The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The absurdity of the "failure to zero" in the West

2022-01-06T22:19:55.146Z


With the changes in the epidemic situation, the West has recently begun to speak about China’s "failure to zero". It believes that China’s efforts to block the new crown virus in the past have brought huge economic benefits to China’s prevention strategies.


With the changes in the epidemic situation, the West has recently begun to speak of China’s "failure to zero". It believes that China’s efforts to block the new coronavirus epidemic in the past have brought huge economic benefits, but it has prevented China from forming herd immunity. China's vaccination protection is inadequate, and eventually the "clear" policy will become an economic drag.


This Monday (3rd), the U.S. political think tank Eurasia Group (Eurasia Group) released its 2022 world's top ten risk predictions, and listed "China's zero clearing policy failure" as the first.

The think tank believes that the broad epidemic in the West stimulates the masses to vaccinate the latest mRNA vaccines, which can effectively reduce the mortality and severe illness rates, so the epidemic should eventually be overcome.

On the contrary, China’s “zero-clearing policy” leaves Chinese people without antibodies, and its self-developed vaccines are less effective. Therefore, after the emergence of new variant viruses, China will not be able to completely prevent the spread of the epidemic. Eventually, a major outbreak will inevitably occur. A larger blockade will only severely hit the economy and affect the global supply chain.

Some US investment banks such as Goldman Sachs also stated that China will continue to maintain a blockade policy in the next year, which will affect its GDP growth.

Xi'an City Lockdown ▼▼▼

+9

China is worse than the West?

The recent lack of control over Xi'an’s closure of the city has caused dissatisfaction among the people, and this is the main entry point for Western criticism of China's defense epidemic "clearing" the argument.

However, is the situation in China really worse than in the West?

Western society has paid a huge price for loose epidemic prevention policies, whether it is economic or health.

As advanced as the United States, there have been 57.7 million confirmed cases and 830,000 deaths so far. If the same population ratio is set above China, that would be 238 million confirmed cases and 3.5 million deaths. The current epidemic in China is obviously not as serious.

As for the economic differences between the two sides, many studies have pointed out that the epidemic has narrowed the economic gap between China and the United States, and China will catch up with the United States several years faster than previously expected.

On January 3, 2022, the number of diagnoses in the United States exceeded 1 million in a single day.

Even if it coexists with the virus, the US economy is still unaffected.

To say that the epidemic in the West has ended but China has not, it is completely lacking in scientific evidence.

What vaccine can effectively respond to Omicron and reduce the rate of death and severe illness. The medical community has not yet had sufficient clinical data to make any solid conclusions. Therefore, at this stage, it is only a natural judgment that there will be backlash in the epidemic in China.

More importantly, the West still has a big misunderstanding of China's anti-epidemic strategy.

For example, the risk prediction of the Eurasian Group refers to China's insistence on adopting the "zero-clearing" policy because of the preference of President Xi Jinping, but this is obviously a wrong view.

China's research and judgment of "clearing to zero" is to take into account various risk factors and will not arbitrarily give up this goal until the situation that is clearly conducive to the end of the epidemic is confirmed.

In contrast, many countries in the Western society have long advocated "coexisting with the virus," which is tantamount to betting on the lives of their citizens.

Looking back at the beginning of 2020, many Western countries believed that the epidemic would not have much impact and chose not to act. As a result, the epidemic broke out and the mortality rate was as high as 10%.

Some scientists believe that Omicron may provide a way out for ending the epidemic, but it is still too early to say at this stage. If it is true, everyone is happy, but what if the situation is not as expected?

Recently, "IHU mutant strains" appeared in southern France. The degree of mutation is higher than that of Omicron. It is still uncertain how much impact it will have. Who can guarantee that there will not be a new wave of more serious epidemics?

China will not be cleared forever

Moreover, China's "clearing" is not a monolithic issue.

The national anti-epidemic policy has always said "dynamic reset", that is, it will not excessively pursue zero infection, but when there is a local outbreak, the public health policy will be tightened to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

Therefore, since this year, some mainland cities have been experiencing epidemics one after another, but they were all quickly brought under control.

This reflects the fact that China's "zero-clearing" policy is actually very flexible, and the ultimate goal is to prevent the spread of the epidemic.

"Dynamic Zeroing" has reduced a lot of negative economic impacts.

In July and August of this year, there were epidemics in Nanjing and Guangzhou. Some investment banks in the United States judged that this means that China will continue to blockade and ultimately affect economic development. Both JP Morgan Chase and Goldman Sachs lowered China’s GDP growth in the third quarter of 2021 to 2% and 2.3%.

But China's third-quarter GDP growth was 4.9%, which was even higher than JPMorgan Chase's original expectation.

As a matter of fact, China has been debating the issue of "when will it be cleared" because everyone knows that it cannot be in lockdown forever and will have to be reopened one day.

In August last year, Zeng Guang, a member of the high-level expert group of the National Health and Medical Commission, said that China’s current epidemic prevention war must be fought in accordance with "clearing", but it will not always insist on "clearing."

China has been preparing for the reopening, otherwise it will not work hard to promote vaccination.

At present, China has vaccinated more than 2.7 billion doses, and nearly 1.19 billion people have completed the two doses. The vaccination rate is as high as 83.6%, which is higher than the 62% in the United States.

In summary, the Western opinion that China will persist in the blockade is a false assumption in itself.

Some people in the West now point the finger at China's epidemic prevention policy, which seems to justify the inability of the Western government to deal with the Omicron variant of the epidemic.

[New Coronary Pneumonia] Anti-epidemic is a big test of the governance capabilities of local governments [New Coronary Pneumonia] The debate on "closing the city" should not be based on ideology and insisting on the goal of "clearing zero" before customs clearance can be discussed

Source: hk1

All news articles on 2022-01-06

You may like

Trends 24h

News/Politics 2024-03-27T16:45:54.081Z

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.