After Virus, How Will Americans' View of The World Change?

As the coronavirus spread across the world and began its reach into the United States, an assortment of Americans from the president on down summoned one notion as they framed the emerging cataclysm.

“The Chinese virus,” they called it — or, in a few particularly racist cases, the “kung flu.” No matter the terminology of choice, the message was clear: Whatever the ravages of COVID-19 are causing, it’s somewhere else’s fault.

Not someone. Somewhere.

A thick thread of the American experience has always been to hold the rest of the world at arm’s length, whether in economics, technology or cultural exchange. The truth is, this nation has always been a bit of an island, a place where multilingualism, or even holding a passport, is less common than in many other lands.

Now, the notion of a virus that came from a distant “elsewhere” stands to carve deeper grooves into that landscape.

“It’s a continuation of the same kinds of fears that we have had,” says Jennifer Sciubba, an international studies professor at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee. “We’ve seen this conversation before.”

As the outbreak worsens by the day, the United States, like other nations, is drawing quite literally inward. With little ability to plan and increasing numbers of Americans out of work, that’s a natural reaction. “The coronavirus is killing globalization as we know it,” one foreign affairs journal said.

It’s unlikely that much of the globalization that touches Americans daily — the parts in their iPhones, the cheap consumer goods, the out-of-season fruit in their produce aisles, the ability to communicate around the world virtually — is going anywhere, at least for good.