I still remember that when the epidemic first broke out, many people thought that it would disappear in the summer like SARS, but now we have waited for three years and have not seen the new crown disappear like SARS. Here is a common medical knowledge for everyone: In fact, most viral diseases are "incurable". Of course, careful friends may have discovered that "no cure" here is in quotes and . If you ask a medical student: Can viral diseases be cured? Then he will tell you that viral diseases can be treated. In fact, there are indeed patients who have been cured in the fight against the new coronavirus epidemic.
However, our current treatment for viral diseases mainly relies on medical intervention to help the human immune system defeat viral diseases. However, we do not have any specific drugs that can directly kill virus . When we faced the SARS epidemic, we cut off the spread of the virus by controlling population movement. However, cutting off the transmission route of the virus and eliminating the virus are not the same thing. We have only used strict prevention and control measures to block the transmission of the virus, but we have not actually developed or produced drugs that can directly disinfect the virus. SARS actually disappeared naturally after the transmission route was cut off.
Today’s new coronavirus is much more complex than SARS back then in terms of transmission methods, difficulty of prevention and control, and clinical manifestations. SARS, a highly pathogenic virus, cannot survive and spread even after killing its host. However, compared with SARS virus , the new coronavirus has the characteristics of high infectivity, low mortality, and longer incubation period. The characteristics of the new coronavirus determine that this virus is likely to exist for a long time. All our current means can only curb the spread of the epidemic, but humankind's current medical technology cannot completely eliminate the new coronavirus.
Now it seems that the possibility that the new crown epidemic will disappear suddenly like SARS back then is quite slim. It is now almost universally known that the new coronavirus will be around for a long time, but the question is how long is this long-term? Now no one in the world can say when the new coronavirus epidemic will end. The worst-case scenario is that COVID-19 will be around for decades or even centuries to come. This means that most of us may not see the day when the epidemic ends. Although this worst-case scenario may not occur, no one can say how long the new coronavirus epidemic will last.
Will everyone be locked up until the epidemic ends? Who will farm? Who will do the work? Who will produce the daily necessities? Don’t we all eat or drink during this period? Therefore, it is unrealistic to wait until the virus is completely eliminated before resuming work. In fact, since last year, countries around the world have chosen to liberalize . Our country is very cautious about relaxing control in an attitude of being responsible for the lives and health of the people. The reason why we have postponed the liberalization until now is to observe the situation of other countries after liberalization.
2022 Since March and April 2022, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore and other countries have seen wave after wave of epidemic outbreaks after they relaxed control, but the peak of confirmed cases in each wave has been getting lower and lower. Now the degree of social openness in Vietnam, Singapore, and South Korea has basically returned to the state before the epidemic. Qatar , which has been sticking to it for three years, also adopted an almost comprehensive liberalization policy on the eve of the World Cup. Now it seems that the hosting of the World Cup has not caused the large-scale spread of the new crown epidemic in Qatar. At present, Omicron is indeed becoming more and more contagious, but its virulent pathogenicity has actually been weakened a lot.
Joint research data from the University of Hong Kong and Hainan Medical College show that the current Omicron variant has a geometric decline in pathogenicity compared with the original strain of the new coronavirus and other mutant strains that subsequently emerged. The State Key Laboratory of Virology of Wuhan University also confirmed that the pathogenicity and virulence of the Omicron variant have been significantly reduced. Epidemic prevention is to protect the life safety and normal life of the people. Putting people first does not mean putting epidemic prevention first—epidemic prevention is only a means, and protecting people is the goal.There is no antagonistic relationship between epidemic prevention and control and the economy and people's livelihood.
China’s achievements in fighting the epidemic in the past three years are obvious to all, but it is also an objective fact that life has not been easy for everyone in the past three years. When the epidemic is fierce, it is necessary to sacrifice economic efficiency to ensure the safety of people's lives. However, when the epidemic situation is relatively stable, the relationship between epidemic prevention work and social life should also be balanced. Since the new coronavirus has been mutating over the past three years, it is only natural for the country to make scientific adjustments based on the new epidemic situation. China has been adopting a strict national one-game model to fight the new crown epidemic in the past three years.
During the epidemic, every community in China became a fortress against the risk of infection. It is within these three years that we have completed nationwide nucleic acid testing and large-scale vaccination. In the past three years, our country has effectively dealt with more than 100 cluster epidemics and effectively responded to the impact of five waves of global epidemics. China's infection rate and death toll have remained among the lowest globally for three years. It is the efforts of the past three years that have provided us with the confidence for our current liberalization. China will not "lie down" when it should not, but will make steady and orderly adjustments when adjustments are needed.
We don’t need to sugarcoat the situation - after liberalization, there are indeed more and more positive cases in society, and the number of positive cases is getting wider and wider. Many people may have thought that they would be able to return to a normal life after being relaxed: go to work when it is time to earn money to support the family, go to school when it is time to study, and treat other diseases as they should... But the real situation now is that everyone is still worried and scared. When I go to work, I am afraid that there will be positive people in my workplace. When I send my children to school, I am afraid that some of my classmates and teachers will be positive. When the weather is cold, if I have cold symptoms, I wonder if I am positive...
Even though the epidemic prevention policy has been relaxed, some shops are still closed. At the same time, in some places, cold medicines have been sold out and fever clinics are hard to find. In the past, people only bought medicines to treat their illnesses when they got sick. Now, people are actually grabbing a bunch of cold medicines and hoarding them at home to wait for the illness to come. I was hoping that after liberalization, the economy would be revitalized so that everyone could make money to support their families, but now I walked around the streets and found that it was even deserted than before. The occurrence of these situations is actually just a short-term pain. Judging from international experience, there will almost certainly be a period of painful rebound after liberalization.
The current unsatisfactory chaos is not a problem with the national policy of relaxing epidemic prevention and control, but a problem with the specific implementation of the policy in various places. After the gradual relaxation of epidemic prevention and control, a competition seems to be taking place across the country: in the past, it was a competition to see who could put the lockdown measures in place quickly, but now it is a competition to see who can relax the measures faster. This is actually another kind of situation that is layered on top of each other. When the country emphasized control, some regions implemented layers of controls during the implementation process; now that the country emphasizes optimizing prevention and control, they simply put it all in. To put it bluntly, it's all a one-size-fits-all approach.
Since liberalization will almost certainly cause a certain rebound in epidemic fluctuations, when deciding to liberalize, it is first necessary to reserve sufficient medical supplies to avoid a run. The fact that there are so many people with ejaculation complaining about not being able to buy medicine proves that some areas may not have investigated the local drug reserves before liberalization. This phenomenon shows that we have not fully caught up with the specific management after liberalization. After all, the new coronavirus is a new virus that we humans have never dealt with before. Any country is almost bound to encounter some setbacks in the early stages of liberalization.
However, I believe that these current twists and turns will be resolved as soon as possible. In fact, some places are already taking measures: Shandong has now resumed 48-hour nucleic acid testing, and Jiangsu has changed the original nucleic acid testing point to a fever clinic... Now it seems that there are indeed some problems in the process of liberalization in various places, so it is reasonable for the government to correct these problems in a timely manner based on the attitude of being responsible for the lives and health of the people.What we need to do now is not to revert to the previous strict and defensive control model, but to continue to make scientific and reasonable adjustments based on the development of the current epidemic situation.
