文茜的世界周报报道,中国结束清零任重道远,至少需要一年时间,原因很多,最主要的几个:
中国30多年来,过于注重经济发展,各位领袖,包括习,一直忽视医疗系统的发展和人员的配备。台湾的医疗体系在世界上名列前茅,病床比例高于大陆将近100倍,最近半年疫情严重,依然发生挤兑,不少各种重症病人无法就医,高新冠死亡率。甚至蒙古国的病床率比大陆高一倍。
中国老人疫苗率不够高,而且大陆的疫苗明显不如辉瑞和Modena,这是大陆无法放弃清零政策的最大障碍。中国这三年来,把大量的钱花在核酸测试和封城隔离上,中国的宣传称,每天可达一亿管核酸测试,平均每管混检10人,一天可以检测10亿,可靠性,准确率难以掌控,最近不断暴露的张珊珊,张核子等一系列核酸检测公司丑闻。
根据西方各国,以及新西兰,台湾,新加坡等国的经验,中国没有准备好Plan B,如要开放必须迅速提高老年人的疫苗率。
几天前,纽约时报刊登诺贝尔奖获得者,Paul Krugman 的文章:How China Lost the Covid War? 指出中国的封城在初期是非常正确的措施,但错在没有与时共进调整政策。中国在疫情初期很优效,但是专制统治的特点是不承认错误,不肯接受他们不喜欢的证据。
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最后10分钟讲中国疫情。
How China Lost the Covid War
Nov. 28, 2022
By Paul Krugman
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Do you remember when Covid was going to establish China as the world’s dominant power? As late as mid-2021, my inbox was full of assertions that China’s apparent success in containing the coronavirus showed the superiority of the Chinese system over Western societies that,
as one commentator put it, “did not have the ability to quickly organize every citizen around a single goal.”
At this point, however, China is flailing even as other nations are more or less getting back to normal life. It’s still pursuing its zero-Covid policy, enforcing draconian restrictions on everyday activities every time new cases emerge. This is creating immense personal hardship and cramping the economy; cities under lockdown account for almost
60 percent of China’s G.D.P.
In early November many workers reportedly
fled the giant Foxconn plant that produces iPhones, fearing not just that they would be locked in but that they would go hungry. And in the last few days many Chinese, in cities across the nation, have braved harsh repression to
demonstrate against government policies.
I’m not a China expert, and I have no idea where this is going. As far as I can tell, actual China experts don’t know, either. But I think it’s worth asking what lessons we can draw from China’s journey from would-be role model to debacle.
Crucially, the lesson is
not that we shouldn’t pursue public health measures in the face of a pandemic. Sometimes such measures are necessary. But governments need to be able to change policy in the face of changing circumstances and new evidence.
And what we’re seeing in China is the problem with autocratic governments that can’t admit mistakes and won’t accept evidence they don’t like.
In the first year of the pandemic, strong, even draconian restrictions made sense. It was never realistic to imagine that mask mandates and even lockdowns could prevent the coronavirus from spreading. What they could do, however, was slow the spread.
At first, the goal in the U.S. and many other countries was to “
flatten the curve,” avoiding a peak in cases that would overwhelm the health care system. Then, once it became clear that effective vaccines would become available, the goal was or should have been to delay infections until widespread vaccination could provide protection.
You could see this strategy at work in places like
New Zealand and
Taiwan, which initially imposed stringent rules that held cases and deaths to very low levels, then relaxed these rules once their populations were widely vaccinated. Even with vaccines, opening up led to a large rise in cases and deaths — but not nearly as severe as would have happened if these places had opened up earlier, so that
overall deaths per capita have been far lower than in the United States.
China’s leaders, however, seem to have believed that lockdowns could permanently stomp out the coronavirus, and they have been acting as if they still believe this even in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence.
At the same time, China utterly failed to develop a Plan B. Many older Chinese — the most vulnerable group — still aren’t
fully vaccinated. China has also refused to accept foreign-made vaccines without unreasonable conditions that were rejected by the manufacturers, even though its homegrown vaccines, which don’t use mRNA technology, are
less effective than the shots the rest of the world is getting.
All of this leaves Xi Jinping’s regime in a trap of its own making. The zero-Covid policy is obviously unsustainable, but ending it would mean tacitly admitting error, which autocrats never find easy. Furthermore, loosening the rules would mean a huge spike in cases and deaths.
Not only have many of the most vulnerable Chinese remained unvaccinated or received inferior shots, but because the coronavirus has been suppressed, few Chinese have natural immunity, and the nation also has very few
intensive care beds, leaving it without the capacity to deal with a Covid surge.
It’s a nightmare, and nobody knows how it ends. But what can the rest of us learn from China?
First, autocracy is not, in fact, superior to democracy. Autocrats can act quickly and decisively, but they can also make huge mistakes because nobody can tell them when they’re wrong. At a fundamental level there’s a clear resemblance between Xi’s refusal to back off zero Covid and Vladimir Putin’s disaster in Ukraine.
Second, we’re seeing why it’s important for leaders to be open to evidence and be willing to change course when they’ve been proved wrong.
Ironically, in the United States the politicians whose dogmatism most resembles that of Chinese leaders are right-wing Republicans. China has rejected foreign mRNA vaccines, despite clear evidence of their superiority; many Republican leaders have rejected vaccines in general, even in the face of a huge partisan divide in
death rates linked to differential vaccination rates. This contrasts with Democrats, who have in general followed something like New Zealand’s approach, if much less effectively — restrictions early on, relaxed as vaccination spread.
In short, what we can learn from China is broader than the failure of specific policies; it is that we should beware of would-be autocrats who insist, regardless of the evidence, that they’re always right.
What the rest of us can learn from the zero-Covid disaster.
www.nytimes.com
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At this point, however, China is flailing, even as other nations are more or less getting back to normal life
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