Ancillary #1
In December 2019, a virus broke out in Wuhan, China, and it was later first identified as COVID-19, a word very well known by global citizens. Nearly every individual in the global society is now spending extra time on COVID tests, quarantines, and cancellations of plans which was supposed to be spent in travels, parties, and entertainment events in the past. Widespread supply shortages, including food shortages and daily necessity shortages, were caused by supply chain disruption and panic buying. Two whole years have passed till now, and the world is still fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic with its latest highly-contagious variant Omicron. Regarding the approaches of pandemic response, different countries implemented different policies and detailed measures. Among the globe, China takes very strict containment in response to the pandemic; while most of the other countries in the world, take the U.S. for instance, carry out comparatively much looser policies against the pandemic. My firsthand experience of the two modes of pandemic response in China and America raised the question, that whether the current pandemic-control approaches that the Chinese government is taking are worth the cost, and why China didn’t take the measures as implemented by most other nations around the globe community.
The pandemic prevention measures imposed by the Chinese government are intensely strict. Here are some scenarios: individuals entering China will be required for at least 21 days of quarantine under the supervision of medical workers; one positive case might lead to 3 weeks of home quarantine for the entire community and COVID test for the whole city; large-scale lockdowns are enforced and citizens being isolated sometimes even experience food shortages; individuals are being recorded on any kinds of public areas that they accessed. These are just the tip of the iceberg. Needless to say, it must be insanely costly to implement all these strict policies.
From a global perspective, the COVID-19 virus is now evolving into more contagious yet less fatal variants. Data from a preprint study that looked at 52,000 people infected with the omicron variant and about 17,000 infected with delta in the SoCal area shows that omicron patients are 53% less likely for hospitalization, 74% less likely for ICU admission, and 91% less likely to die. In most other countries, like the U.S. and the U.K., people live a near-normal life, and infected individuals just self-isolate for a few days with little or no influence on others around. Governments are more inclined to take the herd immunity approach for controlling the Coronavirus. It seems like herd immunity is the preferable long-term solution regarding the COVID pandemic. However, conditions change drastically when taking this issue to a national or local perspective. During the pandemic, it is the government of each nation that directly regulate its citizens, hence the governments must take into account the national conditions, social systems, and even cultural backgrounds when establishing confrontation policies for a global pandemic.
