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March 6, 2021

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Online meeting of COVID-19 experts shows likely slow return to normalcy

One of China’s most high profile respiratory diseases experts, Zhong Nanshan, and the United States’ top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci took part in an online chat about the current COVID-19 situation this week.

Both experts spoke about vaccination and how to get more people to sign up: in China, 3.56 percent of the population are fully vaccinated, and in the US the number is floating somewhere around 7.97 percent. “Fully vaccinated” means at least two weeks have passed since a person has received the second dose of a two-dose vaccine or one dose of a single-dose vaccine.

The vaccination rate compares with more than 40 percent in Gibraltar, 38.7 percent in Israel and around 22 percent in the United Arab Emirates.

Still, neither China or the US are doing badly, it’s just that many of us were hoping things might be moving a little faster. Keep in mind, though, that China’s population is staggeringly high, so even with a vaccination rate of around 3.5 percent, we’re still talking about around 50 million to date, as compared with more than 26 million in the US.

So why are the numbers in China and the US not as grand as some might hope? Well, I would argue it’s all down to public perception.

In China, the country is doing so well in terms of the sheer lack of local cases that people don’t see getting a vaccination now as a matter of life or death. Life here is pretty normal, apart from increased safety measures like wearing masks in public and washing our hands more regularly. On top of that, I think we are all pretty well aware at this point that any form of mass international travel is off the cards for the near future, probably at least for this entire year, and tourists most definitely aren’t going to be freely allowed in any time soon either. Why would anyone bother getting a vaccination that is already limited in the amount of time it offers protection if there’s not really any need?

“The current vaccination pace is very low because outbreak control is so good in China. But I think the capacity is enough,” said Zhang Wenhong, an infectious diseases expert and leader of Shanghai’s COVID-19 treatment team.

The US, on the other hand, lost a lot of public support for COVID-19 vaccination in a twisted and regrettable game of politics. In a way, it was rather unfortunate that a worldwide pandemic hit during a US election year.

Then-President Donald Trump, in all his usual bravado, played up his ability to get a vaccine on the market as soon as possible, firmly placing the health of the nation into the field of political point scoring, which his opponents fell for, hook, line and sinker.

President Joe Biden and his running mate, Kalama Harris, sowed distrust in the public’s mind around any vaccination out of the US in order to win back political points. Harris famously stated, in the run-up to the election, that she wouldn’t take any vaccination that Trump recommended. Is it any surprise, then, that public doubts about the vaccine still play a huge role?

Biden seems to be on the right track now, though, publicly pushing for unity and a relaxing of political tensions as the death toll for COVID-19 in the US passes 500,000, the highest in the world.

“It’s not Democrats and Republicans who are dying from the virus,” he said at a candlelit ceremony to remember the dead recently. “It’s our fellow Americans.”

In that online discussion that Zhong and Fauci took part in this week, both called for international unity and shared effort to get this pandemic under control around the world.

“We have been successful in the past by global cooperation with smallpox, polio and measles. There is no reason in the world why we cannot do the same thing with COVID-19 by a combination of cooperative public health measures and the application of science to get interventions in the form of vaccines and therapies and other types of interventions,” Fauci said.

Zhong echoed that sentiment. “If the coronavirus still spreads in some individual countries, COVID-19 cannot be said to be fully controlled worldwide. If we want to end this epidemic, we need appropriate science-based, evidence-based decisions by decision-makers in each country. Everyone should do their best. So we need global solidarity.”

Zhong and Fauci also gave an upbeat assessment of the role vaccines can play in the battle, and voiced their belief that things will be better in a year, as many countries are witnessing declines in new cases while rolling out vaccine programs.

China has promised to supply around 500 million doses to other countries. Even so, Zhong estimates: “With the development and marketing of vaccines, it will take at least two to three years to achieve herd immunity worldwide.”




 

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