Auto-generated video transcript:
China is at the forefront of the biggest health disaster in modern times, a disaster so huge it has reshaped modern society, economies, cultures and human lives forever. With the world focus on tackling the coronavirus pandemic gleaming eyes focus on China, the soontobe largest economy in the world, and how they’ve responded to the pandemic.
So China has pursued an elimination strategy, also known as the zerocovard strategy. This aims to eliminate local transmissions of the virus as early as possible. In theory, this reduced the compounding effect of the virus and thus it spread into the larger community.
Initially with the first covid 19 variants. This approach was very successful, which reduced transmission to near zero within 18 months following the containment of the initial outbreak in Wuhan. Furthermore, the country during this period suffered just two trove and 19 related deaths, which is incredibly impressive.
However, the question remains, will the zerocovid strategy actually work with newer and more transmission variants of the virus, in particular homocron? Before I answer that question, it’s good to know some context into exactly what is serial coveted.
How does it work? The China COVID-19 Emergency Response Team described its elimination strategy in a paper published in The Lancet in June 2020. When an Inspector person is identified, all close contacts are required to undergo a 14 day centralized quarantine with multiple rounds of PCR testing. During outbreaks, communitywide PCR testing is used to quickly identify infected people in order to rapidly isolate them from the general population and to allow a cricket return to normal activity. Community wide screening was first tried out in May 2020 in Wuhan and has been used in subsequent outbreaks in China. Depending on the city, additional measures may be employed. These include contact tracing, which is aided by the use of a smartphone application, and domestic travel restrictions in high risk areas. Certain demographics may be also subject to pulsory PCR testing, including people with fever or respiratory symptoms, medical staff, and workers who handle imported goods. For example, in Beijing, there was a viral resurgence in June 2020 after 56 days without any known local transmission. The outbreak was centered around a wholesale market where neighborhood residents and their close contacts were tested. The outbreak was quickly brought to a halt by the 5 July, less than a month after it began in October 2020.
After a period of two months without any known local infections in all of China, three new cases were detected in the Port city of Quendau. Two dock workers with asymptomatic infections were identified as the probable source of the outbreak. The population of the Quendale was subsequently screened using pulled PCR testing, and 11 million people had been tested within five days of the first cases. Travel restrictions were imposed in the city, requiring people leaving the city to present a negative PCR test and to quarantine for at least a week. The outrage was brought to an end without a lockdown. From July 3 to August 2021, China experienced and contained eleven outbreaks of the deltaarian. The largest of these outbreaks began in Nanjing, which was traced back to an infected passenger on a flight to Moscow. Doubtbreak spread to multiple provinces before it was contained to manageable levels, however, China did not fully eliminate viral transmission in the community. After lockdown of Wuhan, the overall consensus in top academic journals such as Science Magazine, Nature the Landset, regarded China’s measures to contain the virus as highly effective. One study published in Science magazine concluded that the Wuhan travel ban may have prevented more than 7000 cases outside the city.
Furthermore, a survey on Sarah prevalence found that Serapurveillance fell with distance from Wuhan, indicating that the initial outbreak has been contained outside of the city. On the other hand, a commentary article in Global Public Health examined the possibility of inaccurate death counts due to alleged political censorship. The office concluded that due to a lack of any known deaths of Hong Kong or Taiwan residents in mainland China, the discrepancy between official and the true death toll is particularly not large. Direction from global leaders have been largely positive. For example, US President Donald Trump Xi Jinping on Twitter, stating that China has been working very hard to contain the coronavirus. However, he later rebuked his comments, saying that he was a little upset with China and that the country was very secretive and that’s unfortunate. Current U. S. President Joe Biden would later say that Trump failed to hold China accountable on coronavirus in the first half of 2020. US intelligence officials in the British government expressed doubts about the accuracy of the figures provided by the Chinese government. This race concerns that China has been deliberately underreporting the extent of infections and deaths. On April 1, 2022, United States officials said that China had deliberately concealed its cases and death rates.
The anonymous officials stated that the Chinese central government does not know the extent of the outbreak because lower tier officials reportedly falsified statistics to avoid losing their positions. Since mid February in 2022, China has faced an unprecedented OMICON rave, with daily cases reaching record highs since the pandemic started two years ago. Sierra coveted 19 measures were redeployed in Shenzhen, Shanghang, and Jillian. Other areas, such as Shanghai, have adopted a less straight approach, avoiding wholesale lockdowns, only to issue a snap lockdown in late March. These measures have seen a rare pushback from residents over implementation and the perceived lack of benefits.
So this is the part of the video where I could have a little fun and freedom and give you my raw, unfiltered opinion on how I think China has responded to the coronavirus pandemic. Now, initially during the first 18 months of the coronavirus pandemic. In my opinion, China has done a fantastic job, especially with the Seracovid policy. Why? Because during that time, we didn’t know anything about the coronavirus. We didn’t know its mechanism of action. We did not know whether it spread from human to human. And on top of that, the initial iterations of the virus tended to be a lot more deadlier and also less transmissible. And therefore, the Sierra Cobbt strategy was actually justified. It made sense. They’re able to identify these cases very early on and eliminate them at the source and thus minimize the economic impact that it will have by preventing it from spreading into the larger community. However, I am a little bit more skeptical on whether or not the Seracova strategy will work into the future, particularly with Omicron. Now, most scientists or analysts or media journalists will say, well, it makes sense. Of course, it’s not going to work because I’m a crime is a lot more transmissible, it’s a lot less deadlier and therefore has lower health benefits in order to implement this circuitous strategy.
Right.
However, I’m also skeptical of that opinion. Now, I think they’re missing a very crucial aspect of China, and that is China has a very weak medical system. The medical system has very low capacity. If you look at it from the number of beds they have, they only have four beds per 1000 people and one eight doctors per 1000. That is very tiny compared to something like the UK or the US, which have far more beds and far more doctors. And on top of that, if you look at the vaccination rates of China, yes, it’s higher than the UK. It’s at 83.3% compared to 75% here in the UK. But if you look at the unvaccinated people, the demographics of them, they tend to be older people in China. Older people don’t want to take the vaccine in China because they are skeptical of Western medicine, because they’re skeptical of taking the vaccine. Now, this is extremely problematic because the elderly are the vulnerable people. They’re the ones at risk of actually dying or having severe health complications. Now, if China were to ease any restrictions now, this would cause a significant amount of cases, and that will cause a significant amount of deaths, and that will overload their weak medical system, which would cause untold health consequences for the country.
Not only will Omicron and coronavirus rise, but also other diseases like cancer. Now, my opinion is that China will still continue to pursue this circuit of strategy. Why? Because it’s the only option they have. They don’t have a medical assistant in order to burden the coronavirus pandemic. What they need to do right now is to ensure that there’s enough education, particularly for the elderly people, to actually take the vaccine, to take a double Jab. That’s going to take time and effectively, what the Zerotovid strategy is doing is, one, scaring people into taking the vaccine. And two, this is actually buying them time to effectively putting a marketing campaign out there to educate people. Now, in the long term, China needs to invest in its medical facilities. They need to build more hospitals. They need to hire more doctors. They need to hire more nurses to ensure that they can keep up with the demand. This is a very crucial moment in China’s history. They’re the second largest economy in the world and they’re projected to become the number one economy in seven years time. Now, a lot of their economic growth is driven by human capital, and if that human capital, if those people who are working in China are ill, if people are aging, this not only going to cause an economic burden, but this is also going to cause a massive healthcare crisis in terms of their medical capacity.
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