americans’ jobs, the Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei, President Obama and other Democrats, etc. He often uses strong, uncompromising language.

Lately, he’s focused on a new, developing threat, the coronavirus that China says has killed more than 400 of its people, and which has started spreading to other countries. As of Monday, there were 11 confirmed cases in the United States.

On Jan. 30, Cotton said in a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting that the coronavirus is “the biggest and most important story in the world” and something that “could result in a global pandemic.” He called for banning all commercial air travel between China and the United States and for a “Manhattan Project-level effort” to develop a vaccine. The Manhattan Project created the atomic bomb in World War II.

Cotton’s remarks are notable because this time the threat he’s talking about isn’t a person or group of people, but a virus.

Viruses are microorganisms that invade the body and reproduce by attaching to cells and reprogramming them to create more viruses. They can mutate, frustrating our efforts to stop them.

We tend to mark the past 120 years by great human conflicts: World Wars I and II, the Cold War, the Sept. 11 attacks and the resulting War on Terror, and others.

Lost in that narrative is the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918-19. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the epidemic affected 500 million people, one-third of the world’s population, and killed an estimated 50 million, which no one could possibly confirm. The majority of victims ultimately died from bacterial pneumonia that attacked their weakened respiratory systems, says the National Institutes of Health.

The CDC says the epidemic killed 675,000 Americans, including young adults and young children. In contrast, the Department of Veterans Affairs says 53,402 service members died from combat during World War I. Almost as many military personnel – 45,000 – died from the epidemic as died from battle, according to the NIH. The VA says 405,399 died of all causes in World War II.

In other words, the two-year Spanish flu epidemic killed far more Americans than the World Wars did. The CDC estimates that 10,000-25,000 Americans have died from the flu this year.

In the years since World War II, the United States has developed history’s greatest military. At the same time, mankind has fought wars around the globe and expended vast resources inventing ways of killing people.

But when it comes to fighting and preventing the flu and other viral enemies, we’ve developed only limited weaponry. The flu shot is a good thing, and you should get one. But if the influenza virus carried a Nazi flag or wore a suicide bomber’s vest, we’d have long ago developed better vaccines.

Meanwhile, the modern, mobile, interconnected world is fertile soil for viruses to spread. And our aging, unhealthy society is increasingly vulnerable to disease.

On Jan. 31, the government declared coronavirus a public health emergency, the day after the World Health Organization did. Most noncitizens who recently visited China are now temporarily banned from entering this country. Americans returning to the United States from the Hubei province, where the disease is centered, are being quarantined two weeks. Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, called coronavirus “an unprecedented threat,” saying, “We would rather be remembered for overreacting than underreacting.”

We don’t know if the coronavirus outbreak really is “the biggest and most important story in the world” as Cotton says. Maybe it won’t become a pandemic.

Regardless, his call for a Manhattan Project-level effort against coronavirus should be expanded to include all viruses, especially the flu. It should be done in concert with other nations and funded by today’s dollars, not debt.

And it should be done soon. Humans should wage their next world war not against each other, but against viruses. They’re the enemy that threatens us all and never stops attacking.