Last Friday, Joe Biden stated that he is “going to shut down the virus.” Good luck. If he succeeds, he’ll be in the company of only one other country: China.
Has Donald Trump done a good job handling coronavirus? Absolutely not. The US is in the top 10 of deaths per million. New York and New Jersey have the highest death rate globally, bar none. But would Joe Biden have done, or will do, better? Looking at coronavirus globally, it’s hard to unequivocally answer “yes.”
Since I have family and friends in Europe, I follow events there. The virus numbers are exploding. Two countries I used to live in — Switzerland and the UK — have two of the highest infection rates in Europe. Hospitalizations and deaths are following. In both those countries, incompetent leadership has also played a part, but numbers are also exploding in countries deemed to have responded well to the first wave: France, Spain, even Germany. All this tells me that as much as we’ve learned about this virus, there’s still so much we don’t know. No one has “shut it down.”
Well, with one exception: China. What makes this country uniquely different? I have heard some explanations: As a dictatorship, Chinese leadership successfully imposed an extremely harsh lockdown first in Wuhan then across the Hubei province. This province is home to 58 million people, so that is certainly significant. China also tested quickly and widely. Once Hubei reopened, a culture of wearing masks prevented a resurgence.
While these are certainly important factors, can they answer why China appears to have eradicated the virus — again, a feat accomplished by no other country?
Consider this: the virus existed in China prior to it being reported. In a new documentary about the Trump administration’s COVID response, “Totally Under Control,” an infectious disease modeler says that when the US confirmed its first positive test back in January, 2020, the time lapse meant that at least 2,000 other people should have been tested at the time who weren’t.
Apply that to China: What happened to all the people who were exposed to COVID in Wuhan before the virus was widely known? Keep in mind, the lockdown did not begin until January 23, two months after the first known coronavirus case. No one traveled to Shanghai, Beijing or any other populous center? Indeed, there were Chinese travelers who were super spreaders in Italy. How did the rest of China, outside of Hubei, avoid these super spreaders?
Even when compared to its neighbors whose COVID response has been praised, China still has remarkably better numbers. Japan and South Korea, both countries with cultures of mask-wearing and successful trace and isolate strategies, have recently spiked. Yet, China’s reported numbers remain essentially flat.
Which leads to another oddity: China continues to release a small number of new cases daily (one to two for about three months now), but does not release testing numbers.
I don’t know what’s going on in China, but I don’t think it’s the model to follow. In fact I’d be surprised if Joe Biden would.
Considering the global uptick in coronavirus cases, how would Joe Biden succeed — where nearly no one else has — in “shutting it down?”
Shana Goldberg may be reached at [email protected]
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