Lock-Down Policy: To Prevent a Better World

Introduction

Back to January 23rd, Wuhan, the first city with a large-scale outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic, decided the lock-down policy:

“From 10:00 on January 23, 2020, the city's urban bus, subway, ferry, and long-distance passenger transportation will be suspended; citizens should not leave Wuhan without special reasons, and the airport and railway station will be temporarily closed.”(1)

Immediately afterwards, all cities in Hubei province implemented the lock-down policy. From January 31st to February 12th, more than 200 cities in China announced the Lock-Down policy in different levels, two of those cities switched to fully closed wartime cities.

Hubei, as the center province of China, the geographical position is extremely superior and also known as the “Nine Provinces Thoroughfare”. With the implementation of the policy, the COVID-19 cases had been effectively controlled, but at the same time economic problems have also arisen. This blog will talk about the advantages and disadvantages of the Lock-Down policy to the public and economics. Moreover, even though there are some disadvantages of the policy, we still need it in today’s USA.

COVID-19 Cases

Before we start talking about the cases, we must first understand how the COVID-19 spreads in our society. 

According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, COVID-19 can spread easily between people to people through coughs, sneezes or talks, even some people without symptoms may be able to spread the virus. Moreover, the virus spread easily between people. 

After we understand how COVID-19 spreads in our society, the key point to prevent spreading is to isolate human contact. For the single person, it means “stay-at-home” and “social distancing”; for the city or the state, the best way to keep the virus outside the city is Lock-Down. For my personal opinion, China, especially Hubei province, did an excellent job in the epidemic. Here is the data of cases in China by provinces:

From the data graph, it is easy to see that the main number of cases are located in the Hubei province. For the other provinces in China, it didn’t have the huge impact as Hubei. The reason is that the implementation of the lock-down policy has ensured people’s isolation.

In 342 cities across the country, all cities have implemented school suspensions, isolation of suspected and confirmed patients, and information disclosure measures. 64.3% of cities ban public gatherings and close entertainment venues. Public transport was suspended in 136 cities (39.7%), and intercity travel was prohibited in 219 cities (64.0%)

The lock-down of Wuhan reduced the rate of epidemic transmission to other cities by 2.91 days, thereby delaying the spread and spread of disease in other parts of China.

China has 1.4 billion people and most of them live in eastern of China. If the epidemic spreads to other provinces, with China’s population density, the consequences will be disastrous. Based on the Lock-Down Policy, Chinese government controlled the virus and stayed in Hubei Province.

After the implementation of the lock-down measures, more than 130 cities in China have benefited from this measure and delayed the arrival of the epidemic. These cities cover more than half of China's geographic area and population.

“Based on the fitting of this model to the daily case reports of various provinces, scientists studied the overall impact of preventive measures on the epidemic trajectory outside Wuhan.

The results show that if there is no travel ban and national emergency response in Wuhan, then by February 19, the number of newly diagnosed coronary heart disease cases outside Wuhan will reach 744,000 (±156,000).

On February 19, 29,839 confirmed cases were reported outside Wuhan, which meant that the total number of cases actually occurred was reduced by 96% compared with the situation without intervention.”(Science)

Economics Effects

Due to the occurrence and rapid spread of COVID-19 in China, the government decided to use Lock-Down Policy to decrease the spread of the virus. Although the lock-down policy has achieved outstanding results in controlling the epidemic, it has also made a huge impact on the economy. 

“Growth in the region is expected to slow sharply to 2.2% in 2020 under the effects of the current health emergency and then rebound to 6.2% in 2021.”(ADB)

From January 10 to February 3, 2020, railways, roads, waterways, and civil aviation nationwide sent a total of 1.296 billion passengers, a decrease of 30.3% over the same period last year. Among them, railways sent 194 million passengers, decreases 21.2%; roads sent 1.051 billion passengers, decreases 31.8%; waterways sent 16.09 million passengers, decreases 41.6%; civil aviation sent 35.160 million passengers, decreases 22.5%.

“Since the end of the Cultural Revolution in the mid-1970s, driven by market reforms, China's economy has continued to grow for more than 40 years, and the domestic economy has expanded nearly 100 times. Now this uninterrupted growth momentum has been broken. In the first quarter, GDP contracted by 6.8% year-on-year, marking the first quarterly decline in GDP since the official record in 1992.”(Wall Street Journal)

Conclusion 

The lock-down policy can effectively control the spread of the new crown epidemic, but it will also have a huge impact on social and economic stability. How to balance the relationship between the two will be a problem for society and the government. I believe that life is the most important thing in the face of so-called freedom and economic development.

We cannot give up the control of the epidemic just because of the economy, nor can we give up the best way to control the epidemic because of the so-called freedom. In the current situation, even if there is no government's policy, we should continue to stay-at-home and maintain the social distance, not only to protect others, but also to protect ourselves.