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My Take | Suicidal for China to follow the West’s ‘living with’ Covid-19 strategy
- A team of bio-statisticians at Peking University has modelled various Western responses – the United States, Britain, Israel, Spain and France – and found they could have devastating public health consequences if they had been applied in China
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China has often been accused of not following “the rules of the road” or a rules-based international order. I don’t even think that’s true. At the very least, it’s no worse than the United States; probably better. But that’s a debate for another day.
But this accusation has been carried out to extremes with China’s Covid-19 zero tolerance. Here’s a recent criticism from a Financial Times commentator who is otherwise intelligent and knowledgeable on most other issues.
He claims: “China’s self-isolation is a global concern. Beijing’s zero-Covid policy is damaging international business and global governance.”
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In other words, China breaches international norms just by maintaining its own public health policy within its own territories!
Interestingly, a team of statisticians and bio-statisticians at Peking University have modelled respectively what might have happened if China had followed the “opening up” policies of those Western countries. It has been published at the chinacdc.cn of the China CDC Weekly, the official publication of the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. The research is partly funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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