An Anecdote. Zero Covid or Coexistence?

Thirty years ago I attended an international conference in a Boston hotel during a hot summer week. In an early morning lecture, a few folks arrived at the room on time, and after the lecture began, people kept coming in at different times while the speaker spoke. Latecomers weren't totally unusual on this kind of occasion though not very respectful, but the problem was the door banged shut every time a person came in. That's annoying! Two co-chairmen, one American and one Chinese, sitting at the front bench obviously noted the situation. One of them interrupted and suggested stopping latecomers, and he made that suggestion in a friendly manner. Sounded logical! After all, the lecture had got started for more than half an hour. The other guy, however, requested the conference assistant to help get the hotel staff to fix the door. The anecdote is still relevant: fixing people versus fixing the problem. 

The fundamental issue of all the discussions in the past whole year on "zero covid versus co-existence with the virus" is between restricting people's freedom to stop the spread and achieving the needed herd immunity. If you have absolute power, you can restrict people's mobility and that's the best intervention to achieve "zero covid". This could also be morally correct in the early stage when very little was known about the virus and its possible detrimental consequence, and social restriction was the only way to stop the spread. However, this didn't work for democratic countries, even for a health cause! Even Japan and Korea, where a high level of self-discipline could be expected of people, were no exception! Numbers still soared in these countries. The fundamental conflict with western values and lifestyle naturally steered mentality shift towards finding a cure instead, an effective vaccine in this situation. They did it in an unprecedented short lead-time using advanced mRNA technology. Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson have become widely available since early last year. Furthermore, by now, we have also gained a good knowledge of the virus and the extent of its effects, though through a painful process. Most countries are now reopening their borders and lifting all remaining restrictions. 

What do we do in Hong Kong? "Zero covid" is still the official stand, while we are at the same time achieving a high vaccination rate. With Omicron being the dominating variant and being much milder, does it really justify a "zero covid" policy that relies on drastic restriction of freedom? We never needed such drastic restrictions to avoid the spreading of flu or common cold, though severe or death cases were also possible. For Hong Kong, the decision for maintaining "zero covid" has become irrational and purely political, if the vaccination rate has already reached 90%. What's the point for vaccination if you still need to trace every case and identify transmission paths? The fact is that the 0.03% severe cases among the vaccinated patients are not solely covid related because they are mostly from elderly groups or with chronic or critical illnesses. This is comparable with flu that happens every year. 

Our leaders are best at creating linguistic illusions. If you cannot achieve zero covid, you claim that you are achieving "dynamic zero covid", and if you cannot declare co-existence with the virus (as it is a political crime to comply with the evil west), you may declare "co-existence in a special way". Then, as usual, after a bit of brainwashing, we will claim another remarkable victory of a "special-style" co-existence policy! 

March 6, 2022