What happened to those who 'coexisted with COVID-19'? Doctor bluntly: Too irresponsible
"Coexisting with COVID-19" was something that was unthinkable in the past few years, but now, more and more countries are choosing to "lie down".
In February this year, the United Kingdom announced the official start of the "Coexist with COVID-19" plan. Patients who tested positive for COVID-19 no longer need to be quarantined. Except for vulnerable groups, free testing was also cancelled on April 1.
Now, it's been a while since the UK declared coexistence with COVID-19, so what's the situation?
1. The stress of coexisting with COVID-19 is beyond imagination
Living with COVID-19 sounds great, but it's actually more stressful than you can imagine. Since the abandonment of lockdowns and strict quarantine measures, the COVID-19 virus has not stopped, making some industries worse and more difficult .
First, the number of cases continues to grow and medical resources are increasingly strained. Secondly, the education sector is also at a loss. Teachers have been absent from work due to COVID-19 infection. One-fifth of school teachers have an absenteeism rate of more than 15%.
It was also a tough time for the agricultural sector, with labor shortages that couldn’t fill job vacancies, crops rotted in the fields and no slaughterhouse workers, and animals had to be culled.
Although the catering industry has recovered from the epidemic, the prospects are still unclear. The debt owed during the epidemic has to be repaid, and the cost of raw materials and labor has continued to rise.
After coexisting with COVID-19, the travel and aviation industries are back on fire, but there is not enough capacity to cope with the growing demand for vacations, coupled with a shortage of staff, some flights have been forced to cancel.
In conclusion, the UK is currently coexisting with COVID-19, which looks great on the surface, but is a mess behind the scenes.
Chenghao Zhao, a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering at City University of Hong Kong, thinks it is "too irresponsible" for the strategy of coexisting with COVID-19.
In February of this year, he unfortunately became an infected person of Omicron. However, he had been working from home before the diagnosis, and he had no idea when and where he was infected, which shows that the virus is highly contagious.
In addition, in Zhao Chenghao's view, coexisting with COVID-19 is not a good thing for young children and the elderly with low immunity. The elderly make up the majority of deaths, and young children are also at great risk .
Moreover, the current understanding of Omicron is insufficient, and it is uncertain whether it will cause other sequelae, so we should try to avoid more people from being infected, so as not to cause greater losses.
Wu Zequan , a general practitioner in Hong Kong, also said at the UN Human Rights Council that life is priceless, and coexisting with COVID-19 is not the best way to solve the problem of COVID-19, it is tantamount to doing human experiments .
2. Is the COVID-19 virus a "big" flu? The consequences are unimaginable
Nowadays, there are more and more claims that COVID-19 is just a "big flu". In addition to the United Kingdom and the United States, many countries are also trying to achieve coexistence with COVID-19.
According to media reports, German Federal Health Minister Lauterbach announced that from May 1, people infected with the COVID-19 virus will no longer need to be forced to quarantine, but it is recommended that infected people actively self-isolate for 5 days and avoid contact with others.
However, many expert bodies have raised objections to this.
Later, Lauterbach tweeted that the decision to end the mandatory quarantine was wrong, and that COVID-19 is not a large flu and must continue to be quarantined after infection .
He pointed out that the previous measures were only to reduce the burden on the health authorities, but from the current situation, the number of new infections and deaths every day is still rising, and the danger has not left.
In response to this statement, Liang Wannian, head of the expert group of the National Health and Health Commission's Epidemic Response and Disposal Leading Group, responded that the COVID-19 caused by the Omicron variant strain is highly contagious and harmful.
Although the probability of severe illness is not high for individuals, on the whole, if the prevention and control measures are relaxed, the absolute number of infected people will be larger, and the probability of severe illness and death will also increase .
3. Herd immunity is difficult to achieve, and dynamic clearing becomes the best strategy
In the past, we have tried to "fight" COVID-19 by achieving herd immunity through vaccination. And Dr. Fauci said the traditional concept of herd immunity may not apply to the COVID-19 virus .
On the one hand, in just over 2 years, there have been many mutant strains of the COVID-19 virus; on the other hand, the number of people vaccinated against COVID-19 is far from enough.
In addition, current COVID-19 vaccines are not yet able to achieve eradicative immunity to the virus. Neither vaccination nor immunity from COVID-19 is lifelong, meaning immunity will have to keep getting vaccinated for it to keep up with the virus .
And Wu Zunyou posted that dynamic clearing is the best strategy.
He pointed out that dynamic clearing does not mean zero infection, lockdown or nucleic acid for all staff, but refers to the discovery of an epidemic and the elimination of an epidemic, so as to prevent the epidemic from taking root and germinate, and realize the eradication of the epidemic from non-existent to non-existent.
In short, the core of dynamic clearing is to cut off the chain of transmission. The main measures are early detection, early reporting, early isolation, and early treatment, so that there is no continuous transmission locally.
Therefore, judging from the current situation, neither coexistence with COVID-19 nor herd immunity can be achieved for the time being. To stay away from COVID-19, all we can do is to protect ourselves, get vaccinated in time, and cooperate with epidemic prevention work to reduce the risk of infection.
References
[1] "After coexisting with COVID-19 for two months, the UK found that it was different from the imagination". Central Committee of the Communist Youth League. 2022-04-12
[2] "COVID-19 caused by Omicron variant is equivalent to large flu? 》. Popular Science China. 2022-03-21
[3] "Wu Zunyou's Latest Interpretation of "Dynamic Clearing": The Best Choice for China's COVID-19 Prevention and Control. Health Times. 2022-04-19
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