Koon Yew Yin 19 April 2020
A few days ago, I wrote a piece namely “Trump is killing the Americans”. Since then, the number of cases and deaths has been increasing at an alarming rate. Currently the US has the greatest number of confirmed cases in the world.
The Coronavirus is spreading like wild fire to almost every country around the world. The best way to prevent the spreading of the Covid 19 is the Chinese method.
The table below is self-explanatory.
According to official figures, over 3,300 Chinese died out of a total of over 83,000 infected. A few western reports have cast doubt on these numbers much to the indignation of Chinese authorities. Even if there were significantly more infections and deaths, it does not change the overall picture. The test of the pudding is in the eating. After 76 days of lockdown, Wuhan, the epicentre of Covid 19 has lifted the lockdown and all the people are free to go about as usual.
The Chines Method:
China’s leaders took the fateful decision of locking down
Wuhan, a city of eleven million people on January 23, two days before Chinese New Year. All modes of public transportation suddenly ceased operating – airport, train station, metro, river ports. By the afternoon, highways leading out of Wuhan were sealed off. Within a few days, the sixteen cities of Hubei Province with a population of almost sixty million people came under quarantine. By confining the main epidemic to Hubei province, China was able to prevent other major outbreaks of the epidemic in the country. For two months, the people of Hubei endured varying degrees of hardship, Wuhan the worst. Help poured in from the rest of the country. Within ten days, two special hospitals were built with a total of 2500 beds. Tens of thousands of healthcare personnel were dispatched from other provinces and the People’s Liberation Army to reinforce a public healthcare system that would otherwise have collapsed from the sudden increase of critically ill patients. The Central Government ensured that every city in Hubei had a major province to lean on for general support. In gratitude, Hubei residents came out to the streets in large numbers to send off these ‘foreign’ contingents when they finally left Wuhan and other cities a few weeks ago.
Looking back, if Beijing had not taken this decision to confine Wuhan, the COVID-19 epidemic would have spread to all corners of China within a week. The World Health Organisation described the action as ‘unprecedented’ in the history of public health. There could easily have been fifty Wuhan outbreaks and the Chinese Communist Party would have been shaken to its core. At that time in late January, the nature of COVID-19 was still poorly understood and even today is still not well understood. Chinese authorities made serious mistakes in December and January including the persecution of whistle blowers by local officials. (Key provincial leaders involved in the early coverup have since been removed including the Party Secretaries of Hubei Province and Wuhan City.) But, on the most critical decision, China’s Central Government made the right call. That saved China and bought the world precious weeks which unfortunately were not put to good use despite repeated alarms by the World Health Organisation.
Trump must learn the Chinese method
While the Coronavirus is spreading like wild fire, President Trump has not ordered complete lockdown in all the major cities. Although as the President, he has the right to order lockdown. But he said this decision should be taken by the Governors of each state. He has the difficulty to balance economics and human lives. He is facing with the increasing number of jobless claims which is currently more than 22 million.
In fact, this issue should not be decided by politicians. It should be decided by medical specialists and scientists.
Trump is so angry with WHO’s singing praises of China that he has stopped financial support for WHO.
