It's disappointing to see the pandemic cause some western leftists (who may be solid on practically every other issue) to devolve into hyper-individualist left-libertarians on this subject, who oppose virtually all proactive policies that would help combat the pandemic while offering zero effective alternative solutions. They see anything that would actually help as too "draconian", "authoritarian", or a "violation of civil liberties".
Meanwhile socialist governments like China and Vietnam found success in implementing proactive zero-tolerance pandemic control policies.
In China:
China’s zero-tolerance Covid-19 strategy will not change until the authorities are confident that its vaccination campaign has been effective enough to ease restrictions, a senior health official said on Friday. Zheng Zhongwei, head of medical science development at the National Health Commission, said those strict measures – including quarantine, rigorous testing and large-scale contact tracing – would not be changed easily.
“We will not relax controls until we have reached a certain level of vaccine coverage. We will not relax controls unless we make a judgment about the virus and how vaccination can guarantee the effectiveness of adjusting epidemic control measures,” Zheng told a health forum on the sidelines of the China International Fair for Trade in Services in Beijing.
Zheng said China’s “firm resolution” had contained more than 30 outbreaks since the disease first emerged at the end of 2019, adding that three factors – strict public health controls, a high vaccination rate and therapeutic treatment – would be needed to “end the epidemic”.
More than 1.01 billion people have been fully inoculated with Covid-19 vaccines in China, but the highly transmissible Delta variant is still challenging the country’s target to build herd immunity.
More than 2.16 billion doses had been administered and 1 billion people fully inoculated by Wednesday, Lei Zhenglong, National Health Commission disease prevention chief, said on Thursday.
That total included 170 million doses given to 95 million teenagers and 390 million doses taken by 200 million people aged over 60.
“We rank the top in the world in terms of total number of doses and number of people covered, and have one of the highest vaccination rates,” Lei said.
According to Our World in Data, 54 per cent of the US population, 30.7 per cent of people in the European Union, 13.5 per cent of India’s population have been fully vaccinated. Malta tops the world with 82.9 per cent of its 500,000 or so people fully vaccinated.
Meanwhile, in Beijing 20.3 million people have had at least one dose, with 19.5 million fully inoculated. More than 97.4 per cent of the adult population, or 89 per cent of the total population, of the Chinese capital has completed a full regimen, according to Beijing’s health commission.
The figures mean that 72 per cent of China’s 1.4 billion people are fully vaccinated, reaching a target originally set when China started the national vaccination campaign in December.
The Chinese health authorities aimed to have 1.1 billion people vaccinated by the end of October. By then key groups – the over-60s, those at high risk of infection and people who need to travel to countries with high infection rates – will also have received a booster shot.
The high vaccination rate is not expected to lead to immediate change in China’s zero-tolerance strategy, characterised by strict quarantine, rigorous contact tracing and large-scale testing.
Zheng Zhongwei, a NHC official in charge of vaccine development, said earlier this month that those control measures would remain in place until the authorities were confident that its vaccination campaign had been effective enough to ease restrictions.
Wang from the China CDC urged eligible teenagers and the elderly to get vaccinated soon so that the vaccines could be “truly effective”. Those under 12 years old should also be inoculated, he said.
China has approved the shots for children as young as three but vaccination started only last month for 12-17-year-olds.
The satisfaction index ranges from 10 (unsatisfied with all levels of government on both questions) to 50 (satisfied with all levels of government on both questions). On this 10-50 scale, Chinese citizens indicated an overall satisfaction score of 39.2 (38.8 in Hubei province, where Wuhan is located). This suggests that Chinese citizens’ satisfaction with government performance during the pandemic is very high.
To better present the findings, I recoded each item from the 1-5 scale into a binary measure, designating 4 and 5 as satisfied (1) and other categories as unsatisfied (0). On this binary scale, about 75 per cent of China’s citizens indicated they were satisfied with government’s information dissemination, while 67 per cent were satisfied with the government’s delivery of daily necessities and protection materials during the pandemic.
Next, I considered how citizen satisfaction varies across provinces. I have found that in provinces with a small number of confirmed cases such as Xinjiang, Hunan, Qinghai, Tibet and Liaoning, citizens are more satisfied.
However, in Jiangxi, Guangdong, Jilin, Heilongjiang and Hebei, where more people were infected, citizens are less satisfied. This suggests that citizen satisfaction might reflect actual government performance. Still, citizens in Hubei province, the epicentre of the outbreak, were ranked in the middle in terms of their satisfaction.
The governments of China and Venezuela are some of the first countries to announce their plans to extend their vaccination campaigns to vaccinate younger children, but Cuba is the first to do so:
The communist island of 11.2 million people aims to inoculate all its children before reopening schools that have been closed for the most part since March 2020.
The government has announced schools will reopen gradually, in October and November, but only after all children have been vaccinated.
According to a Reuters article from September 1st regarding Cuba:
Cuba will begin vaccinating adolescents against COVID-19 this week and younger children from mid-September as part of a drive to immunize more than 90% of the population by December, state-run media said on Wednesday.
All children ages 2 through 18 will receive at least two doses of the Cuban-developed Soberana-2 vaccine beginning Sept. 3, the official Cubadebate digital news outlet reported.
In the capital, Havana, where more than 60% of the 2.2 million residents are fully vaccinated, cases and deaths per 100,000 residents are far below the national average, according to government statistics.
Articles and studies detailing Vietnam’s success with proactive pandemic policies:
Despite Vietnam’s great success of having only 35 deaths up until May 2021, they unfortunately have recently experienced a rise in cases centered mainly in Ho Chi Minh City over the summer due to the more contagious delta variant and their low vaccination rate (with about 30% of the population receiving at least one dose) caused by being unable to secure vaccine imports thanks to the oversupply to wealthy western countries that are hoarding them. Vietnam is thankfully beginning to make good progress with their vaccination campaign though with China donating 3 million doses and Cuba agreeing to supply Vietnam with 10 million doses of their vaccine.
It's disappointing to see the pandemic cause some western leftists (who may be solid on practically every other issue) to devolve into hyper-individualist left-libertarians on this subject, who oppose virtually all proactive policies that would help combat the pandemic while offering zero effective alternative solutions. They see anything that would actually help as too "draconian", "authoritarian", or a "violation of civil liberties".
Meanwhile socialist governments like China and Vietnam found success in implementing proactive zero-tolerance pandemic control policies. In China:
In China as of September 16th:
A western article detailing their survey of Chinese citizen satisfaction regarding pandemic control policies (Xinjiang scored the highest satisfaction rate among the Chinese provinces. There are only 3 deaths in that region and 4,636 deaths in mainland China overall):
The governments of China and Venezuela are some of the first countries to announce their plans to extend their vaccination campaigns to vaccinate younger children, but Cuba is the first to do so:
According to a Reuters article from September 1st regarding Cuba:
Articles and studies detailing Vietnam’s success with proactive pandemic policies:
Despite Vietnam’s great success of having only 35 deaths up until May 2021, they unfortunately have recently experienced a rise in cases centered mainly in Ho Chi Minh City over the summer due to the more contagious delta variant and their low vaccination rate (with about 30% of the population receiving at least one dose) caused by being unable to secure vaccine imports thanks to the oversupply to wealthy western countries that are hoarding them. Vietnam is thankfully beginning to make good progress with their vaccination campaign though with China donating 3 million doses and Cuba agreeing to supply Vietnam with 10 million doses of their vaccine.
Citizens don't trust their capitalist ran government. Womder why?