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The View
OpinionComment
Richard Harris
Richard Harris

The View | The world simply can’t afford China-style coronavirus lockdowns

  • Mass containment has become the narrative of the coronavirus pandemic, but is it really the answer? From an economic perspective, it makes more sense to actively protect vulnerable people, and get everyone else back to work

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A person walks through a nearly empty Times Square in New York on March 25. Photo: EPA-EFE
Richard Harris

My otherwise healthy 86-year-old mother was admitted to hospital in early 2015 with seasonal flu, and never returned home. Each year, seasonal flu viruses send 290,000 to 650,000 people, most of them elderly, to meet their Maker. Every year, nearly 1.25 million people die in traffic accidents. These are odds we happily accept.

The coronavirus pandemic has demonstrated the extraordinary importance of framing a narrative around a situation. At another time, with another frame of reference, governments might have been able to think things through and handle things differently.

In China, the first Covid-19 case can be traced back to November last year, when a 55-year-old from Hubei province contracted the disease. The cover-up of the ensuing outbreak in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei, would have begun soon afterwards. In January, when the secret got too big to hide from Beijing, the central government reacted with fear, anger and determination – and framed a draconian response.
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Immediate mass containment became the narrative of the coronavirus outbreak; it was a communist solution with Chinese characteristics. China shut the stable door, with four provinces and about 50 cities going into some form of lockdown around the Lunar New Year holiday, and two months on, some restrictions still remain. (Nevertheless, the initial delays gave the virus plenty of time to quietly bolt and silently infect the global economy.)
China’s lockdowns were rigorously enforced by the strong state security apparatus, dissent was shut down, communication was censored, public panic was allayed, and only official statistics were published.

Within China, the measures have been a qualified success, choking the epidemic and allowing people to carefully return to work. There are only around 4,000 active cases in the country now, though it is reported that testing has been restricted.

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