Writer : Yokogawa View / Editor : Liu Mingxiang / https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2020/10/21/a102968565.html / Direct translation
Image : On 10 October, Trump held the first public event in the White House after recovery from covid. (Samuel Corum / Getty Images)
A few days ago, a friend called and said that he had some arguments with her son. Her son believed that President Trump’s response to the epidemic was wrong and did not respect science. Perhaps not coincidentally, the top international scientific journal Nature also published an editorial article criticizing President Trump and publicly supporting Biden. Today I will talk about whether Trump’s response to the epidemic is appropriate and scientific.
As we all know, in the early days of the epidemic, when the CCP and the WHO jointly concealed and played down the epidemic, President Trump had already ordered the suspension of flights from China, which was attacked by the Democratic Party leaders. This is not an easy decision, because preventive measures are the most thankless.
In the early stage of the epidemic, at least partly because the CCP refused to share information about the origin of the epidemic with the world, the scientific community knew nothing about the virus and did not have a mature prevention and control plan. From the perspective of preventing transmission, there were two extremes: complete city closure and herd immunity plan.
The Trump administration adopted a balanced plan including partial city closures, social distancing, personal protection, telecommuting, gradual opening, federal bailouts, and minimizing the unemployment rate. In terms of treatment, severely ill patients are hospitalized and mildly ill patients are self-isolated at home. To prevent medical treatment system paralysis, the relevant units speed up the clinical trials and approval trials of existing anti-coronavirus drugs (such as Remdesivir), and the application of other drugs (such as chloroquine and histamine 2 blocker famotidine), and develop new treatment methods (Regeneron, a cocktail of two monoclonal antibodies against the viral spike protein). The US has the most extensive testing (this may be the reason why there are more confirmed cases in the United States than in other developed countries). The government and pharmaceutical companies have signed contracts to accelerate the development of vaccines (vaccine prospects are unknown, generally. The companies are unwilling to take risks) and accelerate the localized production of important personal protective equipment. These measures have been successful so far. At least the scientific community has not proposed more effective comprehensive measures.
Of course, the United States has its own difficulties in dealing with the epidemic: each state has the right to enact measures to close the city on its own, and the federal government should not bear full responsibility; different from Asian culture, the general public rejects masks; political interference (large-scale crowd violations from the BLM movement At first, with the support of the Democratic local government), discerning people can see that these are not caused by President Trump's policies.
In addition to the scientific community’s lack of more effective measures, the political opponent Biden-Harris’s team only claimed that they did not propose a plan different from that of President Trump. The part proposed is being implemented by President Trump. If it is proposed to resume work, it must be given. On employees mask-wearing, this is not a solution at all, and at least the lack of masks is the mistake of the previous US governments including moving all the production lines to China, and the Trump administration is the first to try to correct this mistake.
Epidemic prevention is not a purely scientific issue, but a comprehensive issue of science, society, and politics. If according to the recommendations of some epidemiologists, the epidemic can only be effectively controlled by shutting down the American society, including the American economy. It will be a fatal blow to the American economy. The unemployment rate will not be tens of millions but hundreds of millions. The normal death will be several times and dozens of times the current death caused by COVID-19.
Wrong decision to make swine flu vaccine widespread
The widespread swine flu vaccination in 1976 was a decision error. At that time, four cases of lung infections caused by swine flu viruses were found in the Dicks Army Camp in New Jersey. One person died. Due to the lessons of the 1918 flu, the choice was faced at that time: whether this is the beginning of another deadly pandemic. Whether agencies and governments wait for the pandemic to begin or immediately start developing and widely vaccinating vaccines, because vaccines take time, and it may be too late to develop and produce until the pandemic begins.
The next question is, once a vaccine is available, whether it should be fully vaccinated or stored, because it takes 3 months from the production of the vaccine to the completion of the national vaccination. During this period, many people may be infected and die, but if the vaccination does not happen The pandemic will also be blamed.
The final result was a national vaccination, but the expected pandemic did not come. Later, the peripheral neurological disease Guillain-Barré syndrome caused by the vaccine continued for many years. It was a recognized public health disaster.
To deal with sudden epidemics, there are more constraints other than science
This shows that human understanding of sudden and large-scale epidemics is still limited, and the decision-making process and results will be wrong. There are scientific limitations and more constraints other than science.
At that time, there was also a famous Alexander question. Alexander, a professor of public health at the University of Washington, raised questions at the decision-making meeting. How can participants change the national vaccination decision, including the severity of existing cases, whether there are other new cases, What if the situation occurred at a different time and place? But no one seemed to intend to answer his questions, and he did not insist, that is to say, even in the medical world, correct opinions are not always dominant, as we see today.
Science is not omnipotent. Science is the exploration of the unknown. It is an unknown field for scientists. Scientists should not pretend to be authoritative. In the social and political fields, scientific intervention is often a disaster rather than a solution. Social Darwinism is an example.
A few days ago, the top international scientific magazine "Nature" publicly criticized President Trump and supported Biden's campaign. This is very inappropriate.
We can understand that the experimental results and papers that Western countries cannot let go because of medical ethics are often from mainland China. The team member of Wuhan Institute of Viology, Shi Zhengli, who is in the eye of the epidemic this time, is the favorite of Nature. Shi Zhengli’s famous article on the function enhancement experiment was published in "Nature". The paper modified the bat coronavirus spike protein to obtain the ability of cross-species infection.
There is also some little-known history. As early as 20 years ago, "Nature" magazine reported the story of the first batch of scientists in the field of biology from the mainland who obtained academic achievements in the United States and brought high technology back to China and established laboratories. Today, those laboratories are called "shadow laboratories".
At that time, the CCP authorities did not have the Thousand Talents Plan, and they didn't even have any ideas. The magazine Nature was encouraging and propagating what is now considered the theft of American intellectual property rights. Today, as a scientist, shouldn't you devote yourself to discovering the root cause of the COVID-19 epidemic? Of course, it is the government's responsibility to hold the CCP accountable, but shouldn't scientific journals not do what scientific journals should do to scientifically trace the source of the epidemic and provide the government with a policy basis? It is not only politicians who kowtow to the CCP.
This article only represents the writer's views and statements.
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