Covid-19: Beijing Update & Reflections for the U.S. - Women Organizing Women Democrats

Editor’s Note: This is the seventh installment of “Our Stories,” a new WOW Dems series dedicated to telling personal stories related to the critical issues of our time – beginning with the COVID-19 crisis. This story comes from Sabina Brady, a WOW Dems member and American expat who lives in China.

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The beginning

At the very beginning, there were six weeks of inaction during which the Chinese city of Wuhan (population of 11 million) first experienced a few isolated coronavirus cases. Unchecked and untraced, these cases flared into clusters, erupted into a viral explosion, and then began to spread throughout the country, exacerbated by millions leaving the virally besieged city to return home for the Chinese New Year holiday. It was only then that China became singularly focused. In the last week of January, the central leadership and national health administration began to relentlessly and systematically exert the full powers of the state, imposing often draconian measures in order to put (and hopefully keep) the insidious Covid-19 genie back into its bottle.

So far, here in Beijing, we have lived through four months of stringent social distancing and the closing down of the city. We are now finally beginning to emerge: schools are starting back up, businesses and restaurants are opening (with reduced numbers of customers permitted), and there are even traffic jams (albeit small) during our weekday rush hours. Never before have we rejoiced in witnessing lines of cars on the way to/from work! Another reason to rejoice is that we are now in our fourth week of no new cases. If we maintain this trend, we’ll be allowed to stop wearing face masks in public by June 1.

An ongoing effort

Even after four months of battling this pandemic, reaching the peak and finally descending down almost to the base of the curve, there are still social distancing measures in place across most of China. The severity of these measures varies in degree by a given region’s daily new case and death counts and their two-week trends. Confidence in these numbers – reported on our phones throughout the day – are due to China’s ubiquitous and targeted local testing and follow-up contact tracing systems. Wuhan, while more relaxed than it was a month ago, continues to maintain very strict controls. In Shanghai, things are almost back to normal, although temperature checks and targeted testing remain, and masks are still worn in enclosed public places. Beijing, as the nation’s capital, remains more cautious than Shanghai – hence our hopeful focus on the June 1 goal.

Why it’s working

China’s painful containment of its out-of-control epidemic, and its ability to get a handle on it and (finally) progress down the other side of its curve, has only been possible because of nationwide:

social distancing measures and mask wearing;
pervasive general and targeted testing, contact tracing, and same day turnarounds on test results;
imposing isolation and quarantine measures on all those found to be either infected or exposed; and,
systematic tightening or loosening of social mobility measures at the local level, based on testing and contact tracing data.

Recently, an entire city in Heilongjiang (near the Russian border) was completely locked down and quarantined. The border between the two countries closed after a few locals brought the virus back upon returning from doing business in Russia. Asymptomatically infected, they caused small clusters of local community transmission in their wake. Only targeted testing and contact tracing discovered the clusters before they had a chance to get out of control.

Necessary measures

Late last week, I went to a clinic to get a prescription. Before entering, I had to scan an app on my phone showing my location(s) over the last 14 days. This ruled out whether I’d been in one of the country’s continuing “sensitive” areas, such as the quarantined city in Heilongjiang.

Once cleared, I was then met by fully PPE-equipped staff, who took my temperature and had me fill out a questionnaire on my general health. With this second all-clear, I was permitted to go to the main desk and (finally) check in. Any missteps in this process would have resulted in my entry being barred, or (if I had a temperature), being sent to a facility that could handle fevers and where I would also be given a PCR test.

While I was at the clinic, my husband went to a local bookstore. To get in, he too had to scan the location tracking app on his phone and also get his temperature checked. Such is the norm for most shops, restaurants, office buildings, and residential areas. Although slightly inconvenient, these precautions allow us to go out now – fully masked – and more confident in the safety of our public surroundings.

Protecting the public

In Beijing, anyone can get tested simply by going to drive-thru facilities, where they get swabbed and receive results within 24 hours. Ubiquitous testing provides a sense of safety to both institutions and individuals. Hotels where business travelers will be staying require proof of negative polymerise chain reaction, or PCR, tests done within the last seven days. Companies or factories bringing workers and customers back onto their premises require daily testing. Such testing also increases the size of the country’s monitoring net if/when there is a positive result and contact tracing needs to be undertaken.

Lesson learned

Having missed the initial containment window, China knows it cannot simply flip a switch to revert back to the “Time Before Covid-19,” no matter how much everyone needs and wants to get out of their homes and back to work or school. Though the pandemic is 95% controlled, China’s campaign to test, trace, and contain continues unabated. This is not just to restart the (intentionally) stalled economy, but also to reduce the risk and magnitude of a (likely) second wave. And this risk is considerable. Why? Because the virus simply became too entrenched within the general population before it was finally contained.

Those first six weeks of inaction extracted a high toll. Once the Covid genie left its bottle and began to wreak its destruction (as it did here, and it is now doing on an exponential scale in the U.S.), comprehensive testing and contact tracing with the requisite social distancing, and isolation and quarantine measures, are the only ways to get and keep us safe.

What other countries have done

Other countries have learned by watching, but not repeating, China’s initial missteps. In Asia, these include South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam. In Europe, Greece, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Iceland, Germany, and Austria. Down under, Australia and New Zealand have so far succeeded in their containment efforts as well. While continuing to battle sporadic flare-ups, all these countries are now far down on the other side of the pandemic curve and beginning to safely resume and ramp up economic and social life. Because opening means there will be flare-ups and new clusters, they all also maintain strict vigilance. How? By continuing to collect and respond to data from testing and follow-up contact tracing.

Other countries: Finding what works

What does their success look like? To date, all these countries have suffered far fewer cases and deaths per capita. They’ve instituted a much shorter duration and more limited lock-downs/social distancing measures. They’ve also taken fewer devastating economic hits than the U.S. Meanwhile, the U.S. falls at a horrendous apex of thousands of daily new cases and deaths. And, 47 states have initiated reopening although they fail to meet basic reopening guidelines.

What did these countries do differently? They:

took early action (the most successful ones acting before suffering their first Covid deaths);
instituted massive, nationwide testing and contact tracing (that remains ongoing);
isolated all confirmed cases and quarantined the exposed (this also remains ongoing);
mandated mask-wearing by everyone in public (this, too, remains ongoing in many places); and,
imposed, tightened, or loosened data-based lock-downs and/or social distancing measures, including border closures.

Like China, the U.S. missed its opportunity for early action and containment. America wasted some six weeks in inaction, obfuscation, and confusion. During that time, the U.S. experienced exponential growth of the coronavirus. The genie well and truly left its bottle. Unhindered, it sowed its destruction. Sadly for the U.S., its initial errors – especially on the national level – have not stopped, but only grown. The epidemic continues to spread. The U.S.’s dysfunction prevents it from taking critical actions. These actions could move the U.S. off the pandemic’s peak and start moving down the other side of the curve.

What can Americans do?

In the face of the U.S.’s increasingly politicized dysfunction, what can Americans do to keep safe, reduce suffering and death, responsibly restart the economy, and better prepare for a likely second wave? First, they need to lobby their local representatives and pressure their governors to take the type of evidence- and data-based actions that other countries and regions have shown to be effective. Second, they need to do the same type of outreach to Congressional representatives in both the U.S. Senate and House of Reps. Finally, they need to pressure all 27 former U.S. Democratic presidential candidates* and Joe Biden, the presumptive nominee, to come together and issue a unified call for a coherent, coordinated, and institutional pandemic response, led and supported by the national government. The call should be to get the U.S. back on its feet, vibrant and healthy again.

While the Covid-19 pandemic is truly horrific, those politicizing and exploiting the problem are using this unprecedented crisis to eviscerate the United States’ institutional capacity to respond. This widens and deepens the growing social and economic destruction. Sadly, we are only in the second or third inning of this life and death game. More than 16% of America is food insecure (with food banks running low on stocks). More than half of Covid-19 deaths have happened to those in elderly and long-term care facilities.

What we can and should be doing in response are the questions we must all be asking.

*Find former Democratic presidential candidates here, then Google how to contact each by name. Most maintain official offices to carry out their political and/or philanthropic work. For example, Googling “contact Hillary Clinton” yields this result.

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