Despite alarm, Shanghai will beat the odds

COVID-19 cases in Shanghai may be increasing but so are the measures to keep the infections in check. Residents in some areas have been under lockdown for weeks, and the city has come to a standstill since the beginning of this month. Thousands of new asymptomatic and confirmed cases are being reported every day.

And we hope the cases will start declining soon and the city will overcome this dark moment.

But along with these troubling numbers come familiar refrains from a chorus we know all too well. Just as they did during the previous waves of infections, Western corporate media outlets are practically foaming at the mouth in their rush to declare the end of China's dynamic clearing policy, which relies on local governments to stamp out local outbreaks.

We heard this when the Delta variant of the novel coronavirus emerged last year, we heard this when the highly infectious Omicron variant started spreading around the world toward the end of last year, we've been hearing this ever since the enormity of the failures of the United States and European countries to contain the pandemic was impossible to ignore. They've been singing the same tune for so long that the record is not just broken, it is fused to the phonograph.

As always, the Western powers are either willfully ignorant or pushing an agenda, and that's a distinction without a difference these days. Yes, the situation in Shanghai is dire, but China is a big country. There are plenty of cities that have experienced Omicron outbreaks but made it through with minimal consequences.

Shenzhen, for example－an international hub and a densely populated city－nipped the Omicron outbreak in the bud with an early lockdown and mass mobilization of personnel to conduct testing and supply essentials to households. Qingdao, Tianjin, Dongguan and many other cities have been able to tamp down the highly transmissible variant with relative ease.

Amid all this, virologists and epidemiologists in the West are on the verge of tearing their hair out, because despite their warnings an apparent mass delusion is taking hold of populations there, spurred by governments, corporations and media that want a return to business as usual. Now that the danger to the wealthy has dropped to practically nil, and those most vulnerable to infection have been pushed back to work, many governments are behaving as if the virus has been contained.

The notion that Omicron is a pandemic off-ramp is yet to be vindicated. We don't have conclusive data on the length of immunity Omicron confers, or whether it can reliably prevent re-infection.

Remember July 4, 2021, when US President Joe Biden celebrated a "summer of freedom"? That embarrassing incident was consigned to the incinerator not long after, once the country saw its worst-ever daily infection and death rates.

While the latest infection wave seems to be on the ebb, we don't know what the future holds. New variants and sub-variants threaten to push everything back to square one, and the risk of "long COVID-19"－lasting symptoms which can debilitate even the vaccinated for months－shouldn't be taken lightly.

It may be inconvenient to keep the money train rolling, but if public health is to be preserved, politics must follow science, not the other way around. To that end, policies should make hewing to best practices as smooth as possible. Testing should be free along with vaccination to make sure cases are caught early and those who do get infected are less likely to develop severe symptoms.

And when virus's spread makes lockdowns necessary, those unable to work should not be made to worry over a lack of necessary supplies nor a loss of income or housing.

The situation in Shanghai shows us how easily things can get out of hand. But China as a whole has shown us Omicron is far from unbeatable. We have a toolkit which thus far has proven to work even against variants the corporate media have called inevitable. Yet it is too early to throw open the proverbial doors by declaring an end to dynamic clearing policy.

Until a critical mass of people－particularly the immunocompromised and the elderly－have received the three doses necessary to reduce the risk of hospitalization and death to a manageable percentage, a "live with it" strategy could become a "die with it" strategy in record time.

China will only have one chance to open up, and we've seen what happens when countries get it wrong－hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths. Such grim statistics should be cause for mass outrage, but Western mainstream media have managed to normalize this shocking state of affairs to a disturbing degree.

The New York Times called 100,000 dead Americans an "incalculable loss" in May 2020, with 1,000 of their names taking up its entire front page. When that number went up by nine times this February, what did that same newspaper run as its headline?"900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On." The story didn't even make it above the fold.

It is profoundly immoral to demand human lives be sacrificed at the altar of profit, and that's precisely what a 180-degree reversal of the policy in China could amount to. Just because the advanced capitalist economies have priced hundreds or thousands of excess deaths per day into the cost of doing business doesn't make it right.

So many have sacrificed to prevent the virus's spread in China, especially the medical workers and volunteers who have joined the front lines of pandemic-control time and again. They are in Shanghai now, doing their utmost to contain the new outbreak. We dishonor them with complacency and callous language about an "unstoppable" variant we need to "live with", which is surrender by another name.

They're not giving up. Neither should we.

The author is a US writer with China Daily.

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