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The conversation
China beat coronavirus with science and strong public health measures, not just authoritarianism
I live in a democracy. But as Thanksgiving approaches, I find myself craving the kind of freedom I see in China. People in China can move around freely at this time. Many Americans may believe that the Chinese can enjoy this freedom thanks to the Chinese authoritarian regime. As a public health specialist in China, I think the answers go further: My research suggests that controlling the virus in China is not the result of authoritarian politics, but of national prioritization of the virus. health. China has learned a hard lesson with SARS, the first coronavirus pandemic of the 21st century. Just under a year ago, a new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, with 80,000 cases identified in three months, killing 3,000 people. At the end of January 2020, the Chinese government decided to lock down this city of 11 million inhabitants. All transport to and from the city has been stopped. In early April, the Chinese government limited the spread of the virus to the point where it felt comfortable opening Wuhan again. Seven months later, China confirmed 9,100 more cases and recorded 1,407 more deaths from the coronavirus. People in China travel, eat in restaurants and go to the movies, and children go to school without worrying too much about their health. Juxtapose that to what we are experiencing in the United States. To date, we have confirmed more than 11 million cases, with the last million recorded in the past week alone. In September and October, friends from China sent me food photos from all over the country as they traveled to visit friends and family for the Mid-Autumn Festival and then the holiday week. of the seven-day national holiday. I envied them then and envied them even more now as Americans brace themselves and wonder how we’re going to celebrate Thanksgiving this year. What China Has Learned from SARS We Americans are told that the freedoms the Chinese now enjoy come at the expense of submitting to a set of draconian public health policies that can only be instituted by an authoritarian government. But they also have the experience of going through a similar epidemic. SARS erupted in November 2002 and ended in May 2003, and China was anything but prepared for its emergence. He did not have the public health infrastructure in place to detect or control such a disease and initially decided to prioritize politics and economics over health by covering the outbreak. It didn’t work with such a virulent disease that started to spread around the world. After being forced to come to terms with SARS, Chinese leaders finally imposed quarantine on Beijing and canceled the May 1, 2003 holiday week. This helped end the pandemic within months, with minimal impact. SARS has infected around 8,000 people worldwide and killed around 800, 65% of them in China and Hong Kong. The Chinese government has learned from SARS the important role that public health plays in protecting the nation. In the wake of SARS, the government improved the training of public health professionals and developed one of the most sophisticated disease surveillance systems in the world. As it was caught off guard for this next major coronavirus outbreak in December 2019, the country quickly mobilized its resources to almost end the epidemic within its borders within three months. What can the United States learn from China Knowing that there were no safe or proven treatments or an effective vaccine, China relied on proven non-pharmaceutical interventions to beat the epidemic. The main aim was to contain the virus by controlling the sources of infection and blocking transmission. This was accomplished through the early detection (testing), isolation, treatment and close contact tracing of any infected individual. This strategy was supported by the three field hospitals (fancang) that the government built to isolate patients with mild to moderate symptoms from their families. Strict quarantine measures have also been essential to prevent the spread of this epidemic, as was the case with the SARS epidemic in 2003. This was accompanied by the compulsory wearing of a mask, the promotion of personal hygiene (hand washing, house disinfection, ventilation), body temperature monitoring, universal stay-at-home orders mandatory for all residents, and universal symptom surveys conducted by community workers and volunteers. What else could the United States have done to prepare? SARS exposed serious weaknesses in China’s public health system and prompted its government to reinvent its public health system. COVID-19 has revealed similar shortcomings in the U.S. public health system. To date, however, the current administration has taken the exact opposite approach, devastating our public health system. The Trump administration has made significant cuts to the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The latest budget presented by the Trump administration in February 2020, as the pandemic began, called for a further reduction of US $ 693 million from the CDC’s budget. It affected our ability to prepare for a pandemic outbreak. In the past, this preparation included international partnerships to help detect disease before it reached our shores. For example, the CDC partnered with China in the aftermath of the SARS outbreak, to help contain the emergence of infectious diseases originating in the region. At one point, the CDC had 10 American experts working on the ground in China and 40 local Chinese employees, who mainly focused on infectious diseases. Trump began reducing those positions soon after taking office, and by the time COVID-19 broke out, those programs were reduced to a skeleton staff of one or two. [Research into coronavirus and other news from science Subscribe to The Conversation’s new science newsletter.]The Alma Ata Declaration guarantees health for all, not just health for people governed by a specific type of bureaucratic system. The United States has been, and can be, just as devoted to protecting the health of its people as China under its authoritarian government. We demonstrated this during the Ebola outbreak, with the launch of a whole government effort coordinated by Ron Klain, who was appointed White House chief of staff under the leadership of President-elect Biden. , better preparedness in the United States and ultimately helped save hundreds of thousands of lives around the world. A reduction in funding for our public health infrastructure, under the Trump administration, was a divestment in the health of the American people and should not have happened. A new administration that puts public health in the driver’s seat, once again, will, I hope, prove to us that health is not only something that can be protected under authoritarian government, but that it is in fact a right for all. Conversation, a non-profit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts. It was written by: Elanah Uretsky, Brandeis University Read more: * America’s poor response to pandemic will spill over into healthcare policy for years, health experts warn * Experts agree that the response from Trump to coronavirus was poor, but the United States was ill-prepared in the first place Elanah Uretsky does not work, consult, own shares or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and did not disclose any relevant affiliation beyond his academic appointment.
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