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Health / "0 COVID" , "COVID 0" -- policy of the impossible against which I protest
« on: September 01, 2022, 07:11:45 PM »"Zero COVID" -- policy of the impossible against which I protest
From the very beginning of COVID-19 pandemic I wrote a lot about how people are not responsible -- that they should not protest against masks and they should follow the good Chinese habit to wear masks when there are viral diseases (i.e. I am not an antimasker), that they should not gather in crowds (i.e. I am not against distance and keeping away from the viruses), that hygiene is not at the good level at all and should be increased (i. e. I support the increased measures of washing, disinfection, etc. and am not against them), even about the vaccines I wrote that there are not (in the future) necessarily invented successful (and useful) ones, but despite my scepticism in this regard, I was never an anti-vaxer.
But the new policy in China, which is for "0 COVID" ("Zero COVID") runs with mass testing (which goes to daily testing more than 10 times or once every few days in order to give you the right to use transport, enter a supermarket, etc., otherwise you can not), various lockdowns (some of which literally lock you up and you can't even get out on the street or in front of your block (or another kind of home)), traffic/transport, business, sports, etc. limitations led to:
1. Ordinary people to be more and more dissatisfied because they are limited not only their freedoms, but also their incomes.
2. Smaller and larger businessmen to grieve.
3. Journalists, think tank scientists, even sinophiles and more classical oriented socialists like me to criticize, directly or indirectly, Xi Jin-Ping's policy.
4. Even from the WHO (World Health Organization) there was criticism that this 0 COVID result is not possible.
Of course, there are some people that like this 0 COVID policy (for example, insured pensioners with pensions who even hope this will last longer and then they to be able to get free food (in some places the local government really give them a few vegetables for free) and/or because they really believe that the present COVID variant is a very dangerous thing and it is possible to be achieved 0 morbidity).
My main reason to be against it (apart from the already listed the restrictions on freedoms and the economic damages) is that this no new COVID cases (0 COVID) is impossible! It cannot be done once the COVID virus is imported even sometimes from abroad (through unwashed imported products, through illegally crossing the border people, through legal travelers after resumed international flights, etc. ) to achieve permanently 0 COVID (no COVID). It will come from somewhere (either through an unwashed/unsterilized package from abroad, or through an untested (mistested) foreigner or a Chinese citizen returning from abroad) and then what? Again all these mass testings, lockdowns and suffering? There is something I want to add to these: these queues (lines) of people waiting for COVID tests are also kind of like mass gatherings of people (some of them do not even keep the required distance), which also increases the risk of transmitting the infection.
I'm not a fan of talking without evidence or spreading conspiracy theories. Quite logically, however, I think that this policy is hardly based on the pure belief that it is possible to have 0 COVID in one country, given that in the rest of the world COVID is practically everywhere. It is possible (again I say -- a purely logical guess) that there is some other, unknown, hidden economic, political or another kind of motive behind all this.