New Zealand is launching a wide-ranging inquiry into whether it made the right decisions in battling COVID-19 and how it can better prepare for future pandemics.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Monday the coronavirus had posed the greatest threat to the nation's health and economy since World War II. She said now was an appropriate time to examine the government's response with the highest level of independent inquiry.
But over time, the downsides of the elimination approach came into clearer focus as the economic and social costs rose. Some citizens faced big delays returning home due to a bottleneck at border quarantine facilities. New Zealand's Royal Commission of Inquiry will be led by Tony Blakely, an Australian-based epidemiologist and professor. From early next year, it has 17 months to research and prepare an exhaustive report.
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China’s COVID trapLONDON, U.K.—“Our COVID-19 policy is the most scientifically effective, the most economical, and yields the best result,” insisted the People’s Daily newspaper in China after mass public protests against the government’s zero-COVID policy last weekend. If President Xi Jinping believes that, he is in for a lot more trouble. The protests were unprecedented in their scale and daring. They broke out spontaneously in 12 cities across China after 10 lockdown-related deaths in the remote province of Xinjiang. All sorts of people took part, from students to workers to pensioners. A few even called for the dethroning of Xi and the Communist Party. That doesn’t mean the regime is on the brink of collapse. Public anger at the endless lockdowns and the resulting loss of income is strong, but the regime’s surveillance technology is excellent. There was relatively little official violence last weekend, but many of the protesters will have an unpleasant visit by the police in the coming days. Xi’s problem is that the protests will probably recur and may well escalate because over-long mass quarantines and lockdowns are a non-political issue that can unite almost everybody against the government’s policy. Or rather, against Xi’s personal policy, for he has deliberately chosen to portray zero-COVID as the greatest achievement of his time in office. That made sense in the first year of the pandemic, for China’s relentless lockdowns and mass testing campaigns saved a great many lives. Total COVID-related deaths in China have been around 5,000 out of a population of 1.4 billion. The United States, with less than a quarter of China’s population, had more than one million COVID deaths. Xi and his propagandists naturally used this contrast as evidence that both Chinese medicine and the Chinese political system were superior to their Western equivalents. Was he even aware that the zero-COVID policy could only be a stopgap until effective vaccines were developed, never a lasting solution? H
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