After the government announced the new crown "Category B and B" a few days ago, it basically announced that the three-year epidemic prevention has come to an end. So let’s finally post an article about the epidemic.
went out for a walk over the weekend and found that there were already crowds of people in shopping malls in Beijing, and there were long queues at Universal Studios . I have been stuck on the road every night these days. In the past, every time I encountered this situation, I would curse in my heart. But this time, I was so excited that my eyes filled with tears. I followed the traffic and moved forward slowly, feeling that my life was also moving forward.
Beijing Subway publishes traffic data every day. On Monday, it had reached 4.5 million. This data is still far from the 10 million at the peak and the 7 million before liberalization. But you must know that just two weeks ago, Beijing's subway traffic dropped to about 1 million. It can be said that it was the darkest moment of this great city.
Beijing’s passenger flow is currently increasing by 30,000 to 400,000 people every day, and it is expected to return to 7 million in two weeks. It is equivalent to say that we are now at an intermediate point. Beijing, a thousand-year-old northern fortress city, has withstood the attack of the virus and is gradually recovering. If nothing else happens, Beijing may be the first super city to recover smoothly.
Some people said, blogger, why are you talking about this thing? Why don't you go to the hospital to see if the traffic jam is over?
In the past two days, in the eyes of many people, "economic recovery" seems to be contrary to "rescuing the elderly." In fact, only when the economy improves quickly can everything be hopeful, otherwise it will make things worse.
It is common sense that if the economy is not good, many people will be depressed. If you delay treatment of illness in order to save money, many people will also die. Moreover, government spending is derived from economic flows. Only when the economy becomes active can the government have money, expand public spending, and save more people. Therefore, if the economy does not improve, it will be doubly harmful to the elderly.
has reached this point. In the stage of breakthrough, there is no other option at all. We can only bite the bullet and move forward. It is necessary to treat diseases and save people, but also to restore the economy as soon as possible. Not only are these two things not contradictory, they may even be the same thing.
Again, in the eyes of realists, "should have" and "couldn't have" are of little significance, just like regretting not going to college ten years ago is of little significance. They only identify which roads must be taken and which things must be done. Since it is necessary, then you have to grit your teeth and go on.
There has been a quarrel on Weibo and in the past two days. Many people are still regretting the failure of clearing. They feel that if it were not for the "criminal gangsters" to cause trouble, clearing can continue to operate.
Actually, if you think back, in November, there were a few things that could basically determine the future direction.
1, Urumqi has been closed for three months, and the epidemic is still continuing.
2. The finances of all provinces are in crisis, and even the "big tax cows" like the five southeastern provinces are suffering miserably this year.
3. People everywhere have begun to be very uncooperative, and it is becoming more and more difficult to close the city.
Putting these things together, we can draw a basic conclusion:
wants to continue to block it. On the one hand, it has no money, on the other hand, the people no longer cooperate, and the key effect is not enough.
In other words, if the lockdown continues, sooner or later all cities in the country will be sealed. The final effect will still be poor and the spread of the virus will still not be controlled.
I understand why the central government decisively stepped on the brakes and turned the steering wheel.
This is what I have always said. The end of the blockade is not the complete harmlessness of the virus, but the end when the cost cannot be accepted.
This also reminds me that a reader who is a surgeon left a message in my comment area last year. He said that he has been practicing medicine for thirty years and has witnessed countless human tragedies. He said that almost all families started to treat the elderly with all-out rescue, and most of them eventually turned to "conservative treatment". Conservative treatment basically means giving up treatment. Of course, there are also many people who never go to the hospital, so he can't reach them.
It’s not that the old man’s condition has eased enough for conservative treatment, but that as long as the old man is old enough, sooner or later he will develop a condition that is completely uncontrollable and his family cannot afford it.
Which path to choose in this case is not a matter of attitude at all, but a matter of finance. It is not a matter of whether you want to or not, but a matter of whether you can. Everyone knows that life is priceless, but if you have been to a hospital, you should know that you have to pay the bill first before you can get the medicine. If you don't have money, how can you get treatment? If I don't treat it, can I just resign myself to fate?
These words sound ugly, but the fact is that most of us will have to face it in the future. It is not a bad thing to be mentally prepared in advance. At the end of everyone's life, there is a price that we cannot accept, so we have to choose another option.
In this sense, money is life. Why is the life expectancy in developed countries generally higher than that in backward countries? How simple, money can buy life. Everything has a cost. Low cost and high return can form a positive cycle and keep playing. The costs are high and the benefits are low. It will be a matter of time before it cannot continue. Adults should be aware of this.
Back to our topic, it is actually the same. The change in public attitude is essentially a sign of out-of-control costs. Because the cost we are talking about is not just the national finance, but also countless families who are facing constant consumption during the epidemic. My family and everyone are running out of money. Of course, not everyone feels the same way.
I have done several surveys in the past few days and found a problem, which is the "20% law". Before liberalization, during the liberalization process, and even now that Beijing has passed its peak, the survey results at these stages were that 20% supported the lockdown and 80% supported liberalization.
So why can’t we always reach a consensus when discussing our feelings about the epidemic? Because the 20% of people feel completely different from the remaining 80% of people. Maybe the latter says that he is at the end of his rope, while the former says that he is doing well and the people around him are also good, and it is not as serious as you say. How can we talk about this?
Nowadays, too, the entire society has formed small closed circles, and each other cannot hear what the other is saying. If you want to break out of the information cocoon , it is best to go to the comment areas of different platforms, especially Kuaishou and Douyin . These two are sinking enough, and their views represent the views of the vast majority of people in China.
So someone asked me whether you are a person of zeroing or liberalization. I said that I am a realist. If I can reset, I will accept zeroing. If I can’t, I will accept liberalization. Try to avoid being that kind of person. When it is cleared, he objects, but when it is let go, he feels that it has not been done well. In the real world, nothing is so perfect. "Unreasonable" and "unsatisfactory" are the normal conditions in this real world.
As for why the steering wheel turned so fast, I don’t know. However, I tend to think that by this year, there may be only two states of epidemic prevention and control, "extreme lockdown" and "other", and there may not be the option of "orderly relaxation" at all. Once the high-pressure lockdown is abandoned, it is actually in a state of "relaxation." This virus spreads so fast that there is really no good way to deal with it.
Why didn't we prepare any medicine? Why didn't we notify in advance?
Regarding these questions, I tend to think that the upper management may not be prepared to make a change in the near future, so the policy has not been advanced in advance. Of course, it is mainly a guess, and I don't know. Even after the failure to break through in Shijiazhuang in November, the lockdown was actually stricter. But at that time, as long as we paid attention to this information, we could already judge that there was a high probability that the blockade would not continue.
For example, November 11 is a key date. On that day, the "New 20 Articles" were released, and the National Health Commission also issued a document asking everyone to "strengthen drug reserves." It was also a hot search at the time. It may have been discovered at that time that it was impossible to control it, but it has not been confirmed yet. Many bloggers also saw it at that time, but they couldn't say it too directly.
One problem that must be acknowledged is that the three years of epidemic prevention have resulted in a kind of "political correctness", that is, the bottom line of epidemic prevention is that the death of the elderly must not occur. Just mentioning "letting go" seems to be like joining the West and abandoning the elderly. Therefore, in public discussions, everyone seems to have erased the option of "letting go", because if we let go, people will die. This means coexistence, but it is unacceptable. The key is that there is no way to solve the problem of dead people. Since there is no way to solve it, let's just stop talking about it.Ma Qianqiang has discussed before that if we face the impact of letting go, the comment area was flooded. In everyone's eyes, no matter how we face it, people will die? You can only reduce death, but you cannot avoid death. Are you talking about this and disregarding human life?
Everyone carefully avoided this topic. There is little discussion of what to do if we let go. In fact, it stands to reason that when Shijiazhuang was first liberalized, everyone should have prepared medicines, but most people did not realize it and did not dare to discuss it openly in public topics.
By the time the overwhelming "self-rescue plans" came out, it was already after liberalization, and by then all the medicines in pharmacies had been wiped out. The question is still unanswerable to this day: "What to do with the old man?" It is too cruel and cold, and no one is ready, but we still have to face it.
Relatively speaking, the Singaporean government has a relatively detailed explanation of these issues. They released it on October 9, 2021. At that time, they were faced with the very virulent delta strain , but they couldn't control it and simply chose to give up. Lee Hsien Loong made a national speech that day.
In his speech that day, Lee Hsien Loong admitted that the situation was unfavorable and that he could no longer control it, and announced that he would let go. I have excerpted a few paragraphs, you can read them, they are of reference value to us today:
About why we should open up:
We cannot lock down the city and close the borders indefinitely. This is not feasible and will cost a lot. We will not be able to resume our daily lives, conduct social activities, and open the borders to revitalize the economy. Every time we tighten epidemic prevention measures, corporate operations and businesses will be affected even more. Workers will lose their jobs. Children will not be able to live a normal and complete childhood and school life. Some Chinese and their families will be separated for longer, especially those with relatives abroad, and some extended families have never been able to reunite. This situation not only brings psychological and emotional stress to people, but also makes people feel mentally exhausted, which affects Singaporeans as well as other people, including foreign workers.
So, we decided a few months ago that the zero-to-zero strategy was no longer feasible. So, we changed our strategy and transitioned to "living with COVID-19."
How to deal with the problem of excess deaths among the elderly:
As more and more people are infected with the disease, most of us have been exposed to confirmed patients, or know people who have been exposed to confirmed patients. I believe that everyone will get sick one day, and all seniors are not immune. The risks they face are real. As I have said before, the coronavirus mainly affects the elderly, including people over the age of 60 who have not been vaccinated, and people over the age of 80 who have been vaccinated.
As cases increase, older patients will also increase. Assuming 5,000 new cases per day, about 100 people are expected to become seriously ill. This is not a small amount.
Our doctors and nurses do their best to treat and take care of every patient, but unfortunately, no matter how hard they try, they cannot ensure that every severely ill patient can defeat the virus, and some will eventually die, just like being infected with pneumonia . More than 4,000 people die from pneumonia in our country every year. Most of them are elderly and suffered from other diseases before their death. In the coming weeks and months, we are likely to continue to see more deaths from COVID-19.
From this statement, you can also see that Singapore stopped recruiting last year. The cost of epidemic prevention was too high and it could not control the epidemic, so it simply coexisted.
Singapore is equivalent to the two richest districts in Beijing, Chaoyang and Haidian , and its medical conditions are relatively good in the world. However, faced with the problem of high mortality among the elderly, they also admitted that there is really no good solution but to "try their best". And we adults all know a common sense. When the other person says to try his best, he is actually saying that there is no good solution and he can only take one step at a time.
But I think the good thing about this declaration is that it is candid and tells the people the facts, so that the country and the people can tide over the difficulties together.
In addition, at the end of Lee Hsien Loong's speech, he mentioned a word called "COVID-resilience", which can be understood as "COVID-19 resilience".
In other words, the new crown epidemic will not end in the short term, or even in the long term. Unless you insist not to test, as long as you test, it may always be there. Take Japan, which has the strictest COVID-19 tracking, as an example. Japan has experienced eight waves of the epidemic so far, and Hong Kong has also experienced five waves of the epidemic. Many other countries have simply ignored it. Singapore was not completely flat before. For example, it also restricted the number of people dining. On April 26 this year, after the emergence of Omicron , it was found that the restrictions were of little significance and was simply cancelled.
Therefore, we can only adapt to this new normal by adjusting our living habits and mental state. To use a popular saying, it is called "insensitive", and gradually we will not care so much. Of course, it's normal if you insist on caring. There is a survey in Japan. 1.3% of people are very, very painful after letting go. They live in fear every day, almost losing their social skills, and dare not contact others. They don't know when they will get better.
In this sense, after we break through this level, it is not the end, but a beginning. Start right from the start. This is a war with no choice but to fight on.
As for the economy, I have no doubt that it will reach over 5% next year. Many people say how to develop the economy in this current situation where the virus is raging? There is no need to worry about this at all. Countries are similar at the beginning and have a similar mentality to ours now. But after two or three months, more and more people will start to adapt. When the economy recovers, more resources will be available to help the elderly tide over the difficulties.
has said so much, and finally summarizes:
From a cost perspective, it will be sooner or later to let go. After all, the outside world has lost control and has completely moved towards coexistence, and we are no exception. I also said that day, even if the United States could control it, India would definitely not be able to control it. If India could control it, Africa would definitely not be able to control it. Therefore, the probability that this virus can be controlled is very, very low. In this sense, moving towards coexistence is almost inevitable.
In addition, this year, the costs of fighting the epidemic are obviously greater than the benefits, which is unsustainable. In addition, it is impossible to solve a virus with an R0 of more than 20 by blocking and controlling it.
So, accept the reality, take good care of yourself, and take care of your family. There are a lot of tips on Moments in the past two days, so I won’t go into details here.
Anyway, there is definitely no way to go back now. If you don’t have a choice, it is a choice. If you have no choice, it is also a way. Keep going and hope that the economy will get better next year.
Again, don’t get entangled, because it’s useless to get entangled. The only direction now is forward. The full text of
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