Anyone who thinks coronavirus is the last global pandemic America will face lacks sufficient imagination. There's no question this will happen again. In a world connected by jet travel that is guaranteed.

HOW MANY CORONAVIRUS TESTS ARE AVAILABLE, AND HOW MANY ARE NEEDED NATIONWIDE?

So as we suffer through this virus, maybe we should learn something useful for the next time. Going forward, our leaders ought to be certain we have enough medicine and tests and hospital beds, at the least in case something awful happens unexpectedly - because it will.

There should be a plan to respond quickly in ways that assure the public that the people in charge know what they're doing. Those are the obvious lessons from the epidemic now in progress.

But there's more to learn. Here are a few other things to think about. First, borders matter. It turns out that immigration isn't some boutique political issue that only activists need to care about. The question of who lives in your country is the most basic issue that any nation faces ever.

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Immediately after the coronavirus began to spread globally, sane countries started to secure their borders. They wanted to know exactly who was coming in and out, and they wanted to control it. That was the first thing they did.

In Israel, where leaders care deeply about their country, border controls were swift and highly aggressive. The Israelis did not want a single person who was even potentially infected to cross into Israel, and good for them.

Unfortunately, nothing like that could ever happen here in the U.S. Democrats would denounce it instantly as racist and xenophobic. So maybe Nancy Pelosi will give us a stern lecture about how immoral Israel is. We'll be waiting for that speech, probably forever.

Here's the worst news: The Chinese hate us and have threatened to withhold life-saving medicine from us. Our most powerful enemy in the world has the power of life and death over our country.

Next, gun control takes on new significance when things fall apart. It doesn't take much for law and order to collapse. Civilization itself can evaporate quickly and over the centuries; it often has.

On some level, all of us know this. We're animals with the collective memory of prior chaos embedded in our genes. So at times like this, we're reminded how precarious any society is. Given that, you've got to wonder about our leaders' demands that we disarm.

Anyone who increases the threat to you and your family, and at the same time tries to prevent you from defending yourself is your enemy -- by definition. It's scary when you think about that in the context of what is happening now. And apparently a lot of people have thought about it.

Ammunition sales jumped by hundreds of percent this week. If Americans really believed their leaders would protect them when it came down to it, that wouldn't be happening.

And speaking of our leaders, who's really in charge of this country? We think we know the answer -- the people on the ballot at election time.

But if you want to know who's actually in control of anything, ask yourself this: Who can make you beg for mercy?

If one of your kids had a bad infection, you would do anything for antibiotics. But our leaders don't control those drugs. China does. The Chinese manufacture our entire supply of antibiotics, not to mention countless other goods your family literally could not live without.

And here's the worst news: The Chinese hate us and have threatened to withhold life-saving medicine from us. Our most powerful enemy in the world has the power of life and death over our country.

Instead of protecting the people of this country, our leaders' top priority is condemning fake xenophobia and making certain they can't be called racist on Twitter.

We should not let a single day pass before fixing this. But we should also recognize that not all of our opponents are foreign. In the next few months, American hospitals are likely to overflow with the desperately ill. It's possible that many people who need immediate care will be turned away to suffer and die. That's a horrifying prospect.

So does this seem like the right time to open our entire health care system to the rest of the world for free? What would happen to sick people in America if we did that? It sounds like a form of sabotage.

Yet that's exactly what every Democrat who ran for president proposed in public. Even now as we face an unprecedented strain on our health care system, thanks to coronavirus, they have not changed their view on that.

What are they thinking? Well, they're not thinking. They're believing -- believing fervently in the cult of identity politics.

Joe Biden released his plan for coronavirus on Sunday. The first bullet point proclaims this: "Acts of racism and xenophobia against the Asian-American and Pacific Islander community must not be tolerated." That's number one on Biden's list.

Is racism against the Pacific Islander community really our country's most urgent problem right now? No, it is not. It is not even in the top 500 problems. You're not going to see angry mobs lynching people in the streets because of coronavirus.

You never will see that; it won't happen here. This is not that kind of country. America is a welcoming place filled with unusually kind and open-hearted people. The merchants of wokeness cannot see that -- they refuse to see it. As a matter of faith, they believe that all bad things emanate from America. They will always put America last. It's their creed.

Biden's plan goes on to demand that we change the Trump administration's so-called "public charge rule." Changing that would allow more penniless immigrants to move into this country at taxpayer expense and use our already dangerously overburdened health care system in the middle of a terrible epidemic.

How does that help? It doesn't help. It hurts. That's the point of it.

People like this are dangerous. They're the reason things are falling apart. Suddenly, they seem to run everything. But they are not in the majority in this country, and we should remember that.

Most Americans are not called members. They're not ideological. They're sensible. They understand what our leaders need to do. They need to treat us as we would treat our own children.

If there's a threat to your kids, you don't pause to think of an excuse or pretend it's not happening. You act. You do whatever is necessary to protect them. Period. If you die trying, it is a life well spent.

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If you're forced to choose between your own children and the kids next door, you understand that's not really a choice. You have only one duty -- to the lives in your care, your people, the ones who depend on you. In the end, that's what it means to lead a family. It means no less to lead a country.

Instead of protecting the people of this country, our leaders' top priority is condemning fake xenophobia and making certain they can't be called racist on Twitter. Just so you're very clear about their priorities, they are.

Adapted from Tucker Carlson's monologue from "Tucker Carlson Tonight" on March 12, 2020.

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