[NB: This article was written by me in June 2020 in Chinese, I have now translated it into English. The original Chinese version is below. This is NOT a summary of an article published on the Aisixiang (爱思想) website.

Why Did Western Countries Fail to Prevent the Spread of Covid-19?

The Covid-19 pandemic is a once in a century grave health crisis.  From the time when the first cases were first diagnosed in Wuhan in December 2019, the virus quickly spread around the world.  To date at least 400,000 people have died. [Note: this article was written in June 2020].

In my opinion the most interesting aspect of the pandemic is that, with very few exceptions, no country and no national leaders outside China anticipated that the virus would spread to their countries as it has done.  European and western hemisphere countries in particular failed to heed the lessons learned by China and other Asian countries in the early stages of fighting the virus.

All the news coming out of China, and in particular Wuhan and Hubei Province, in January and February of this year clearly showed the virus was highly contagious, causing serious illness and a high death rate for many of the people who contracted it.  However, in Europe and North and South America, with the exception of Germany, we all failed to do enough to prepare for it.  Since then, we have all experienced a much more serious and prolonged pandemic than China, Taiwan and South Korea.  Why is this?

I believe the key reasons for this are as follows:

First, when the Chinese government decided to lock down Wuhan and Hubei Province on 21^st January, they undoubtedly realised the virus had spread to the rest of China and other parts of the world.  That is why they immediately took forcible measures to prevent the virus spreading to other parts of China.  Up to 800 million Chinese people were forced to remain at home.  In western countries our television channels and newspapers were filled with reports of Chinese people’s bitter experiences.  The Chinese government also issued daily reports about the number of confirmed infections and deaths on the previous day.  In western countries, however, even though we knew there had been frequent flights between Wuhan airport and our own airports, we still did not acknowledge the possibility the virus might have already spread to our own countries.   We therefore wasted valuable time in making our own preparations and did not promptly adopt lockdown measures.  We also failed to order enough protective medical equipment.

Secondly, a major reason western countries failed to realise the virus would spread through their own populations was the fact that the vast majority of western people mistakenly believe this type of pandemic crisis only happens in China and simply cannot occur in advanced western countries.  We also believed during the early stage of the pandemic that our medical systems were robust enough to cope with the pandemic if it did reach us.  By the time many Italian people had died from the virus, it was too late for the United Kingdom, France, the United States and other countries to prepare for it.

Thirdly, I ask myself whether the Chinese government, when they took the decision to lock down Wuhan on 21^st January, realised that the virus had already spread to many other countries?  If they did realise that, why did they not immediately stop all flights in and out of China?  Why did they not warn countries outside of Asia that the virus had already spread to other parts of the world?  Based on their experience of the SARS epidemic in 2003, the possibility that the Covid-19 virus would spread to Europe and the western hemisphere must have been foreseeable.  However, the Chinese government refused to cancel all flights and indeed criticised Australia for its decision to stop flights.  They also urged the World Health Organisation to delay the declaration of a global pandemic.  Did the Chinese government (including General Secretary Xi Jinping) realise at that point that western countries would soon face a grave public health crisis that they would be unable to control?  I believe that if the Chinese government had warned western governments at an early stage that they needed to make urgent preparations to combat the virus, such a warning would have had no effect.  Nonetheless the fact that a warning appears not to have been issued may well result in western countries criticising China and pursuing claims against it in the future.   

西方国家为什么没有防止新冠疫情的蔓延？

这场全球的疫情是一个一百年未见的严重有害健康的危机。自从去年十二月在武汉确诊的最初病例以来，新冠疫情迅速蔓延到全球。迄今为止至少四十万人死亡了。（2020年6月的统计）

而对我来说，最有意思的问题是，除了很少例外，任何国家，任何政府领导人，都没有预料到这场疫情势必蔓延到自己的国家。尤其是欧洲和美洲国家，都忽视了中国和其他东方国家在抗击疫情过程中取得的教训。

来自中国于本年一，二月份的新闻报道，尤其是来自武汉和湖北省的，都指明了新冠病毒很强的传染性以及患者症状的严重性和高死亡率。然而在欧洲，美洲和南美洲国家（除了德国以外）我们都没有下足够的功夫准备。最终我们都（再次除了德国以外）遭到了比中国，台湾和韩国更严峻和持久的疫情。为什么？

在我看来关键原因有以下几点：

其一，中国政府于本年1月21日决定封锁武汉和湖北省的时候，他们无疑意识到新冠病毒已经蔓延到中国的其他地方。于是他们为了防止疫情的传播到中国各处马上采取了强制性措施，以致八亿左右中国人被强迫留在家。我们在西方国家的电视台和报纸都充满了关于中国人惨痛的经验。中国政府也每天都发表了前日的新病例和死亡率的数据。然而在西方国家，尽管我们都知道在我们的机场和武汉机场之间一直有很频繁的航班，但是我们仍然没有意识到疫情已经蔓延到我们国家的可能性。所以我们耽误了很多时间，没有及时采取了封城的措施，也没有及时订购了足够的抗击疫情的医疗设备。

其二，西方国家没有认识到疫情会蔓延到这里的主要原因在于大部分西方人都误以为这样的严重疫情危机只会在中国发生，而不会在发达的西方国家发生。在疫情初期，西方人都相信我们的医疗制度健全得以处理任何疫情。等到很多意大利人已因新冠病毒而死，法，美，英等国家都来不及准备了。

其三，我也自问，中国政府是否于一月份封锁武汉的时候，意识到了新冠病毒已经从中国传播到很多国家了？ 如果是，他们为什么没有马上中止一切国际航班，为什么没有向亚洲之外的国家预告疫情已从中国传播出去了？鉴于他们在2003年萨斯（SARS）疫情中的经验，新冠疫情蔓延到欧洲，美洲的可能性是可以预见的。然而中国政府拒绝了中止航班，甚至谴责澳大利亚中止中国航班的决定。他们也劝世卫组织延迟宣布大流行状态。中国政府（包括习近平总书记在内）是不是预料到西方国家在近期内面临这样严重的健康危机会失败？我认为，尽管中国政府是否早期告诫了西方国家他们需要加紧抗击疫情的准备，想必都没有效果。不过，没有如此向全世界发表警告会导致中国未来难以应对西方国家关于疫情蔓延的谴责和起诉。

Michael Ingle – michaelingle01@gmail.com

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Tags: 西方国家为什么没有防止新冠疫情的蔓延, 新冠疫情