Ditching the Rhetoric of War in Coronavirus Prevention

On December 22, 2021, Xi'an (capital of Shaanxi Province) was forced to press the pause button due to the new crown epidemic.

Recently, there has been a spate of malignant incidents due to improper epidemic prevention strategies. A man had a sudden heart attack, but missed resuscitation because the nucleic acid report was not available and was refused by multiple hospitals; a netizen posted that his father had a sudden attack of angina pectoris, but missed resuscitation due to the refusal; a pregnant woman's family claimed on the internet that her 8-month-old baby miscarried due to hospital refusal, and two days later on the 5th a pregnant woman posted that she miscarried due to multiple hospital refusals ......

It has been two years since the massive new crown outbreak in Wuhan at the end of 2019, so why are these incidents still happening? Why did they produce results that were inconsistent with the original intention of preventing the epidemic?

Effective epidemic preparedness, I think, must come at a price, but every price deserves to be taken seriously. The "magical facts" of Xi'an's epidemic preparedness was the result of Xi'an's overreaction to an emergency situation that resulted from a massive, near-war emergency response: blocking movement, designating risky zones, and applying different supplies to the different zones. Numerous media outlets have widely characterized this epidemic preparedness as an "epidemic war". What is overlooked is that when epidemic prevention is seen as an act of "war", the more it is used and accepted without distinction, the more likely it is to be given a sanctity that transcends all else, and the more sacrifices are seen as justified.

Since the 2019 epidemic, the term "epidemic war" has been widely used to express a determination to fight to the end against the new coronavirus, a determination that not only demonstrates a resolute attitude toward the new coronavirus, but also contains a judgment that humans occupy the righteous side - that The virus is unjust, and man will prevail in this fight. It is this confidence that has driven people to repeatedly stand firm in the face of outbreaks and, indeed, to achieve significant results.

However, when "war" is used as a rhetorical term to describe the fight against epidemics, "prevention of epidemics" goes beyond the original connotation of "stopping the spread of viruses and ensuring the safety of people's lives" and becomes a kind of "defence war". "It has even acquired a sacred mission that transcends life, and the "sacrifice" that accompanies "war" is also justified. The "sacrifice" accompanying the "war" was also justified at the same time. Thus, the "war against the epidemic" seems to have a meaning that should not appear: the epidemic is the enemy of mankind, and in order to fight it until it is destroyed, the sacrifice of individuals is part of this "just war" and gains its own source of justification. Thus, a seemingly paradoxical result is produced: the return of people to normal order is instead conditional on their unnormal order. Wu Kejing, president of the Xi'an Writers' Association, recently dismissed women's normal physiological needs as "pretentious", which is a manifestation of this paradox, because in his logic, the "sacrifice" of "women's normal needs not being met" is normal, not unnormal.

I think we should abandon the rhetoric of war in epidemic prevention and demonize it. Only then can every cost of epidemic prevention be taken seriously.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)