Op-ed views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author.

We should all mark the date of the death of globalism. It was March 19, 2020.

On that date, the states of Pennsylvania and California announced a total and complete economic shutdown. They ordered their citizens to stay home and their businesses to close. More states may soon follow.

Why did they take these extreme and unprecedented steps?

Wuhan Coronavirus, of course. Maybe its time to not have friends who eat bats?

Coronavirus, or “Chinese virus” as President Trump often calls it, is shutting down the world. This invisible menace is causing extremely visible actions and reactions across our country. In the span of a couple of weeks we have seen first music festivals, then sports, then literally everything else shut down. Restaurants and bars can no longer offer service on site. Movie theaters are closed. Schools, churches, clubs, everything is just gone, and with them the livelihoods of millions of Americans have been snatched away.

Whether this is an overreaction or not we don’t know yet. What we do know is that this virus started in China in markets where people buy live bats and take them home to eat them. The virus jumped from animals to humans. These are facts. It’s not racist, as the media trolls who either run interference for China for free or for yuan converted to dollars, keep saying. The virus started in China and could have been stopped there.

Here are some more facts. Chinese doctors first noticed the new virus in November 2019, weeks earlier than they have admitted. Their government destroyed the samples and ordered the doctors to cover up what they knew. That happened on December 27, 2019. If you violate the will of the communist thugs who run China, they will kill you. Those frontline doctors faced the agonizing choice of following their conscience and getting murdered by their government, or concealing what they knew and watching this bug become an outbreak, then an epidemic, then a pandemic, potentially killing millions. The communists punished the doctor who tried to sound the alarm, and he later died. The Chinese communists destroyed his life on their way to destroying the world. The United States saw its first coronavirus case on January 19, 2020 — thanks to China’s cover-up and our own elites’ faith in globalism. We had not shut down travel from China yet.

The hashtag #ChinaLiedPeopleDied has trended on Twitter off and on through the past few days. It perfectly encapsulates why our lives are being disrupted. Thanks to faith in globalism, for all you know, your neighbor may be carrying the virus right now. If you have underlying health conditions and contract the virus, it can and likely will kill you.

And all of this is because of globalism.

President George H. W. Bush renewed China’s “Most Favored Nation” trading status against considerable opposition in 1989. President Jimmy Carter first granted China that status in 1980 and President Reagan renewed it. But in 1989, China showed its true colors to the world when it murdered thousands of its young citizens for the thoughtcrime of seeking the personal liberty most of the world takes for granted. Bush went ahead with the privileged trade status because the elites still believed in globalism. President Bill Clinton signed the law making that status permanent in 2001. The choice to grant this status was based on the globalist belief that doing business with China would export capitalism there and over time, crack the communist regime. That belief approached religious fervor on Wall Street and in the halls of power in Washington.

But what has happened since then? What have we gotten for this? The communists allowed just enough capitalism to make themselves rich. And China has robbed us blind. We have shipped countless American jobs from our Rust Belt states to sweat shops in Shenzhen. China has stolen sensitive military technology, illegally bought favorable media coverage from our feckless, dishonest press, and it has made the entire world dependent on it for everything from our smartphones to our pharmaceutical supplies. We used to make our own syringes, drugs and other medical supplies in America. Thanks to China’s favorable trade status, based on the globalist faith, we depend on them to make far too much of it. That was stupid, and it left us vulnerable and unprepared for the crisis we face now.

The coronavirus started in Wuhan, China. That’s a fact. The outbreak will probably never be fully investigated for the simple reason that China is not an open society with a free press or free people. The communists ruthlessly control information at all levels. While the world will never get all the facts, we already know that China knew about the virus weeks before they admitted. We know that had China acted quickly, the pandemic would have been mitigated and the world would be the same place it was a couple of months ago — and a different and better place than it is now.

Why is Italy on its knees right now? Globalism – too much trade with China. Why is coronavirus spreading across Europe? Globalism – the borderless European Union has become a petri dish the size of a continent.

The globalist belief that doing business with China would spread freedom there has failed. It’s done. Coronavirus is a killer that must be stopped, and when it is, we must kill off globalism and cut off our dependence on communist China. They’re not our friends, and they have proven themselves to be the deceitful enemies some of us always knew they were.