China officials move to impose Lockdowns for Flu, prompting fears that the west will once again follow suit.
The city of Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province in central China, said it is considering enforcing lockdowns “when necessary” if an outbreak of the common flu virus poses a threat. The city's 'emergency response plan', published on Wednesday, is reported to combat the rising number of influenza cases, cases that are rising as COVID-19 cases continue to fall.
The plan by the Xi’an local government is said to account for four levels of flu outbreak. If the common virus was to reach a 'critically high level', lockdowns would likely be reinstated. It is down to the local government to determine what those 'critically high levels' would be, prompting fears that they will again use the threat of a virus to control the people still further.
During the pandemic, Chinese residents were not allowed to leave their homes. Some were not even allowed to go shopping for food or crucial supplies, some who broke lockdown rules had steel doors welded shut to ensure they complied whilst others suspected of infection were carted off to quarantine camps.
The city of Xi’an was placed under some of the strictest lockdown measures by authorities until restrictions were rapidly eased across the country in December last year following mass protests. Reacting to the prospect of a return to enforced lockdowns, social media users in China on Weibo (China's state-run 'facebook-style' platform) said the common flu was a normal virus and did not require lockdown measures prior to Covid. The BBC reported one user saying “life went on as per normal” when influenza outbreaks hit. Another said China’s local governments had become “addicted to sealing and controlling”.
The Washington Post is championing the idea that Americans too must lockdown for anything, and everything. An article to mark the third anniversary of the' pandemic', titled ‘America shut down in response to Covid. Would we ever do it again?‘ softens-up Americans for the return of restrictions.
'An incalculable number of lives were likely saved by delaying what would have been the natural spread of the virus. That gave doctors more time to develop techniques and drugs for treating patients in the brutal period before vaccines helped lower the fatality rate.
“It is entirely plausible that we might have seen a million or more dead before anyone had the chance to be vaccinated, had we done nothing,” suggests Harvard epidemiologist William Hanage.
In public health, though, success is measured against counterfactual outcomes: hypothetical infections, conjectured suffering, imaginary deaths. By contrast, the pain of the national shutdown — businesses going under, weddings postponed, protracted isolation of the elderly, learning losses among school kids —is glaringly obvious.
Critics of pandemic restrictions contend that the cure was worse than the disease. In response, Republican-dominated legislatures in many states have passed laws limiting public health interventions, such as vaccine or mask mandates.'
The Washington Post is guilty of misinformation on a grand scale. There is no evidence that lockdowns saved lives, merely estimates and computer models, yet the evidence for the damage they causes is overwhelming. Lockdowns must never happen again under any circumstances. The idea they should be imposed to prevent everyday occurrences such as flu, and bad weather, is abhorrent if not very, very predictable.