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Opinion | Are coronavirus lockdowns justified given the health, economic and social costs?
- While billions are being pumped into Covid-19 vaccine research, diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria continue to have high mortality rates
- Perhaps, Covid-19 is attracting attention because it largely affects old people in rich countries
Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
Perspective has always been a challenge for journalism. This is ever more the case as news sources move to instant online feeds. Keeping perspective on Covid-19 is a near impossible task. The daily volumes of unfiltered, often dubious, seldom comparable information about tests, cases, death numbers, vaccine trials, theories of origin, health impacts, age, race and other relative vulnerabilities from a multitude of countries are bewildering.
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I sympathise with governments which must address Covid-19 without devastating other aspects of our lives.
It is natural for experts on viruses to want to be heard at this time, even if they may not actually be able to agree on very much. It is natural for epidemiologists to want to be heard, even though different models of the spread of the virus are often so wide apart that governments have unenviable choices: do you believe A or X, and proceed accordingly? Or do you take a middle path and hope for the best?
In this case, experts and non-experts can only learn through experience. Thus, early on, many, including the World Health Organisation, were not convinced of the value of masks. Now even US President Donald Trump has learned from experience.
But experience also shows that lockdowns cannot eradicate a virus which is now everywhere so that places such as Hong Kong, which went for a sustained period without any local cases, now find themselves facing a small wave. Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor will find that repeated lockdowns no more kill off the virus than the national security law can eliminate demands for free speech and assembly.
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Hong Kong battles third wave of coronavirus infections
Hong Kong battles third wave of coronavirus infections
The logic of repeated lockdowns must be questioned if economies, employment and international travel are ever to return to normal without the discovery of a vaccine that will at least ameliorate the disease, if not prevent it. The news on that front varies from day to day as reflected on Wall Street. Don’t hold your breath.
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