Evening Standard comment: The world must unite to stem coronavirus spread | The news from the BBC | Golden Years for music

“The epidemic is a devil. We cannot let the devil hide,” China’s President, Xi Jinping, warned yesterday. There’s no hiding from it now.

What started a few weeks ago as an obscure outbreak in the central Chinese city of Wuhan has become a crisis with global implications.

This morning British Airways suspended all flights to mainland China. Our Government is announcing evacuation plans for British citizens trapped in the isolated city — and other countries, quicker off the mark, have already started getting their people out.

There has been a case of the virus transmitting from person to person in Japan. It has been detected in Germany. Thailand’s health minister says the country is “not able to stop” its spread there.

This disease knows no borders.

The world is just starting to deal with the human, social and economic impact of a crisis whose scale is still unknown.

Even if containment largely works, as it did for the SARS coronavirus almost 20 years ago, and even if, as seems to be the case, the huge majority of those who are infected recover, just as they would from any other kind of flu, the disruption will be massive.

Those cancelled BA flights to and from Beijing and Shanghai don’t just carry people, for instance.

Just to take one example, 41,335 tons of smoked salmon exports went through Heathrow in 2017 — almost a quarter of it headed for China. That may sound trivial, but not if you are part of a community in Scotland that depends on the industry for jobs. On the way back, the planes are full of the sort of consumer goods we have become used to receiving on overnight order.

The dislocation to the world economy will have consequences, just as SARS did. And China is far more central and connected to global trade than it was then.

What should the response be? Alarm is natural. Panic can be avoided, if the world works together. Already there are good signs.

The World Health Organisation is taking the lead. Work has begun in several places on a vaccine. It has a “very good chance” of being effective, says one of those leading the efforts at Imperial College London, although even if it is ready for testing by the summer it would not be set for widespread use until next winter.

We know how to screen people and treat people, and have an advanced health system that will be able to cope.

Through co-operation and openness, the coronavirus can be managed. But, as often happens with flu, the bad news is that things will get worse before they get better.

The news from the BBC

The loss of Nicholas Parsons is a reminder of what the BBC can be at its best — a constant part of many people’s lives.

His show Just A Minute went on air in the late Sixties, when politicians were debating whether to join the EEC, and he was still presenting it in 2019 when they were debating how to leave the EU.

That doesn’t mean everything about the BBC should stay the same, though.

Today it’s announcing news shows like Today and the TV news will work together, which will save money but cost jobs. It’s the right plan.

Bureaucratic duplication is not the same as good journalism. We need a brave, independent and financially stable BBC, able to report the truth.

These changes will help.

Golden Years for music

You can take a risk at The 100 Club. Tickets are still cheap and you might just discover the next Louis Armstrong, David Bowie or Johnny Rotten. They have all played in its cavernous red basement.

So we applaud Westminster council’s decision to give the club protected status, making it exempt from business rates.

There’s still an appetite for great venues, as the successful crowdfunding campaign to save The 100 Club’s neighbour, The Social in Little Portland Street, shows.

Places like this, where you can dance to the music, are what make London special.

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Brits returning from China to be isolated for 14 days over coronavirus