With the Omicron raging throughout China since this March, many cities in China has regarded the fight against the pandemic as an important task. This is especially true of international metropolises like Shanghai and Beijing. To combat the pandemic, the two cities unanimously implement the Dynamic zero-COVID policy. Compared with the so-called “international consensus” which advocates coexistence with the virus, China’s policy seems alternative. China has long been criticized for this.
Actually, the Dynamic zero-COVID policy is implemented based on its population reality. Existing data from different countries shows that the average age of death for COVID-19 patients is over 70 years old, and the virus does most harm to the elderly people. It’s worth noting that there were 190 million people aged 70 or above in China in 2021, accounting for 13.5 percent of the country's total population, and the proportion was even higher in metropolitan areas. In order to relieve the great medical and financial pressure caused by the aging population, COVID-19 is intentionally or unintentionally regarded by some countries as a way to "clear” the aging population. For China, a country which has a long history of considering respecting the elderly as its traditional virtue, and a country which has just completely eliminated poverty and aims to achieve common prosperity, this is unimaginable. And in China, giving up the Dynamic zero-COVID policy means abandoning the elderly people. This is unacceptable. Moreover, in Chinese mainland large-scale nucleic acid tests, quarantine and treatment of the inflected are free of charge. In the field of economy, since the outbreak of COVID-19, the global economy has been severely tested and major economies have suffered recessions to a varying degree. However, thanks to the Dynamic zero-COVID policy, China became the only major economy to achieve continuous positive GDP growth since 2020, and the growth rate reached 8.1% in 2021. But the inflation rate is only 0.9%. Though the GDP of America in 2021 increased by 5.7%, the number decreased by 3.4% in 2020 . So the GDP of America in these two years actually only increased by 2.2%. Nevertheless, its inflation rate reached as high as 7.5%. Although China was more severely impacted by the pandemic compared with 2020, We still achieved a GDP growth of 4.8% in the first quarter of this year. The data above directly shows that scientific prevention and control measures will by no means block the development of economy. For China, the Dynamic zero-COVID policy is still the most effective policy to combat the pandemic.
Now let's see what has happened in the countries which advocate “coexistence with the virus”. On May 9, The Washington National Cathedral rang the bells 1,000 times to express their condolences to the 1 million American people who died because of COVID-19. According to the Atlantic, COVID-19 has orphaned 200,000 children in the USA. The situation in the UK isn’t better. In the UK, due to the changing policies and the decision of ceasing large-scale nucleic acid tests, the number of new confirmed cases have exceeded 5 million for two consecutive weeks and the total confirmed cases have exceeded 22.1 million. That means there is one novel coronavirus-infected person in every three people. Because of the breakdown of the health care system, a shortage of health care staff and the exhaustion of medical resources, the UK is faced with a dilemma. China's neighbor, Korea, once did a better job in controlling the epidemic. However, two months after Korea announced the decision to coexist with the virus, the total number of new coronavirus cases had soared from 1 million to over 17 million. Due to the large number of deaths, staff in the funeral parlors, crematoriums have to work overtime and even coffins are in short supply. Korea's Joongang llbo reported on May 10 that five new cases of the latest variants of Omicron(BA.2.12.1) had been found in Korea, all of which were the imported cases from the USA. The latest variants of Omicron has 30 % higher infection rate than the former Omicron, which makes people worry and fear again. Thus it can be concluded that novel coronavirus is not a serious cold. if you advocate coexisting with it, you may be infected.
In China, the successful practice of Dynamic zero-COVID policy has set up a strong protective shield to fight against the COVID-19 and it also provide a viable path to prevent and control the epidemic for the international community. There is no doubt that only through scientific and effective epidemic prevention measures can the virus be eliminated. Furthermore, those who are actively trying to tie epidemic prevention together with ideology on media and social platforms and even attack Dynamic zero-COVID policy would not revive innocent people who have already been dead. As Dante wrote down the words by the guide Virgil in Chapter Five of the Divine Comedy and Purgatory, " Come with me and let people talk about it." The virus is not scary. As long as people around the world love life, stick together, and abandon arrogance and prejudice, human beings will be able to overcome the COVID-19 and see the dawn of victory.
