GUANGZHOU, one of China’s largest and busiest cities, is locking down as it battles a major outbreak of COVID-19. Lockdowns are truly effective and less cumbersome, a lot simpler to enforce, if done in a timely fashion when it comes to a contagious killer disease, like the SARS-CoV2 virus.
In this case, the horses are already out of the barn, so to speak, so a lockdown is a bit too late. It will likely be more of a crackdown now. It should have been implemented in the whole of China as a preventive measure when the first diagnosed case in Wuhan City was confirmed.
Overkill? Not if we want to save millions of lives. Science has the proof of the gross mistake: Almost 7 million people have died from COVID-19 around the world.
The best scenario would have been the total lockdown of Wuhan City when it first identified the mysterious killer pneumonia as caused by the novel coronavirus we now know as SARS-CoV2 virus, the super-contagious killer (almost 644 million cases today, with more than 6.6 million deaths). Had Wuhan been locked down (100 percent), no-one-in, no-one-out, it could have contained the deadly virus within the city. The cases and deaths would have been limited to that city alone. And even the rest of China could have been spared, not to mention, the whole world.
‘The greater tragedy is the fact that majority of the more than 100 million cases and those deaths were, epidemiologically speaking, mostly preventable.’
For infectious diseases, it must be 100 percent lockdown, and not 99 percent, because one single infected person going out could spread the virus like an exponential wildfire, which is what actually happened. This COVID-19 pandemic started December 8, 2019 with one person, Wei Guixian, a female vendor at the large Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan City, who was the first person infected with the novel coronavirus. Indeed, one person is enough to start a deadly global catastrophe.
If the United States, on December 31, 2019, or even on January 18, 2020, upon confirming the first case of novel coronavirus infection in Washington State involving a person who returned from Wuhan City, had started a total national lockdown and immediate contact tracing, mandatory masking in public and social distancing, and had federally mandated vaccination of everyone in the country, when the vaccines were available (those refusing to be vaccinated, quarantined at home, those returning to the USA quarantined at facilities near the airport, seaport, etc.), the more than 100 million US cases of COVID-19, with greater than a million deaths, would have been reduced by more than 90 percent.
Faithfulness to the century-old proven epidemiologic measures to minimize the spread of a contagious disease and people’s discipline and cooperation could have saved at least 900,000 of those lives lost in the United States alone. But that requires pure medical, pure science, and a wise and steadfast national leadership in the management of the pandemic, sans politics and fake news.
But people in a free nation like the USA appear to savor the exercise of their freedom of choice under our First Amendment Rights more so than preventing the spread of this killer virus and saving the lives of their fellowmen, as shown by the number of cases and deaths from COVID-19 in the United States. People’s refusal to mask up in public and refusal to get vaccinated have contributed to the massive exponential spread of SARS-CoV2 virus around the country and the almost 1.1 million deaths in the United States, not to mention a devastated national economy. The greater tragedy is the fact that majority of the more than 100 million cases and those deaths were, epidemiologically speaking, mostly preventable.
Two of the most perpetrated fake news in the social media claim masks are useless and that vaccines have been rushed and are dangerous. Science has repeatedly shown masks are effective in preventing the spread of respiratory diseases. Masks help protect the wearer and people nearby! Like bullet-proof vests, they are not 100 percent.
As for the vaccines, more than 13 billion have been administered worldwide, saving billions of lives around the world during this pandemic, contrary to disinformation anti-vax mongers are promoting which has caused countless deaths.
I hope we have learned enough from this pandemic to prepare us for a future one.
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Philip S. Chua, MD, FACS, FPCS, a Cardiac Surgeon Emeritus based in Northwest Indiana and Las Vegas, Nevada, is an international medical lecturer/author, a Health Advocate, Chairman of the Filipino United Network-USA, a 501(c)3 humanitarian foundation in the United States. He is a recipient of the Indiana Sagamore of the Wabash Award in 1996, whose other awardees include: President Harry Truman, President George HW Bush, Astronaut Gus Grissom, Mohammad Ali, David Letterman. Websites: FUN8888.com and philipSchua.com Email: scalpelpen@gmail.com
