Editorial
This week will see Macau’s toughest anti-COVID-19 control and prevention measures since the nasty virus began to impact our daily lives back in early 2020.
Let’s be realistic, practical and pragmatic when dealing with this week’s predicament – let’s just tough it out. Moaning, wailing and whining about it doesn’t help. It only makes this unfortunate condition – which is trying enough – even worse. That’s the last thing that we need right now.
Nor do we need more online scuttlebutt about it. While rumours have been ingredients of human life since time immemorial, and most of them are nothing more than tittle-tattle that can be easily brushed aside as claptrap, canards about public health issues such as COVID-19 are a matter for the police and prosecutors to deal with.
The crux of the matter is that COVID-19’s subvariant BA.5 – an extreme peril – has arrived in Macau.
As a matter of fact, it has arrived on multiple fronts on our planet.
An editorial by The Washington Post on Friday, headlined “The worst virus variant just arrived,” underlined that “BA.5 should be a reminder that the finish line in this race is nowhere to be seen.”
Rather dramatically, it described the pandemic as “a relentless race against Mother Nature”. It pointed out that according to Eric Topol, professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research, BA.5 “is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen.”
BA.5, Prof Topol pointed out, has taken “immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility,” well beyond earlier versions of Omicron. According to Prof Topol, BA.5 is markedly different to all prior variants as it is able to evade the body’s immune system.
All this reads like the script for another Hollywood horror movie.
However, Prof Topol acknowledged that whether BA.5 will lead to more severe disease “isn’t clear yet.” That’s why, he said, the greatest need right now is for next-generation vaccines that are more broadly protective, more durable and that can dampen transmission.
An enlightening article by Danny Altman, professor of immunology at Imperial College London, published by The Guardian recently, emphasised that the idea of “living with the virus” – the West’s best-loved approach towards dealing with COVID-19 – “is proving much harder than the early vaccine success suggested. This fight is far from over.”
That’s exactly how I feel.
I also agree with him that “we are all so very tired of COVID-19, and there are many other crises to wrestle with.”
It is common sense that being “very tired” of something doesn’t offer a solution to the problem that we are fatigued about. It’s officialdom’s typical head-in-the-sand response to issues that they can’t or prefer not to deal with.
Prof Altman stressed that “just live with” COVID-19 “looks self-evidently too thin a recipe and, currently, not very workable or successful with the emergence of [the] BA4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants.”
Welcome back to reality!
Prof Altman also refers to the possible “horror film” scenario due to the new subvariants: “Contrary to the myth that we are sliding in to a comfortable evolutionary relationship with a common-cold-like, friendly virus, this is more like being trapped on a rollercoaster in a horror film.”
Moreover, as Altman rightly points out, there is also immunologists’ ongoing struggle to decode long COVID mechanisms and potential treatments.
Various medical studies quoted by MedicalNewsToday late last year showed that more than one-third of COVID-19 patients may experience long COVID symptoms such as difficulty breathing, anxiety and depression, fatigue and, most worryingly, cognitive symptoms.
This is very alarming indeed.
I have always distrusted the “living with COVID” approach, championed by the EU and US in particular. I think it has primarily been a facile way of getting a knotty issue off the political agenda in order to please electorates waiting with baited breath to get back to their pre-pandemic lifestyle.
I have confidence in China’s dynamic zero-COVID policy, even though it inconveniences the affected populaces for days or even weeks on end. But, as the figures show, the policy has saved countless lives, prevented life-threatening cases and averted new outbreaks.
Let’s hope that everyone in Macau will heed the government’s instructions during this week’s relatively stern anti-COVID-19 curbs. Lawbreakers should be punished for the simple reason that they endanger public health, i.e., they are a threat to anyone here.
Unfortunately, there were still quite a few pedestrians not wearing facemasks yesterday. Some maskless hikers even climbed over barriers to enter areas blocked off in response to the current outbreak. Thank heavens, the wearing of KN95 facemasks is now mandatory for adults in Macau.
Well, trust is good but control is better…
So, let’s tough it out and hope that this week’s measures will help keep BA.5 at bay so that we can all gradually but always carefully return to our pre-pandemic life. However, I am quite sure that the dynamic zero-COVID approach will remain in place for quite a while. Realistically, it is still premature to make short-term plans for the post-pandemic future. Of course, this should not stop us from weighing alternative approaches in the medium- and long-term such as to focus more on special protection and treatment methods for particularly vulnerable groups such as the elderly, chronically sick and those who cannot be vaccinated.
But that’s still quite a way off…
– Harald Brüning
