Mark today! Because today is February 29, 2020. We have Feb. 29 once in every four years. The calendar is actually a complicated system.
On such a special day, the below report made me laugh loudly — A view, in my opinion, belongs to “uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking” .
Any control of pandemic relies on the responsive mechanism of medical care system and government management. For COVID-19, which has no effective treatment and vaccine until now, a harsh quarantine strategy has been proved to be the most effective means to prevent more infection. One dangerous clinical characteristics of COVID-19 is half of the infected patients don’t have fever or other obvious symptoms at the beginning of infection. The average transmission rate of COVID-19 is 2~3, which means one infected patient can transmit 2~3 healthy people. In this case, the contact tracing and “harsh response” as said in the above article help the patient acquire timely treatment, protect the medical-care workers, and most importantly, prevent more public infection. Chinese government put people’s lives at the first place. What’s more important than life? Authors of the above article may argue freedom is more important than life. This is the reason why I commented this view belongs to “uneducated crudity and superficiality of naive thinking”. Freedom doesn’t equal to private interests. If one person’s freedom may endanger the health and safety of peers, then this freedom must be constrained. In this case, I think other countries should take same actions as China to manage the ongoing or potential outbreak.
I seriously hope author of the above article and public take COVID-19 seriously. A popular view in western nations is the death rate is not high (about 2%), so COVID-19 can be regarded as flu. Death caused by COVID-19 occurs most in elder and people with preexisting conditions. In an ethical society, any life should be valued and respected. It is similar as taking flu vaccine. From a point of population immunity, injecting flu shot is not only protecting yourself but also the people surrounding you, especially those with a low immune function. A vigorous young man may not show severe symptoms in case being infected by flu virus, but the active virus may take lives of those who happen to contact this young man.
As of today, the COVID-19 has been spreading in South Korea, Japan, Italy, Iran and many other countries. More than 3000 confirmed cases were reported in South Korea. Super-spreaders occur in Italy and South Korea. What makes things worse is the virus strains in Iran and South Korea are different from strains discovered in China. This means this virus can mutate and from the severity of infection in Iran and South Korea, the mutation increase the virus transmissibility. COVID-19 outbreak tortures the medical system and causes panic amongst public. Fighting against virus is actually a war which needs the unity of all nations’ efforts. Any political leverage that put benefits above people’s lives is anti-human.
Again, happy leap day and fight against virus.