堅持清零的困惑

過去兩星期，香港第五波疫情進入高峰期，政府起初放風決意於三月底進行全民檢測，配合極端嚴厲的隔離和社交距離措施，務求盡快找出隱形患者，切斷傳播鏈，恢復動態清零，言之鑿鑿，幾萬人被嚇得匆忙離境，當中包括香港人和在港工作的外國人。

西方發達國家對變種病毒 (Omicron) 作為主流新冠病毒的病癥和嚴重性已有一定的認識，疫苗接種已達到廣泛程度(95%)，加上感染率亦已接近飽和。根據外國數據，Omicron 的威脅性已跟一般流感病毒無異，雖不能令它徹底消失，但縱然與它共存也沒甚可怕。香港錄得的死亡率（至今0.7%）比其他國家多出三成以上，和內地相比更誇張得不合情理，原因可能與死亡分類的方法有關，若將Omicron與其他病因一併計算的話，死亡率必定偏高。例如，把一位癌症末期病人感染 Omicron 後死亡的個案納入計算 Omicron 的死亡率是否恰當？ 正當大部分發達國家已經重新開放，港府還堅持清零，透過親政府人士不斷宣傳清零的好處（甚至宣揚「不清零即赴黃泉」的謬論），花費巨額建造大量隔離設施為滿足全民檢測之後衍生的隔離需要。要強調的是，「清零」（如能做到的話）的好處是無庸置疑的，但鑒於變種病毒的性質、可控性及疫苗接種率的客觀因數，理性抗疫的抉擇應在乎能否平衡可行性、社會代價和經濟代價。科學點看，「清零」乃反自然之舉，幾千年來，不同病毒從動物傳人，所經過的變異，從猛烈到溫和，最終達至與人類共存，都是典型的過程。中國稱得上是科學強國，偏偏選擇反科學而行，老百姓卻無語問蒼天！

香港政府的抗疫政策明顯脫離科學現實，面對嚴重下滑的經濟，「派錢」是唯一補教方案，但依然堅持「清零」作為抗疫目標，官員還掩耳盜鈴的假定市民相信官方發放的信息，而事實上，國際資訊仍可在香港流通，大部份香港人和在港工作的外國人已掌握 Omicron 的科學數據和對不同年齡人士的風險，並在社交媒體提出各種質疑。港府在國際社會的眼中，表現得極為愚昧，反映了它徹底失去管治的自主權，將抗疫政治化，若把「動態清零」看成不可動搖的政治立場，又如何理性抗疫？如今，根據外國數據，Omicron 的重症及死亡率與流感相若，即使全港兩百多萬人曾感染 Omicron 也屬正常，真正的焦點是能否透過接種疫苗保護長者和長期病患者。

倘若 Omicron 在內地爆發，相信中央政府亦難敵經濟滑落的壓力或民眾的極端反應，恐怕也要放棄「動態清零」了，推出「中國式共存」新口號，例如先把新冠病毒歸類為甚麼新感冒，到時候港府官員及一眾忠心耿耿的良好市民也定必出來擁護「中國香港式共存」！把話說得太盡，不留轉身餘地，實在不智。明明說好要「堅持清零」到底，不負中央心意，突然轉軚又情何以堪？明明說過與病毒共存就必共赴黃泉，但倘若中央一聲令下，又馬上毫不動搖的去配合黃泉之路。說得過去嗎？

話說「金瓶梅」中的武大郎每天在市集販賣同一款燒餅，連日滯銷，其妻潘金蓮見他苦無對策，遂獻計推銷「普天同慶燒餅」，燒餅無需改良，換湯不換藥，總之改個口號，翌日果然客似雲來。武大郎不明箇中道理，潘金蓮笑指天下蠢人何其多！

2022年3月21日

一眾文盲高官

當問及何謂「動態清零」時，香港特首笑說「對此名詞不理解，我不是始作俑者」。據說「動態清零」乃係內地專家和官方提出（發明）的防控策略口號。而「始作俑者」一詞是指惡劣風氣的創始者，那麼，何解特首形容他們為「始作俑者」？

面對外間流傳一些對政府不利的言論時，特首及一眾高官齊以「毫無根據，天方夜譚」反駁。事實上，任何傳聞，即使是謠言，都有其社會性基礎或根據，即使可能與事實不乎，也不能形容為「天方夜譚」。「天方夜譚」出自阿拉伯民間故事《一千零一夜》，此詞一般比喻虛誕離奇的言論。 

回應市民對抗疫隔離設施欠佳的批評，保安局長卻說政府會「精益求精」！人家說你有不足之處，理應謙虛回應，而「精益求精」是假設自己已經很好了，但還自我要求做得更好。差人出身的保安局長，即使文化水平稍遜，亦情有可原，但既已貴為局長，是否也應該提升語文能力？

第五波疫情開始時，衛生局長呼籲市民提高警惕，說政府「必須比嚴陣以待更嚴陣以待」來應對疫情。是文盲的嗎？抑或讀過番書就不懂中文？

從以上例子可見香港高官的語文水平有多低劣。現在，市民每天收到政府發出「九唔搭八」的訊息，一則公立醫院行政改動的通告突然以「緊急警示」飛彈式轟炸全港手機*，今天另一公立醫院同樣的安排卻沒有發出「緊急警示」，令人莫名其妙！

2022年3月10日

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*根據通訊管理局設立「緊急警示」的公告，「緊急警示」系統是在極端天氣、嚴重的公共安全和衞生事故等緊急情況下，向全港手機用戶發出「有迫切性的公告及訊息」。在美國、加拿大等地也有類似的alert message，主要牽涉人身安全和重大事故，接收警示的範圍也限於有關地區。究竟昨天的醫院安排（指定一所位於九龍的公立醫院處理COVID病人）又有何迫切性和廣泛性，必須於下午5時55分發給全港市民？

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

 

Geometric progression! "Dynamic" zero infection!

"Omicron is spreading in geometric progression!"

Our government officials and health experts have kept saying this in the past few days! Do they really know what they are talking about? Obviously not! Or they only meant to exaggerate the situation to justify the implementation of more drastic measures to support our nationwide zero-covid policy. This could be good for Hong Kong, but the abuse of mathematical terms is not acceptable or truthful, coming from our top officials and medical experts. Looking at it differently, this may simply reflect how ignorant of mathematics these people are!

Geometric progression, a secondary school math concept, means a sequence of numbers successively being kept multiplied by a fixed constant, like 1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, and so on. This is a very aggressive progression! Think about it! If Omicron is indeed spreading in such a progression in Hong Kong, we should be heading to tens of thousands by now. The so-called reproduction number R0, which is used by medical professionals to indicate the contagiousness of a disease, is the number of people possibly infected from a single carrier. With no refinement, direct application of this R0 could indeed end up with the conclusion of a geometric progression with the multiplying factor being R0. If R0 = 4 for Omicron, then we should expect a progression to look like 1, 4, 16, 64, 256, 1024, 4096, 16384, 65536, ... and blowing up in a short time!

(Chart added March 5)

The truth is that spreading dynamics is nothing like this, definitely not a R0 geometric progression! It is rather governed by a dynamical process, where the rate of change of the infected number is a function of the current infected number and susceptible population size, of course with a whole bunch of parameters like infection rate (how fast the virus can spread), recovery rate, and other factors such as non-pharmaceutical interventions that suppress transmission. Technically the so-called compartmental model (commonly called SIR or SEIR in epidemiology research) is a set of differential equations describing the spreading progression, and with data generating the controlling parameters, the model can accurately track the progression. In short, it is never like a geometric progression!

Hong Kong's top officials are mostly trained with a political, art or social science background. They could be extremely sensitive and careful selecting the right words when making a political announcement, but can be completely flexible or imprecise when coming to the use of mathematical jargons.

A more outrageous example of math abuse is 'dynamic zero infection' (動態清零). The term 'dynamic' refers to variation with time. 'Zero infection' is a state of having no infection. That's clear! But 'dynamic zero infection' is a self-contradictory term. None of our top officials could explain what it actually means. Even our CE said publicly that she was not in a position to explain it as she was not the initiator (literally 我唔係始作俑者！). They all knew they could not achieve zero infection, and they all knew Beijing wouldn't like to hear the truth which is 'sometimes zero, and sometimes not zero', and so adopting the term the mainland experts invented is the only politically wise choice. The same usage can be extended to anything that the government can't do or does poorly but wouldn't like to admit.

The lesson is: when you can't find a good way to lie about your failure and you still want to lie, simply say you have made a 'dynamic' success.

February 8, 2022

辛亥革命後逃脫的管治DNA—「社會」主義

中國歷代開國皇帝多數非皇族出身，推翻前朝，登上皇位後，受萬民景仰，同時也必遵守由文武百官規管的宮廷律例及制度。皇帝擁有至高無上的權力，但其行為也受宮廷制度約束，自由受到限制。這種矛盾的權力制約是如何維持？中國幾千年來採用的政治制度，以皇帝為核心，而「帝制」 的基石是「天子」的神聖地位。皇帝乃「天子」，名正言順，天與人歸，百姓必須服從，但同時「天子」亦深信自己能登上此位乃是天命在身，其言行自然也應當從規蹈矩。此乃孔子儒家思想中的治國理念，配合君臣父子的倫理道德規範，建構所謂可以長治久安的社會。

中國幾千年歷史已告訴我們，事實並非如此！歷朝歷代都免不了經歷興衰週期，人民總有對政權不滿的聲音，也總有官府以外的民間團體，即所謂「黑社會」在運作，而當政權開始腐敗，管治能力衰落到了極點時，必有民間團體出來反對朝廷，最終某派「黑社會」成功推翻朝廷，改朝換代！這黑幫首領，搖身一變，成為「天子」，一個時代又從新開始！朱元璋如是，魯爾哈赤如是，最終都接受帝制的教化，從黑社會龍頭老大蛻變成名正言順的天子。而本來的黑社會亦升格為朝廷，朝廷等同國家，剷除異己既是保衛國土安全之神聖責任，也同是保障皇親國戚（原來的黑社會群體）永享榮華富貴的合法舉措。夏、商、周、秦、漢、三國、晉、南北、隋、唐、宋、元、明、清，循環不息。

直至公元1911年，以孫中山為首的「黑社會」推翻滿清，同時廢除皇帝制度。問題在於帝制被廢除後，無規可範，惟繼續以「黑社會」模式經營和管治。經歷一百多年的優化過程，規模宏大，「龍頭老大」改稱「主席」，「紅棍」叫做「總理」，「黑社會」模式亦正名為「社會主義」，但基本元素卻保留至今。例如，傳統「黑社會」要求各環頭從上到下必須絕對忠誠，上級向下級洗腦，各環頭大老利益割據，時不時出現激烈和殘酷的內鬥，元老們在背後仍有話事權，可以指點江山，提拔自己人上位等等；現代「黑社會」大老的夫人們還必需擁有外國護照，身家存放於境外銀行，後路常開以保家人平安等等。

從歷史角度看，自辛亥革命後，中國人的管治DNA逃出了幾千年的帝制樊籠，中國特色的「社會主義」模式得以弘揚，人民也終於獲得真正的中國式「民主」和「自由」！但從演進過程的角度來看，一百年、甚至兩百年也只是短暫的過渡期，中國特色「社會主義」能否持續，達致長治久安，亦有待証明。

2021年12月30日