(1A) "The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China", Dec 13, 2021, a scientist, World Socialist Web Site, < https://www.wsws.org/en/
(1B) "China’s Zero COVID policy proves that the elimination of COVID-19 is possible", Perspective, Dec 13, 2021, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
Introduction by dmorista (amended):
These two articles from the World Socialist Web Site present a stark, and for those of us in the United States a pretty grim picture of how our society has contended with the Covid Pandemic, as compared to the response of China. The rate of infection in the U.S. so far has been 1 of every 6.64 individuals in the overall society, while the death rate in the U.S. has been 1 of every 417.5. In China the comparable statistics are an infection rate of 1 of every 14,285.7 individuals; while the death rate has been 1 of every 280,000 individuals in the overall society. That is the U.S. infection rate is 2,151.46 times as high as the Chinese infection rate; while the U.S. death rate has come out to 670.66 times as high as the Chinese death rate.
What is more there have only been 2 deaths from Covid in China since that society brought the Pandemic under control, in the Spring of 2020, meanwhile in the U.S. over 730,000 deaths from Covid-19 were recorded during that time period. So if we compare the Covid-19 death rates since the Spring of 2020 the ratio of U.S. vs China's Covid deaths expressed on a per capita basis is a stunning 1,525,373.13. That is Americans were over 1.525 million times more likely to die of Covid than were Chinese, when considering the fact that China's population is 4.2 times that of the U.S. U.S., in contrast, had about 3 months warning before a significant number of people were infected and the numbers of deaths began to rise. The Trump regime did not organize any sort of effective or scientifically compentent response during that time, but rather operated the most cynical, opportunistic, and venal response to Covid imaginable. This totally politically motivated response saw the President and many of his minions denying the severity of the disease, suggesting various crazed crackpot remedies, and shifting resources around to benefit the right-wing run “red states” and several successful efforts to comandeer resources that the Blue States had amassed, that were then allocated to the reactionary states where their “base of supporters” largely live. The Trump Regime had, in a typical extremely short-sighted move to reduce governmental expeditures, eliminated 3 scientific task forces that had been established in the wake of the Ebola outbreak of 2014 (that was largely confined to West Africa, but during which a few cases had occurred in the U.S. and Europe).
A couple of basic issues are this. The standard view by the Western Corporate Controlled Media operations, as well as most Western politicians, academics, and diplomats is that Chinese Statistics cannot be trusted. This brings up the question of just whose statistics can be trusted? There is still some, largely unwarranted, confidence in the data and information integrity of the West. The West, that has had centuries of relative power and wealth, has built up a complex multi-faceted information system. Powerful corporations wield major informational resources that vary greatly in their reliability and truthfullness. Direct Corporate and “rented politician” PR handouts are uniformly unreliable and self-serving. There were numerous “news conferences” presented by the Trump Regime, in which false and misleading and dangerous material was presented by The President and his minions. Those “news conferences” stand out as examples of the unreliable and self-serving nature of much of the political communications in the U.S. Various governmental agencies operate on scientific principles and are mostly reliable, but political and socio-economic power centers occssionally purge such agencies to enforce capitalist informational discipline. Small outlets, previously small presses and newspapers and magazines now websites, are tolerated as long as they did not/do not achieve the size and power to reach the general public. Thus a very wide variety of data sources and interpretations of information are available in the West, but must be sought out by using some degree of effort in an internet environment that is designed to steer users to the major Corporate controlled Media and other sites.
The Chinese government exercises control over information on the internet. But as the first article "The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China" points out about the Chinese Medical authorities: “Contrary to the common perception in the West, an enormous amount of detailed information about every case is published as a matter of course in China. Public health agencies publish a detailed “activity track” [3] for each person who tests positive, listing the times at which they visited various places in the preceding days, how they were infected (if known), and even the license-plate numbers of the taxis they’ve recently hailed.” (the citation for note [3] is to an article in Chinese, with a Chinese title in the End Notes of the article). Other articles have noted that early in the overall pandemic Chinese scientists quickly sequenced the Covid-19 virus' DNA and reported that and the symptoms to the World Health Organization. Of course it also appears to be a fact that the local authorities in Wuhan did not react very well. They tried to suppress information about the disease, famously punishing an Opthamologist who early on reported a “pneumonia like infection” he observed in patients, and they allowed people from Wuhan to leave in large numbers. The people leaving Wuhan went to numerous other places in China and overseas for the Chinese New Years holiday. That is the largest holiday of the entire Chinese Year and millions of people traveled moving the virus to points all over the world in a couple of days. The WSWS series of articles written about Covid have steadfastly taken the position that theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Virology Lab is a smear by Western Corporate entities and Covert Action Agencies. What is the truth is that the most likely, and only plausible, possible sources of the Covid Virus were either: a). the Military Games in which U.S. forces participated in October from the 18th to 27th of October 2019 in Wuhan, China; b). a leak from the “Wet Market” in Wuhan or; c). A leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
The World Socialist Web Site (WSWS) is not a nest of knee jerk supporters of China; rather WSWS is in fact very critical of China, its purported and self-proclaimed status as a socialist society, and its role in the global socioeconomic and political systems. The two articles include the first one posted here: "The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China", Dec 13, 2021, a scientist, World Socialist Web Site, < https://www.wsws.org/en/
“A scientist” mentions early in the article that the New York Times had posted an article that used a small (by Chinese Standards, 270,000 population) city located near the Myanmar (Burmese) border. (See, “China's 'Zero Covid' Policy Leaves a City in Perpetual Lockdown”, The New York Times, Nov. 6, 2021, Vivian Wang & Joy Dong) He/she correctly noted that this city Ruili is located in an area where there is still considerable smuggling and covert operations of various types. Relatively large numbers of people, some of whom are infected with one or another variant of Covid-19 move in and out of Ruili on a regular basis, complicating and making far more difficult the efforts of the Chinese Government to eradicate Covid-19 there.
We can note that Ruili is located near the area where one of the remnants of the Kuomintang Army fled to after the Chinese Communist Party won the Civil War in 1949. This same area was near where the opium poppies, that were transformed into heroin, were grown during the 1960s and 1970s in the infamous “Golden Triangle”. Of course the CIA, members of the U.S. military, and U.S. organized crime all cooperated with the Kuomintang veterans in moving that deadly product into the U.S., Europe, and other places. Many of them grew rich on that deadly trade. The author, of "The misunderstood—and misrepresented—Zero COVID policy in China", points out that the use of Ruili is a deceptive ploy by the New York Times to try to portray China in the worst possible light, and that the actual effects of China's “ Zero COVID policy” have been spectacularly successful.
China continues to produce its outsize share of the world's industrial and technological products, but does so with its society mostly open and functioning normally but when various Covid outbreaks occur the Chinese Government acts quickly and decisively to isolate and eliminate the outbreaks. This has included several times when entire urban areas with 10 – 20 million inhabitants have been totally tested for the disease and any infected individuals isolated and cared for. There have been about 12 outbreaks in China, but they have been contained and life in China has been far less disrupted than in the chaotic and disorganized U.S. and other places in the West.
The ruling classes of the West are very upset that their profit rates have been negatively impacted by Chinese shutdowns of production when infection outbreaks occur. That is the reason that there has been very strident criticism of China and massive political pressure for China to adopt the “herd immunity” and “live with the virus” policies that have led to millions of deaths in the West. This is a very important article and should be read by as many people as possible, I am very pleased to make it available to our readers here at The Class Struggle.
The other article is a follow-up to and an analysis of the first article and of other issues written by one of the leaders of the Socialist Equality Party that publishes the WSWS. Joseph Kishore, the author, notes that in China: “The policy has not only saved millions of lives, but it has, remarkably, allowed the population to move about and interact freely for most of the past two years. The article submitted by 'a scientist' explains that life inside China, including its major urban centers, 'has been relatively normal since the end of the first wave in the spring of 2020. Businesses, such as restaurants, bars and movie theaters have been open throughout China.' For the most part, the population of China has not lived under the constant fear of being infected or infecting others.” This is a short excerpt from the second article “China’s Zero COVID policy proves that the elimination of COVID-19 is possible”, Perspective, Dec 13, 2021, Joseph Kishore, World Socialist Web Site, at < https://www.wsws.org/en/
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