We Will Never Be Like China
In February you’d try anything to get out of China. In April, you wish you were in China.
On January 11th, China recorded its first death of a 61-year old man from a new kind of pneumonia due to a mysterious virus. Later it was discovered that he was a frequent customer of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. Around the same time, scientists identified a new type of coronavirus, the novel coronavirus, now named Covid-19.
Within days, the numbers of Covid-19 cases in Wuhan ballooned from several to several hundred. By January 23rd, with the Chinese new year coming up in two days, the number was reaching 1000 with at least 20 dead. On that day, the world was stunned by the decision of the Chinese government to shut down the city of 11 million completely. No planes, trains, or ships going out of the city. No public transportation in the city. Within a couple of days, cities in the Hubei province were shut down as well. By the beginning of February, the whole nation was in lockdown mode.
Just three months later, Covid-19 had ravaged through the world infecting nearly 3 million people. Western Europe and the United States have become the new epicenters accounting for more than half of the world’s deaths from the virus. Almost all of the heavy-hit countries have issued lockdown orders. Now, weeks later, countries like the US, Italy, France, the UK, and Spain have finally seen their daily new cases stable and even on the decline.
Governments are now faced with decisions that will impact the health care system, the economy, and most importantly the wellbeing of their people. The lockdowns have worked so far but should they be extended? The curves are being flattened but could the numbers go lower? How did China do it?
How did China go from over 100 daily deaths and almost 50,000 sick in the middle of February to zero new infections by late March in a country with 1.4 billion people?
By enforcing the strictest lockdown in the world, China was able to stop the deadly virus in its tracks.
During the quarantine period, no one was allowed to leave their homes except for medical reasons. Police and local residential committees were involved in reenforcing the shut down orders. Vehicles were not allowed unless you had a special license issued by the government. And for the most part, people were cooperative and stayed home. Problems with shut down restrictions were rare.
By contrast, most of the Western countries’ lockdown policies are not nearly as strict. They usually allow people to leave their homes for essentials like food, medicine, and basic supplies for home. Exercise, running, and dog walking are allowed. Public transportation systems are open. Moreover, facial covering like masks has only gained acceptance in the last month. Still, there is resistance to this simple and inexpensive social distancing measure.
Conformance also varies. In Italy, police officers entered churches to break up the services and gave out tens of thousands of citations on Easter Sunday. Earlier in the month, fines were doubled by Governor Andrew Cuomo because “too many New Yorkers weren’t taking the rules seriously.” Still, personal travel nation-wide is about half the level of pre-outbreak travel. People are still moving about. The public transportation system is still open in New York, the heaviest hit city in the US. “I can’t force 19 million people in the state to stay home.” The New York Governor Andrew Cuomo repeatedly said in his daily briefings.
Stay home. Stop the spread. Save lives. The slogan at Governor Cuomo’s daily briefing spells out the current government strategy. Educating. Pleading. Encouraging. Shaming. “You don’t have the right to risk someone else’s life,” Cuomo scolded.
Nevertheless, in the last two weeks, the pressure of reopening gets higher everyday. Is it a good time to reopen yet? Should we stay the course longer for better results? And since China serves as the only example to have had a severe outbreak and got it under control within 2–3months,
Can we be like China?
Chris Murray, the researcher at the Institute for Health Metrics and
Evaluation at the University of Washington, who created the White House’s favorite model (based on the data from Wuhan and some European countries), commented that the US curve had not come down “as expected” weeks after the stay-home order. In Albany, New York, Governor Cuomo is wondering how fast and steady the decline would be for new Covid-19 cases and how low the numbers will go (as seen below from the slides of his April 25th and April 27th briefings)
You won’t see the curve go down to the bottom, Governor Cuomo. Because:
We will never be like China.
Not until you order people to stay in their homes except for emergencies and you enforce it. Not until you issue a shut down of public transportation right away and you give the best protective gear to your healthcare and essential workers. Or until you clean all public areas with disinfectant according to strict protocol. Until then, your numbers will not go down as low as you wanted and the curve will not drop.
Because the number of daily cases are a reflection of the new infections caused by this very contagious virus. To put it simply, coronavirus transmits from one person to another person. As long as you allow interactions between unprotected people, the virus will continue to spread.
On April 8th, the lockdown order was officially lifted in Wuhan. As of April 26th, there are no new reported cases in Wuhan. All Covid-19 patients have gone home. In cities all over the country, people are out shopping, dining, and enjoying the Spring time in the public parks.
In the West, we hold values of personal liberty and individual freedom as the core beliefs in our society. Our democracy has afforded individuals the right to make their own decisions in daily life, even in this pandemic. But if China has shown the world that a two-month strict lockdown was all it took for them to contain the virus and get peoples’ lives back to normal, are tens of thousands of deaths, an economic loss in the trillions and an uncertain future really the price to pay for being American?
