美媒：美國為何抗疫失敗？無能、階級暴力、欺騙和謊言

【觀察者網 訊】

美國是全球新冠疫情最嚴重的國家，累計確診病例和死亡病例數長期高居全球之首。全球醫療技術領先、醫療資源豐富的美國，為何會淪為最大抗疫失敗國？

7月18日，美國《每月評論》發表美籍記者和編輯黛博拉·韋內齊亞爾的文章《美國為何抗疫失敗：無能、階級暴力、欺騙和謊言》（Why the U.S. failed to control COVID-19: incompetence, class violence, deception, and lies），作者指出，新冠對美國社會的實際損害被大大低估了，資本找到了卑鄙但合法的方式來“拋棄”這些剩餘人口，疾病大流行是其中的方式之一。而中國的社會主義仁政、科學管理和從這次流行病中學習的能力、以及中國人民的紀律和犧牲精神，在保護人民的生命和為未來做準備方面顯示了令人難以置信的結果。

值得注意的是，這篇文章6月29日首發在觀察者網，引起極大的關注，被全網轉載。很多網友感嘆這位記者是個真正瞭解中國的外籍人士，並希望這樣客觀、一針見血的文章能夠讓更多的西方人所看到；還對文中眾多表述的英文頗為感興趣，如社會主義仁政等等。

觀察者網刊發英文全文，以饗讀者，中英文版本略有不同。

《每月評論（Monthly Review）》 截圖

The United States (together with its Western allies) always tries to tell China what to do in managing COVID-19 outbreaks, and since the whole city of Shanghai was under lockdown, the U.S. media seems to have even more reasons to criticize China’s anti-virus policy. But here’s the irony: If China had done as “well” as the United States, 380 million Chinese would have been infected and 4.46 million would have died.1 In fact, only 5,226 people died from COVID on the Chinese mainland.2 This is an amazing achievement given that China is a developing country with far fewer medical resources per capita than the United States.3

If China followed the current advice of the Financial Times and the West, and abandoned the dynamic zero-COVID policy, millions of Chinese would die. To be sure, estimates of the likely number of deaths can vary by as much as 70% between models,4 because the models on which these estimates are based make many assumptions. Even the lowest published projected number of deaths (which includes many unconfirmed assumptions in the model) is over 1.6 million 5 and the model does not account for deaths from new COVID variants.

China takes human life seriously. Despite having a per capita income of only 17.3% of that of the United States,6 the average Chinese life expectancy is 77.9 years.7 Preliminary studies find that life expectancy in the United States is 76.6 years.8 American life expectancy declined by 2.26 years between 2020 and 2021. The U.S. media is advocating for China to abandon its dynamic zero-COVID strategy, which is basically advocating mass racist killings. Perhaps it is not surprising that the most violent state on earth is making such noises.

Let’s be objective: the United States is one of the worst countries in the world at controlling COVID-19, which has not only claimed more than one million American lives but has also caused and continues to cause enormous social and economic devastation in the country. This article examines the impact of U.S. anti-COVID policy and what the Western media has to say about it. Three main conclusions can be drawn.

First, the actual damage of COVID-19 to U.S. society has been greatly underestimated. Historically, pandemics have allowed pre-existing structural fractures in capitalist society to be exposed and magnified. The coronavirus has killed over a million people and infection rates remain high; the long-term post-COVID symptoms continue to damage people’s health, with minorities and the poor suffering disproportionately. The functioning of U.S. society has been severely disrupted, with working-class families bearing the heaviest costs. An already decaying healthcare system has been hit hard, with overextended facilities incapable of housing the large number of patients or treating them due to the lack of proper medical and personal protective equipment. Sixty-five percent of nurses across the United States have been verbally or physically assaulted in the past year, and one in three has claimed that they will resign by the end of the year.9

Meanwhile, billionaires and large corporations are reaping huge financial benefits during the pandemic. Selfishness, individualism, and racial hatred is spread throughout American society. In short, the callosity of the U.S. elite class reveals the pathological class violence against the working class in the United States. Marx scientifically points out that the process of capitalist accumulation itself constantly creates a disposable “surplus” population. In the United States, capital has found despicable yet legal ways to “dispose” of this surplus population, and pandemics are one of these ways.

Second, China’s socialist benevolent policy, scientific management, and ability to learn from this pandemic, as well as the discipline and sacrifice of its people, have shown incredible results in protecting people’s lives and preparing for the future. China, as a middle-income country, has the resources to take complex steps to protect the lives of its people. But to the embarrassment of the G7 developed countries, when China developed vaccines, it immediately made most of its production available to the world’s poorest people. This is internationalism. In sharp contrast, the United States, and its private pharmaceutical manufacturers, under its protection, refused to make the therapeutic drug Paxlovid and the vaccines available quickly and cheaply to other countries.

Third, the pandemic has forced the U.S. elite to wage their ideological war in an increasingly intense and virulent manner. They have used their hegemony in the media and other ideological spheres to hide the reality of their own failure to fight COVID, and to exaggerate the distortions and lies about China’s policy and effectiveness in fighting the virus.

The incompetence of the U.S. government has led to millions of deaths

When COVID-19 had not yet spread to the United States, its media and politicians called it a “plague”. Two years later, when COVID had infected more than 84 million people and killed more than 1 million in the United States, they changed their story and said that COVID-19 was–at least after several mutations–equivalent to seasonal influenza, and therefore promoted the policy of “coexistence with COVID-19”. Globally, COVID-19 has a case reported mortality rate of about 1.61%, 1.2% in the United States.10 In the U.S. there were an estimated 460,00 deaths from COVID in 2021 versus 20,342 11 deaths attributed to flu in 2019 (even less in 2021).

Based on global data, Case Fatality Rates (CFR) averaged one percent for Lassa hemorrhagic fever, mumps encephalitis, all less than Covid.12 “Coexistence with mumps” or “coexistence with smallpox” is unimaginable in developed industrial countries, where children with mumps-induced encephalitis are quarantined and smallpox has been eradicated since 1977. Yet the U.S. media and politicians are urging people to coexist with the coronavirus, which has a much higher death rate.

There is a conscious or unconscious belief that infectious diseases will become progressively less lethal as they mutate, eventually becoming a mild and common disease. Although infectious diseases usually evolve in a mild direction in the long term, it may not necessarily be the case in the short term.13 Immunologists tell us that the evolutionary trajectory of the virus depends on the complex interplay of several factors that shape the response of our immune system to the evolution of the virus. In a scenario where the virus has multiple hosts, such predictions become even more difficult.14

The Alpha variant is 40% more lethal than the original virus. Delta is twice as likely to cause severe cases than the Alpha variant, and the statistically relatively low mortality rate is likely the effect of widespread vaccination rather than a reduction in viral lethality. The Omicron variant is slightly less lethal (0.9%) but more infectious and has caused more deaths than the Delta variant in the United States.15 There is no guarantee that the next COVID variant will be less lethal, and it could still kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people. Leading German virologist Christian Drosten recently admitted his own optimistic estimates in the first year of the pandemic were wrong. He also distanced himself from a government committee convened to battle the disease.16 Betting that the virulence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus will reduce with time, cannot be a responsible public health measure.

The Financial Times has reluctantly acknowledged 17 that Europe is now facing a surge in new hospital admissions from the Omicron BA.5 variant. They have further acknowledged that lack of testing, abandonment of outbreak control, and high rates of reinfection in people who have already been vaccinated three times may lead to higher mortality rates in the future.

The effectiveness of herd immunization remains to be seen. When Trump was the U.S. President, he supported White House senior medical advisor Scott Atlas who said that if enough people were vaccinated (or infected with COVID), the virus would have nowhere to spread and die out naturally.18 For the same reason, Biden also focuses on vaccination, arguing that if vaccination rates reach 70% or more, masks can be fully abandoned and social activities resumed.19 But historically, effective herd immunization (e.g., measles) has three necessary conditions: a stable, non-mutating virus, a very effective vaccine, and high vaccination rates. And none of these three conditions existed at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

In more than two years, COVID-19 has mutated into at least six major variants; vaccines effective against the Delta variant have become limited against Omicron;20 and vaccine efficacy decreases by 20 to 30 percentage points after about six months.21 There is also no evidence that patients infected with COVID-19 are automatically immune (like smallpox or mumps), and the number of reinfections with coronavirus has been rising sharply since the Omicron variant was discovered.22 From the beginning, Chinese central health officials have maintained the right scientific attitude and insisted that no compromise be made until there is sufficient evidence.

Although the cause remains unclear, substantial evidence shows that even after cure, COVID-19 can cause a variety of long-term symptoms, including extreme fatigue, shortness of breath, chest pain or tightness, reduced memory and attention, and joint pain.23 Thirty percent of patients who had been hospitalized for COVID-19 still suffer from long-term symptoms after six months,24 and some patients have had symptoms for more than two years. About one in five patients infected with COVID have developed long-term symptoms, nearly 17 million people across the United States.

British scholar Ravi Veriah Jacques, who recovered from COVID 14 months ago, still has to be bedridden for 13-16 hours a day due to chronic symptoms.25 Catie Barber, a registered dietitian and a 29-year-old long-distance runner in the United States, is still unable to walk and is confined to a wheelchair due to chronic symptoms five months after recovering, and she nearly lost her life to COVID-induced heart disease.26 Vaccination prior to infection provides only partial protection during the acute phase of the disease and has limited impact on long-term symptoms.27 For working class people who have to live on wages, these long-term symptoms can further impair their ability to work and their income levels.

All these facts raise the question of why the world’s most powerful and resource-rich country responded to the catastrophic outbreak of an infectious disease in such a way that its people have suffered so deeply? Around New Year’s Day 2020, officials from the Chinese Center for Disease Control called Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to warn him of the dangers of the COVID virus 28– a new virus that Chinese doctors had just identified a few days earlier. Incredibly, U.S. media claimed that China was withholding information. It was U.S. officials who withheld information from other agencies within the U.S. government, and from the American people. Their incompetence and withholding of information allowed the United States to waste valuable time in developing a response plan.

Class inequality in the pandemic

Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, predicted on January 29, 2020, that the COVID epidemic would cause 500,000 deaths and trillions of dollars in economic damage. Yet the U.S. government continued to let the virus run its course, and one important reason is that the ruling class that controls the country has suffered very little from the epidemic. Among the 12 U.S. billionaires who have died over the past two years, none of them died from COVID-19. The wealthy U.S. bourgeoisie has a larger per capita living area and better community infrastructure, does not need to clock in and out of crowded factories or offices, and enjoys expensive and superior medical care. As a result, in the two phases that caused large numbers of deaths (late 2020 to early 2021 and August to November 2021), residents in high-income counties in the United States were less than 20% as likely to die from COVID as those in low-income counties.29 When affluent Americans say that no one around them has died from COVID, the odds are that it’s true.

The rich even benefit from the pandemic. In March 2020, the Federal Reserve launched uncapped quantitative easing, expanding its balance sheet by $5.2 trillion by the end of the year. Trump and Biden signed economic bailouts of $2.2 trillion and $1.9 trillion, respectively. These additional monetary issuances quickly brought the U.S. stock market back to all-time highs, thus making ultra-rich stockholders even wealthier. By October 2021, the total wealth of U.S. billionaires reached $5 trillion, a 70% increase compared to March 2021, with the wealth of the top five billionaires (Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Larry Page) increasing by 118%.30 So, it’s no surprise that Musk tweeted “Give people back their godamned freedom” as the epidemic was causing its first spike in deaths at the end of April 2020. After all, every day that workers were quarantined at home meant that his accumulation of wealth was slowed down a little bit. Musk’s wealth, during the epidemic, grew sevenfold, making him the richest man in the world.

Contrary to common perception, the working class has benefited very little from U.S. economic growth over the past few decades. Since 1980, the richest 10% of the U.S. population has grabbed more than half of all economic growth, while the working class, whose incomes are lower than the median, have received only 10% of economic growth. In each of the three periods of economic growth over the past three decades, the top 10% of income earners received about half of all income growth.31 Households with incomes below the median have seen almost no income growth over the two decades from 2000 to 2020.32 The working class are a silent group in the U.S. political environment, and while Trump (with his chief strategist Stephen Bannon) liked to boast about the support of the “white working class”, it was actually the racist far-right lower middle class that was mobilized by his fascist policy. They are mostly white, mostly from small towns or rural areas, running small businesses or doing professional jobs, and they make up about a quarter of the country’s population; they are better off than the working class (though also on the decline), and are often employers of the working class.

After a short period of containment, the U.S. government relaxed controls of the epidemic, guided by a policy of “herd immunity” that had not proven effective for the current phase of COVID. Business owners strongly demanded that all control measures be lifted because they needed their employees back at work to resume production and operations, at the expense of the working class. Working class individuals are four times more likely to die from COVID-19 than people of higher social and economic status,33 but debt pressure and a lack of savings forced them to return to work. Of households earning less than $35,000 a year, 57.3% experienced job loss or income decline during the pandemic, and 60% of households struggled to cover daily expenses; 47% fell behind on housing payments, and 7 million feared eviction or foreclosure within two months; 25% (nearly 11 million people) experienced food hardship.34 In order to make ends meet, the working class has to return to work at the risk of dying from COVID or suffering from chronic symptoms, which Musk calls “freedom”.

While most effective means of preventing and controlling the epidemic were abandoned in the name of “individual freedom” and “restoring society to normalcy,” in reality the bourgeois elite was only concerned with keeping their money-making businesses up and running. In fact, despite the reluctance of the U.S. government to implement lockdown measures, social activity has been severely disrupted, and after more than two years there is still no sign of pre-COVID normality. In the education sector, for example, by the end of 2020, 24 million elementary school students had already lost an average of 54 days of instructional time.35 By the end of November 2021, U.S. elementary and middle schools had experienced a total of 71 weeks of complete or partial suspension (compared to 27 weeks in China).36 In August 2021, the U.S. Department of Education issued a Return to School Roadmap to support school reopening.37 As a result, only days after classes resumed, 120,000 children were infected across the United States and many schools had to close again.38

The long-term inability to resume regular schooling has shown clear negative effects, with students suffering learning losses observed in several states, such as in Texas, where two-thirds of 3rd grade children tested below grade level in math in 2021, an increase of more than 30% from previous years.39 Meanwhile, children from lower-income working-class families who have less access to good IT facilities and distance learning environments, are more severely impacted by school closures. According to estimates from consulting firm McKinsey, children from low-income families lose an average of 12.4 months of learning time (national average 6.8 months) and are expected to lose 4% of their total life earnings (national average 2.2%).40

The U.S. media can’t wait to announce that the U.S. economy has returned to normal after dropping COVID controls; according to CNN’s “Back-to-Normal Index”, the current U.S. economy is back to 93% of its pre-pandemic (March 2020) level.41 The Dow Jones and S&P 500 hit record highs in late 2021, but then fell sharply. From January to April 2022, the S&P 500 fell more than 13%, its worst four-month performance since 1939.42 More importantly, the stock market does not truly reflect the economy, even with the massive stimulus package, real U.S. GDP only grew by a combined 2.11% between 2020 and 2021,43 accompanied by severe inflation and rising prices. The “normality” that the media is so fond of touting, has not materialized for the working class. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Pulse Survey, taken between April 27 and May 9, 2022, indicates that nearly 138M people had difficulty paying their household expenses; more than 31M people had lost employment or received no wages; and almost 74M people had, either sometimes or often, not enough to eat.44 In June 2022, there was an 8.6% year-over-year increase in CPI, the highest rate of inflation in 40 years.45

More significantly, while GDP, to a degree, can indicate the health of an economy, it is a pathological way of thinking to worship GDP growth as the ultimate goal of the country. When adverse events (e.g., widespread natural disasters, wars, pandemics, etc.) occur, commodity prices rise abnormally and this is also counted as GDP growth. Under the GDP Supremacy mindset, it is not optimal to reduce social activities for a short period of time to control the spread of the epidemic; rather, it is optimal to let the virus spread and go on with business and life as usual. The spread of the virus will instead increase medical and pharmaceutical consumption, thus increasing GDP. This is key to why the U.S. government chose to “coexist with the virus,” and the pharmaceutical and testing companies received huge subsidies thanks to the long-lasting epidemic.

The average price of a PCR test in America is $130 ($185 without health insurance),46 which has allowed hundreds of billions of dollars to flow to the companies involved, while at the same time being an argument for the infeasibility of mass testing and a zero-COVID strategy. In comparison, China has reduced the price of a PCR test to RMB3.5 (about $0.52), and the country spent RMB21.6 billion in April 2022 for normalized mass PCR testing, about 0.2% of GDP. This spending will be significantly reduced again after outbreaks are contained. This is a choice made to put people’s lives over short-term economic interests.

One hundred million Americans are currently in debt due to healthcare costs; one in seven people say that they have been denied access to a hospital or other medical facilities because of unpaid bills; and two in three people have stopped treatment because of the cost.47 The complete dominance of capitalist private property rights and the constant curtailment of public goods in the U.S. political system have given Big Pharma a staggering $10 billion increase in revenues, profits, and assets. Pfizer is on track to become a juggernaut with a $100 billion market cap by 2022, with sales of $53.9 billion just for its two major COVID-related drugs,48 and profit margins likely to reach more than 27%.49

The hypocrisy and degradation of the U.S. ruling class

U.S. politicians used outright lies to deceive their citizens, persuading workers that COVID-19 was not dangerous and they could return to work (and make money for the capitalists), when scientific facts relentlessly shattered the illusion of “coexistence with the virus” and the death toll remained high, proving that herd immunity was unachievable, at least in the short term. In March 2020, Trump claimed that warm weather and sunshine would kill the virus. And in April, the United States experienced its first rise in COVID mortality, with more than 2,000 deaths per day and nearly 100,000 deaths in two months. After receiving the best possible hospital care after being infected with COVID in October 2020, Trump made a full recovery and immediately tweeted “Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life.” In December, the United States saw a second spike in deaths from the pandemic, with over 240,000 deaths in three months.50 In May 2021, Biden called on those who had been vaccinated not to wear masks because “vaccination protects you from COVID”. During the Omicron outbreak in January 2022, the country’s daily death toll rose to 2,258, breaking the previous record set in February 2021.51 In late April, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor, said that America was already out of the COVID pandemic phase, when the country’s death toll had exceeded 1 million. Less than two months later, he was diagnosed with COVID.

The anti-vaccine and anti-mask movements in the United States have been driven by the depraved lies of government leaders (first Trump and then Biden) concerning COVID. The “rugged individualism” that has been pushed by the U.S. ruling class since the founding of the country is one of the ideological foundations upon which these movements are built. The myth of “pulling yourself up by your own bootstraps” which hides capitalist exploitation, is part of the foundation of the illusory “American Dream”. This narrative portrays evil capitalist slavery and the genocide of Native Americans by “brave pioneers” as the epitome of this “rugged individualism”, one of the pillars of the American Supremacy and Exceptionalism ideas, rather than despicable acts of greed and selfishness. Therefore, it is not surprising that a sizable proportion of the U.S. population objects to the idea of wearing masks or receiving vaccinations to prevent the spread of deadly viruses.

Today, U.S. capitalism, despite its enormous wealth, pollutes the air, poisons the water, murders black people, enforces religious homogenization in schools, burns books, commits mass murder of schoolchildren, and invades and dominates other countries, all under the guise of “freedom”. A customer at a grocery store in an LA suburb threw down her shopping basket and hurled insults at the staff who advised her to wear a mask. At a bagel shop in New York City, a woman walked up to another customer and deliberately coughed in the latter’s face. At a large department store in Flint, Michigan, a security guard was shot dead, just because he told a customer that her child needed to wear a mask inside the store. And who can forget Senator Rand Paul (a Republican from Kentucky) who wandered the Senate chamber and Senators’ gym without a mask the whole time he was waiting for his COVID test result, which turned out to be positive.

In August 2021, while 26,000 children in Florida were infected with COVID-19 in a single week, the state government issued an executive order banning schools from enforcing a student mask mandate. Arizona, Utah, Texas, and eight other states with Republican governors have also banned the mandatory wearing of masks in schools. Some states have even banned mandatory mask wearing in state-run organizations, and even in some private industries. Fourteen states have banned vaccination mandates. In other words, the rights of the individuals far outweigh those of the collective or the society.

The COVID pandemic has clearly demonstrated the moral decay of the U.S. ruling class who, unfortunately, has won the support of a sizable portion of the lower, middle, and working classes. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick once said,52 “No one reached out to me and said, as a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren? And if that’s the exchange, I’m all in”. Of course, Patrick is not the average working-class senior citizen who must ultimately pay with his life. Since the lieutenant governor has access to the best medical care due to his U.S.$25 million in cash holdings, Patrick recovered from his COVID infection after only a week of minor ailments. What type of society would be willing to sacrifice its senior citizens for wealth and power? A society whose time has come and should be long gone.

U.S. politicians and media outlets always criticize other countries for violating “human rights”. The most fundamental human right, however, is the right to live. The most compelling evidence for the fact that the U.S. government has no respect for human rights is the more than one million people living in the United States who have died of COVID-19. They are simply promoting false human rights–such as having a particular form of government, or access to Facebook–instead of the fundamental rights that humans require, like survival, food, healthcare, and education. As Dr. Paul Farmer, a public health expert who passed away in Rwanda in February, once argued, “Medicine should be viewed as social justice work in a world that is so sick and so riven by inequalities”. The extreme morbidity and inequalities in the United States are reflected in the cruel reality inflicted by the COVID pandemic in the country.

Socialist benevolent policy in China

In stark contrast to the situation in the United States, China has a tried-and-true “dynamic zero-COVID” policy to fight the disease. There is no perfect solution to an emerging pandemic, and each approach has its strengths and weaknesses. A pandemic prevention strategy must first be evaluated by whom it serves. COVID-19 has caused only 4 deaths per million in China (compared to 3,108 in the United States) as of June 27, 2022 53 notably proving that its policy prioritizes the lives of its citizens, especially the poor.

It takes a high level of scientific understanding of the rules governing virus transmission, a thorough comprehension of the limitations of predictive models, advanced statistical knowledge, the awareness of national conditions, the ability to assess prevention experiences, and to modify plans in real time to achieve such amazing results in the fight against complex mutated viruses. Mao Zedong eloquently described the dialectical relationship between the “great benevolent policy” and the “small benevolent policy”: the great benevolent policy must not be hindered by the concern for the small benevolent policy.54 Given that SARS-type viruses (COVID-19 and MERS are on this spectrum) can cause a significant number of fatalities, the dynamic zero-COVID policy can be described as a great benevolent policy.

A dynamic zero-COVID policy can only be successful if the people understand and respect science, give up individualistic thinking, and are prepared to make short-term sacrifices for the long-term benefit of themselves and others. It requires the people to have faith in their leaders and to use deliberate self-criticism as a way to grow and succeed. According to data from several research institutions, more than 90% of the Chinese people trust their government.5556 The fact that the Chinese people are far-sighted, have the capacity to sympathize with others in their pains and difficulties, and can take unselfish action, is the sign of an advanced civilization.

Science plays quite different roles under capitalist and socialist systems. The United States has proven to the rest of the world that, in a capitalist society, science is used to maximize profits, develop inconceivable levels and types of offensive nuclear and other military weapons, and spy on the communications and social media of most of the world’s population. For example, information from every Brazilian’s email and social media account is stored in enormous data centers in locations like Bluffdale, Utah, among other places.57 However, science is not being used to address the medical needs of poor patients or to help develop effective pandemic prevention strategies at the grassroots level.

Large monopolies purposefully impede the advancement of science as a defense mechanism to maintain their monopoly. Science is vilified and people are told lies, such as “global warming is fiction,” when the truth stands in the way of profits. To this day, 30% of Americans continue to reject the idea that human activity is the primary cause of global warming.58

In socialist China, science is respected, fostered, and most importantly, recognized as a servant in promoting the demands of the people and society, something that is reflected in the pandemic in many ways. One small illustration of how science serves the people is the establishment of a dynamic, nationwide network of digital health code platforms and the placement of small, mobile PCR testing kiosks in major cities, outfitted to protect medical personnel and make testing more convenient and faster.

Foreigners often fail to understand the details of how China completes these challenging duties. They regularly receive disinformation about the so-called  “authoritarian government of China” from the Western media. They overlook the fact that President Xi’s reaffirmation of the mass line has revitalized 4 million grassroots Party organizations over the past ten years. These grassroots party organizations operate at the bottom of society, in every residential community. The Communist Party of China (CPC) has always attached great importance to improving the ideological and organizational capabilities of its cadres, increasing the connection between cadres and the masses, and creating effective communication channels. One of the greatest organizational feats of humankind is the system for organically managing and organizing food supply, quarantining and transporting the infected to hospitals, and regularly visiting the elderly on a scale of hundreds of millions of people.

The Western media has made a major claim that China’s dynamic zero-COVID policy has failed economically compared to the U.S. policy. However, economist John Ross noted that for the nine quarters between October 2019 and March 2022, China’s GDP increased by 11.5%, while U.S. GDP grew by only 2.8%, according to the global economic indicators’ website Trading Economics and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. China’s economic growth was over four times faster than the U.S. during the pandemic. This comparison includes China’s worst quarter (Q1 2020, -10.5% GDP growth), and places like Wuhan and Shanghai who were most affected by the pandemic.

There are numerous factors that influence GDP growth. Not all areas of China experienced the same effects in the second quarter. Even though China’s overall growth rate may be lower in the second quarter of 2022, it will not have a significant impact on the full ten-quarter period that covers the Pandemic. Goldman Sachs analysts predict that China’s GDP growth will remain above 4% in 2022 and rise to 5.3% in 2023, despite the impact of the outbreaks in the second quarter. China’s GDP growth is estimated to reach 4.2 percent in 2022 by other investment banks like Citi, JP Morgan, and Morgan Stanley.59 By Western logic, it must be concluded that the U.S. policy of extreme tolerance for high mortality rates is the real destroyer of GDP growth.

Only nine new confirmed indigenous COVID cases were detected in the Chinese mainland as of June 20, 2022.60 This figure once again highlights the remarkable achievements of the CPC, the Chinese government, and the Chinese people in fighting against the pandemic.

Why is China smeared for its dynamic zero-COVID policy?

On April 12, Reuters reported that according to the Japanese investment bank Nomura, “as many as 45 cities in China are now implementing either full or partial lockdowns, making up 26.4% of the country’s population”.61 The original source of this data from Nomura could not be found. Then the Financial Times did a simple multiplication and claimed that “45 cities and 373mn people in China were under … lockdown”.62 First of all, this is an absurd number, not only because it has no source, but because, even if you add up the 45 most populous cities in China (the vast majority of which have not had any outbreaks so far this year), the total population is only 293 million.63 The Western media just made up the number of “373 million” based on unknown sources.

Moreover, the method of adding up the total population of cities that had some form of lockdown and claiming that all of them were under total lockdown is a clever and sinister manipulation of data. In most cities where outbreaks have occurred, the number of people actually under lockdown has been a small fraction of the total population and the duration of the lockdown has been relatively short. In Sichuan Province’s Guang’an City, which suffered an Omicron spillover from the outbreaks in Shanghai, for example, a lockdown took place in Linshui County, which only accounts for 21.7% of the city’s population, and lasted just 14 days. Data purportedly released by Nomura imply that the entire populations of these cities were under lockdown in the second quarter of 2022, clearly a huge deviation from the facts.

In fact, the Chinese government continues to learn and adjust its approaches when carrying out the zero-COVID policy. Even when a mega-city, like Beijing, was subjected to another round of strict control because of some pub’s non-compliance with the regulations, the outbreak was contained in less than 10 days, with only about 170 locations (most of which were single buildings) actually locked down. It was estimated that the total number of people under lockdown was no more than 200,000 (less than 1% of Beijing’s resident population). Most people throughout Beijing were still able to carry on with their work and life as normal. For a few weeks, gyms and restaurants were closed in some areas, but supermarkets and takeaway restaurants still secured food supplies. People are able to walk outdoors wearing masks. The Western media misrepresented all of this as “authoritarian lockdowns”.

Despite the obvious falsification and exaggeration of such figures, the Western media have accepted them with great satisfaction. Bloomberg,64 CNN,65 and Kyodo 66 all scrambled to quote the “373 million” figure, and it became “nearly 400 million” in the New York Times.67 When Quartz commented on China’s economy in May, their statement that “nearly 400 million people are under COVID lockdown in China” was used as if it was a fact that required no discussion.68 What followed was “People’s freedom of movement is being restricted in China” (even though American schoolchildren have lost almost three times as many class hours as in China); “China’s economy will be destroyed by lockdowns” (even though China’s economy has grown four times faster than the U.S. economy since 2020, and several U.S. investment banks predict that China’s economy will still grow faster than the U.S. economy), and a host of other lies.

This is a premeditated propaganda war against China’s dynamic zero-COVID policy, designed to discredit China’s socialist achievements in public health. These lies have been widely disseminated in the English-language media and social networks to make billions of people forget that America is so bad at controlling COVID-19 and think that the dynamic zero-COVID policy is wrong. This is cultural hegemony in Antonio Gramsci’s sense: through the manipulation of perceptions and interpretations, the U.S. ruling elite intends to perpetuate its dominance over the world.

Socialist alternatives for public health

The SARS pandemic of 2003 revealed a new trend in public health: as globalization deepens, the global pandemics of infectious diseases are bound to occur more and more frequently. The U.S. performance in the COVID pandemic has proven that a capitalist system that only cares about short-term economic interests and disregards people’s lives and health cannot cope with such a disaster as the outbreak of a pandemic. It sacrifices lives and loses economic development, and only a small group of the bourgeois elite benefit from it. The socialist system represented by China, on the other hand, points to a viable path for how humanity can respond to public health disasters in the future. Nearly-free, normalized universal testing, combined with the dynamic zero-COVID policy of early detection, reporting, isolation, and treatment, is not only effective for the prevention and control of COVID-19, but also provides a solution for the prevention and control of any new dangerous viruses that could emerge in the future.

Both the effective control of new pandemics at home and the rapid delivery of low-cost vaccines to the world’s poorest countries, has proven that Chinese socialism is advancing humanity’s ability to protect itself from future disasters. Over one million more lives lost in the United States thus far from COVID than in China, despite a U.S. population only a quarter the size of China’s, and a mortality rate hundreds-of-times greater in the former as compared with the latter, provide a graphic and sharp contrast, directly challenging the big lie of the “superiority of the capitalist system”. For Washington, which relies on the capitalist system to reap monstrous global rewards, this is a challenge that shakes its very foundations. Therefore, it launched a public opinion war against China’s anti-COVID policy, hiding the reality of its domestic failure to fight the virus, hoping to deceive the Chinese about the global anti-COVID situation, and even spark a “color revolution” in China against the government’s policy.

Although not all countries are able to implement an effective dynamic zero-COVID policy like China due to various objective constraints, China’s experience has shown the world that, in the face of a pandemic, especially when the virus is not fully understood in early stages, “herd immunity” or “coexistence with the virus” can neither be the best nor the only option. Developing countries can also do better than Western developed countries, such as the United States, as long as the people’s basic rights are prioritized over the short-term interests of capital.

Notes:

1.↩ www.worldometers.info

2.↩ ourworldindata.org

3.↩ www.forbes.com

4.↩ www.thelancet.com

5.↩ www.bloomberg.com

6.↩ statisticstimes.com

7.↩ www.china.org.cn

8.↩ www.medrxiv.org

9.↩ www.healthcaredive.com

10.↩ ourworldindata.org

11.↩ www.cdc.gov

12.↩ Lassa fever:  https://www.who.int. Mumps encephalitis: Heymann DL, ed. (2008). Control of Communicable Diseases Manual (19th ed.). p431. Washington, D.C.: American Public Health Association. ISBN 978-0-87553-189-2. Smallpox, Variola minor: USAMRIID (2011). USAMRIID’s Medical Management of Biological Casualties Handbook (7th ed.). p87-88. U.S. Government Printing Office. ISBN 9780160900150. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-09. Retrieved 2012-08-01.

13.↩ www.npr.org

14.↩ www.smithsonianmag.com

15.↩ www.webmd.com

16.↩ www.spiegel.de

17.↩ www.ft.com

18.↩ www.washingtonpost.com

19.↩ abcnews.go.com

20.↩ www.nejm.org

21.↩ www.thelancet.com

22.↩ www.nature.com

23.↩ www.bbc.com

24.↩ www.cdc.gov

25.↩ www.youtube.com

26.↩ people.com

27.↩ www.nature.com

28.↩ www.nytimes.com

29.↩ www.poorpeoplescampaign.org

30.↩ inequality.org

31.↩ equitablegrowth.org

32.↩ www.advisorperspectives.com

33.↩ hwww.seattletimes.com

34.↩ www.census.gov

35.↩ jamanetwork.com

36.↩ en.unesco.org

37.↩  www.ed.gov

38.↩ www.forbes.com

39.↩ www.unicef.org

40.↩ www.mckinsey.com

41.↩ edition.cnn.com

42.↩ edition.cnn.com

43.↩ www.imf.org

44.↩ www.census.gov

45.↩ www.theguardian.com

46.↩ www.consumerreports.org

47.↩ www.commondreams.org

48.↩ www.fiercepharma.com

49.↩ finance.yahoo.com

50.↩ covidtracking.com

51.↩ edition.cnn.com

52.↩ www.washingtonpost.com

53.↩ www.worldometers.info

54.↩ www.marxists.org

55.↩ news.harvard.edu

56.↩ www.edelman.com

57.↩ www.theguardian.com

58.↩ www.tucsonsentinel.com

59.↩ www.cnbc.com

60.↩ www.chinadaily.com.cn

61.↩ www.reuters.com

62.↩ www.ft.com

63.↩worldpopulationreview.com

64.↩ www.bloomberg.com

65.↩ edition.cnn.com

66.↩ english.kyodonews.net

67.↩ www.nytimes.com

68.↩ qz.com

附：中文版

【文/觀察者網專欄作者 黛博拉·韋內齊亞爾】

美國和它的西方盟友總想指導中國應該如何管控新冠疫情，在上海全城封控後美國媒體似乎更有了批評中國抗疫政策的理由。然而這是件很諷刺的事：假如中國的抗疫工作做得像美國那麼“好”，本應有3.8億中國人感染、446萬人死亡。實際上中國大陸地區只有5226人死於新冠。考慮到中國是一個發展中國家，人均醫療資源遠不如美國，這一抗疫成績是令人驚歎的。美國每10萬人ICU牀位數為34.7，而中國僅為3.6，相差幾乎十倍。

如果中國聽從《金融時報》和西方國家目前的建議，放棄動態清零策略，那將造成數百萬中國人死亡——對於可能死亡人數的估計，不同的模型相差70%之多，這是因為這些估計所基於的模型都包含許多假設。即使是公佈的最低預測死亡數字（該模型中包含了大量未經證實的假設）也超過160萬人，並且該模型沒有考慮未來新冠變體造成的死亡。

中國嚴肅對待人的生命。儘管人均收入只有美國的17.3%，但據一份尚未正式發佈的研究數據顯示，美國人的預期壽命在2020至2021年間下降了2.26年，中國人的平均壽命預期（77.9年）已經超過了美國（76.6年）。美國媒體鼓吹中國放棄動態清零的抗疫策略，這等於是在鼓吹大規模種族主義謀殺。也許地球上最暴力的國家發出這樣的聲音並不令人驚訝。

讓我們客觀一點：美國是全世界控制疫情做得最差的國家之一。新冠不僅奪走了超過100萬美國人的生命，而且已經並仍在繼續給美國社會和經濟造成巨大的破壞。

當地時間5月4日，美國新冠死亡病例突破100萬例，美媒比約翰斯·霍普金斯大學更早公佈了這一數字

本文全面研究了美國抗疫政策的影響以及西方媒體對其的評價。可以得出三個主要結論。

**首先，新冠對美國社會的實際損害被大大低估了。**從歷史上看，大流行病使資本主義社會預先存在的結構性斷裂被呈現並放大。疫情已經造成了超過一百萬人死亡，而且感染率仍然居高不下，新冠治癒後的長期症狀持續損害人民健康，少數族裔和窮人受害尤為嚴重。社會運作被嚴重破壞，勞工階級家庭承擔了最沉重的代價。本已衰敗的衞生系統因設施的過度緊張而受到嚴重打擊。全美國65%的護士在過去一年中曾受到口頭或身體上的攻擊，1/3的護士聲稱將在今年年底前辭職。與此同時，億萬富翁和大企業卻在疫情期間獲得巨大的經濟利益。自私自利、個人主義、種族仇恨在美國社會蔓延。

總之，美國精英階層的無情行為揭示了美國對工人階級的病態階級暴力。馬克思科學地指出，資本主義積累過程本身不斷創造出可拋棄的“多餘”人口。在美國，資本找到了卑鄙但合法的方式來“拋棄”這些剩餘人口，疾病大流行是其中的方式之一。

**第二，中國的社會主義仁政、科學管理和從這次流行病中學習的能力、以及中國人民的紀律和犧牲精神，在保護人民的生命和為未來做準備方面顯示了令人難以置信的結果。**中國作為一箇中等收入國家，擁有的資源使其能夠採取複雜的步驟來保護人民的生命。但令G7發達國家尷尬的是，中國剛剛研發出疫苗，就迅速將其生產的大部分疫苗提供給世界上最貧窮的人。這是一種國際主義行為。與之形成明顯對比的，美國及其保護下的私營製藥商卻拒絕將治療藥物帕克斯洛維德（Paxlovid）和疫苗迅速廉價地提供給其他國家。

**第三，疫情迫使美國精英以愈發激烈且惡毒的方式開展意識形態鬥爭。**他們藉助在媒體等意識形態領域的霸權地位，掩蓋自己抗疫失敗的現實，並極力渲染對中國抗疫政策和成效的歪曲和謊言。

美國政府的無能導致百萬人死亡

當新冠疫情還未蔓延到美國時，美國媒體和政客稱它是“瘟疫”。兩年後，當新冠已經在美國感染超過8400萬人、死亡超過100萬人，他們改口稱新冠的危害——至少是經過若干次變異之後——跟季節性流感相當，並因此鼓吹“與新冠共存”的策略。新冠在全球的病例致死率約1.61%，在美國致死率為1.2%。在美國，2021年約46萬人死於新冠，而2019年死於流感的人數僅有2萬多，2021年更少。

從全球數據來看，新冠的致死率比拉沙出血熱（約1%）、腮腺炎腦炎（約1%）或是小天花（variola minor）（約1%）還高。“與腮腺炎共存”或者“與小天花共存”在發達工業國家是不可想象的，因腮腺炎導致腦發炎的兒童會被隔離治療，小天花則早在1977年已被根除。然而美國的媒體和政客卻在勸説人民與致死率更高的新冠共存。

有一種有意或無意的信念，認為傳染病總會隨着變異逐漸降低致死性，最終變成温和的常見疾病。儘管長期來説，傳染病通常朝着温和的方向演化，但這未必會在短期內體現。免疫學家告訴我們，病毒的進化軌跡取決於若干因素的複雜相互作用，這些因素形成了我們的免疫系統對病毒進化的反應。在病毒有多個宿主的情況下，這種預測變得更加困難。

阿爾法（Alpha）變體的致死性比原始病毒高40%。德爾塔（Delta）引發重症的幾率比阿爾法變體高了一倍，統計上相對較低的死亡率很可能是大面積疫苗接種的效果，而非病毒致死性下降。奧密克戎（Omicron）變體雖然致死性略低（0.9%），但傳染性更強，在美國造成的死亡人數已超過Delta變體。誰也無法保證新冠的下一個變體就會迅速降低致死性——而那可能導致數萬、數十萬人喪生。德國著名病毒學家克里斯蒂安·德羅斯頓（Christian Drosten）最近承認，他自己在大流行第一年的樂觀估計是錯誤的。他還與一個為抗疫而組成的政府委員會保持距離。賭2019年新型冠狀病毒（SARS-Cov-2）的毒性會隨着時間的推移而降低，這不是一個負責任的公共衞生措施。

《金融時報》被迫承認，歐洲現在面臨着奧密克戎BA.5變體帶來的新入院人數激增。他們進一步承認，缺乏檢測、放棄控制疫情、已經三次接種疫苗的人再感染率高，這些因素可能導致未來更高的死亡率。

羣體免疫的效果仍有待觀察。特朗普擔任總統時支持白宮高級醫學顧問斯科特·阿特拉斯的觀點，認為只要足夠多的人接種疫苗（或感染新冠），病毒就會無處可傳播而自然消亡。出於同樣的原因，拜登也重點關注疫苗接種，認為只要疫苗接種率達到70%以上，就能全面放棄口罩並開放各種社會活動。但歷史上有效的羣體免疫（例如麻疹）有三個必要條件：穩定不變異的病毒，非常有效的疫苗，以及高接種率。而這三點在新冠疫情初期都無法確認。

在兩年多時間裏，新冠已經變異出了至少6種主要變體，對德爾塔變體有效的疫苗對奧密克戎的效果變得有限，且疫苗的效力在大約半年後會降低20~30個百分點。也沒有任何證據表明感染過的病人能自動免疫（像天花或腮腺炎那樣），自奧密克戎變體被發現以來，再次感染冠狀病毒的人數一直在急劇上升。從一開始，中國中央衞生官員就保持了正確的科學態度，堅持在沒有充分的證據之前絕不輕易妥協。

儘管原因尚不明確，但已有大量證據顯示，即便在治癒後，新冠仍會造成各種長期的症狀，包括極度疲倦、呼吸急促、胸痛或胸悶、記憶力和注意力降低、關節疼痛等。曾因新冠住院的患者中，30%在6個月後仍受困於長期症狀，一些患者的症狀長達兩年以上。所有感染的患者中，大約1/5出現了長期症狀——全美國接近1700萬人。

英國學者夏仁巍（Ravi Veriah Jacques）在痊癒後14個月，仍因為長期症狀每天不得不卧牀13-16個小時。美國一位註冊營養師、29歲的長跑愛好者卡蒂·巴伯（Catie Barber）在痊癒後5個月因長期症狀仍無法行走，只能坐在輪椅上，並差點被新冠引發的心臟疾病奪去生命。在感染前接種疫苗只能在疾病的急性期提供部分保護，對長期症狀的影響很有限。對於需要依賴工資謀生的勞工階級而言，這些長期症狀會進一步損害他們的勞動能力和收入水平。

1/5的成年新冠患者出現了長期症狀

所有這些事實提出了一個問題：為什麼全世界最強大、資源最豐富的國家以這種方式應對一場災難性的傳染病大暴發，使其國家的公民遭受如此深重的苦難？2020年元旦前後，中國疾病控制中心的官員致電美國疾病預防控制中心主任羅伯特·雷德菲爾德博士，警告他新冠病毒的危險性——幾天前中國醫生剛剛識別出這種新型病毒。令人難以置信的是，美國媒體卻聲稱中國隱瞞信息。實際上，是美國政府官員向美國政府內部的其他機構、向美國人民隱瞞了信息。他們的無能和對信息的隱瞞使美國浪費了制定應對計劃的寶貴時間。

夏仁巍通過新聞和社交媒體呼籲重視“新冠長期症狀”的危害

新冠疫情中的階級不平等

特朗普的貿易顧問彼得·納瓦羅在2020年1月29日預測新冠大流行會造成50萬人死亡和數萬億美元經濟損失。然而美國政府仍然放任疫情發展，一個重要的原因是，掌控這個國家的精英羣體在疫情中遭受的損失很少。

過去兩年中，有12個美國的億萬富翁過世，其中沒有一個死於新冠。富裕的美國資產階級擁有更大的人均居住面積和更良好的社區基礎設施，不需要在人員密集的工廠或辦公室打卡上班，並且享受昂貴而優越的醫療服務。其結果是在疫情造成大量死亡的兩個階段（2020年底至2021年初，2021年8月至11月），居住在高收入郡縣的居民因新冠致死的幾率還不到低收入郡縣的20%。當富裕的美國人説他們身邊沒有誰因為新冠喪生，那大概率是真的。

富人甚至能從疫情大流行中獲益。2020年3月，美聯儲啓動了無上限量化寬鬆政策，截至年底其資產負債表規模擴張了5.2萬億美元。特朗普和拜登分別簽署了2.2萬億和1.9萬億美元的經濟救助計劃。這些增發的貨幣很快讓美國股市回到了歷史高點，從而讓擁有股票的富人變得更富有。到2021年10月，美國億萬富翁的財富總量達到了5萬億美元，相比2021年3月增長了70%，其中排名前五的富豪（伊隆·馬斯克、傑夫·貝索斯、比爾·蓋茨、拉里·艾利森、拉里·佩奇）的財富增長了118%。所以2020年4月底疫情正在造成第一個死亡高峯時馬斯克在推特上高喊“把人們的自由還給他們”也就不足為奇，畢竟工人在家封控的每一天都意味着他累積財富的速度被減慢了一點點——馬斯克在疫情期間財富增長了7倍，成為世界首富。

億萬富翁的財富總量在疫情期間大幅增長

與常見的印象不同，過去幾十年來，勞工階級從美國的經濟增長中獲益甚少。自1980年以來，美國最富有的10%人口占據了所有經濟增長的一半以上，而收入低於中位數的勞工階級只獲得了經濟增長的10%。在過去三十年的三次經濟增長期中，收入前10%的人每次都獲得了所有收入增長的一半左右。在2000年到2020年的二十年間，收入低於中位數的家庭收入幾乎沒有增長。

勞工階級在美國的政治生態中是沉默的羣體，雖然特朗普（和他的首席戰略師斯蒂芬·班農）喜歡自吹“白人工人階級”對他的支持，實際上被他的法西斯政策動員起來的是種族主義情緒嚴重的極右翼下中產階級——大多是白人，大多來自小城市或農村，從事小生意或專業工作，約佔全國人口1/4。他們的經濟狀況優於勞工階級（雖然也有下滑的趨勢），而且經常是勞工階級的僱主。

收入低於中位數的50%家庭收入三十年來幾乎沒有增長

在未經證明對當前階段新冠有效的“羣體免疫”政策指導下，美國在短時間封控之後很快放鬆了對疫情的管控。企業主強烈要求解除一切管控措施，因為他們需要員工回到工作崗位恢復生產和經營，代價則由勞工階級承擔。相比社會和經濟地位較高的人羣，勞工階級因新冠致死的幾率高出4倍，但由於缺乏積蓄和債務壓力，他們不得不回到工作崗位。

在年收入低於3.5萬美元的家庭中，57.3%在疫情期間遭遇了失業或收入下降，60%家庭難以支付日常開支；47%的人拖欠了住房付款，700萬人擔心在兩個月內被驅逐或取消抵押貸款；25%的人（近1100萬人）遭遇食物困難。為了維持基本生活，勞工階級不得不冒着感染新冠致死或遭受長期症狀折磨的風險復工，這就是馬斯克所謂的“自由”。

美國低收入家庭為生存基本需求掙扎

儘管以“個人自由”“恢復社會正常運轉”的名義放棄了絕大多數有效的疫情防控手段，實際上資產階級精英們關心的只是讓給他們賺錢的生意運轉起來。事實上，儘管美國政府不願執行封控措施，社會活動仍然遭受了嚴重破壞，在長達兩年多之後仍然沒有回到疫情前狀態的跡象。

美國媒體迫不及待地宣佈，在放棄對新冠病毒的控制之後，美國經濟已經回到了正常——據CNN的“回到正常指數”稱，當前美國經濟已經恢復到疫情前（2020年3月）93%的水平。道瓊斯指數和標普500指數在2021年底創下歷史新高，不過隨後即大幅下跌。2022年1月至4月，標普500指數下跌超過13%，是1939年以來最差的年初4個月表現。而且股市並不能真實反映經濟狀況，即便有超大規模的經濟刺激計劃，2020和2021兩年間，美國真實GDP合計增長僅2.11%，伴隨着嚴重的通貨膨脹和物價上漲。

媒體鼓吹的“正常狀態”對工人階級來説並沒有實現。美國人口普查局在2022年4月27日至5月9日期間進行的調查表明，近1.38億人難以支付家庭開支，超過3100萬人失去工作或沒有收到工資，近7400萬人有時或經常吃不飽。2022年6月公佈的CPI指數同比上漲8.6%，是40年來物價上漲的最高速度。

以2019年第四季度為基準的真實GDP曲線，可見疫情後美國真實GDP增長緩慢

以2019年12月為基準的CPI曲線，可見疫情後美國物價上漲明顯

更重要的是，儘管GDP能一定程度上反映經濟運轉的健康程度，但將GDP的增長作為國家的終極目標來膜拜，這是一種病態的思維方式。在不利事件（例如大範圍自然災害、戰爭、全球疫情等）發生時，商品價格會異常上漲，而這也會被統計為GDP增長。在GDP至上的思維模式指導下，短時間減少社會活動控制疫情傳播不是最優選擇，放任病毒傳播、照常進行生產生活才是最優選擇——病毒的傳播反而會增加醫療和藥品消費，從而增加GDP。這是美國政府選擇“與病毒共存”的重要原因，製藥公司和檢測公司因為疫情的長期持續獲得了鉅額補貼。

在美國做一次核酸（PCR）檢測的平均價格是130美元（沒有醫療保險的情況下是185美元），這讓上千億美元流入了相關企業，同時也成為大範圍檢測並清零策略不可行的論據。作為對比，中國已經將核酸檢測價格降至人民幣3.5元（約合0.52美元），2022年4月全國因大範圍、常態化核酸檢測支出人民幣216億元——約佔GDP的0.2%，而且在疫情得到控制後這筆開支還會大幅降低。這是將人民的生命放在短期經濟利益之上做出的選擇。

目前有一億美國人因醫療費用而負債累累，其中1/7的人説他們曾因為未支付賬單而被拒絕進入醫院或其他醫療機構，2/3的人因為費用而放棄了治療。在美國的政治制度中，資本主義私有產權佔據完全支配地位，公共品被不斷削減，給大型製藥公司的收入、利潤和資產帶來了百億級的驚人增長。輝瑞公司有望在2022年成為市值千億美元的巨無霸，僅其兩種主要的新冠相關藥物的銷售額就達539億美元，利潤率可能達到27%以上。

美國統治階級的虛偽與墮落

當科學事實無情地打破“與病毒共存”的幻想，死亡人數始終居高不下，證明羣體免疫至少在短時間內難以實現，美國的政客們就用赤裸裸的謊言來欺騙自己的國民，讓工人們相信新冠其實並不危險、可以回到工作崗位（為資本家們賺錢）。

2020年3月，特朗普説温暖的天氣和陽光將殺死病毒，4月美國迎來了第一個因疫情死亡的高峯，每日死亡人數超過2000，兩個月內死亡近10萬人。2020年10月，特朗普感染，經入院接受最頂級的治療後康復，隨即在推特發文號召“不要害怕新冠，不要讓它支配你的生活”，12月美國迎來了第二個因疫情死亡的高峯，三個月內死亡超過24萬人。2021年5月，拜登號召接種過疫苗的人不佩戴口罩，因為“接種疫苗可以保護你免受新冠的侵害”，隨後在2022年1月的奧密克戎流行中，全國每天死亡人數達到2258人，突破自2021年2月以來的最高水平。2022年4月，拜登的首席醫療顧問安東尼·福奇博士稱美國脱離了新冠大流行階段，此時全美死亡人數已超過100萬。

政府領導人（首先是特朗普，然後是拜登）關於新冠的墮落謊言，對美國反疫苗和反口罩運動推波助瀾。而這些運動賴以生存的意識形態基礎之一，是美國統治階級自建國以來一直推崇的“粗獷的個人主義”理念。虛假的“美國夢”建立在掩蓋資本主義剝削的“自強不息”神話之上。在這套敍事之下，罪惡的資本主義奴隸制度、以及“勇敢的拓荒者”對美洲原住民的種族滅絕，不再是貪婪和自私的卑鄙行為，而是這種“粗獷的個人主義”的縮影，是美國至上、美國特殊思想的支柱之一。因此，美國很大一部分人反感以戴口罩或接種疫苗的方式阻止致命病毒的傳播，這一點也不奇怪。

如今，美國社會打着“自由”的旗號污染空氣、在水中投毒、謀殺黑人、在學校中強制推行宗教同質化、焚燒書籍、對學童實施大規模謀殺、入侵併統治其他國家。

新冠大流行清楚地暴露了美國統治階級的道德墮落，不幸的是，他們得到了美國數量不小的中下階層和工人階級的支持。得克薩斯州副州長丹·帕特里克曾説：“沒人問我，作為一個老年公民，我是否願意用自己的生命為代價，換取為子孫後代保留美國人所熱愛的美國？如果要我做選擇，我的答案將是，我完全願意。”當然，帕特里克並不是那個真的需要付出生命代價的普通勞工階級老年公民。儘管帕特里克也感染了新冠，他只經歷了一週輕症就痊癒了，畢竟手握2500萬美元現金資產的副州長能獲得最好的醫療待遇。什麼樣的社會願意犧牲他們的老年公民來換取金錢和權力？這樣的社會，早就應該消亡。

美國的政客和媒體總是拿“人權”為由攻擊其他國家。然而生存權是最基本的人權。超過100萬因新冠死亡的美國公民，是最鮮明的證據，表明美國政府並不尊重人權。他們只是在宣揚虛假的人權——例如擁有某種特定形式的政府、或是能訪問臉書——而不是人類真正需要的基本權利，例如生存、温飽、醫療和教育。正如今年2月在盧旺達去世的公共衞生專家保羅·法默爾醫生（Dr. Paul Farmer）曾説過的：“在這個病態且充斥不平等的世界裏，醫學應當被視為社會公正的工作”（Medicine should be viewed as social justice work in a world that is so sick and so riven by inequities.）。

新冠疫情在美國造成的殘酷現實，恰好映照出這個國家極度的病態與不平等。

中國的社會主義仁政

與美國的現實形成鮮明對比的，是中國行之有效的“動態清零”抗疫政策。在一種新出現的流行病面前，沒有十全十美的應對措施，每種策略都有其優點和缺點。評價一種抗疫策略，首先要看它是為誰服務的。新冠在中國造成的每百萬人死亡人數僅為4人（美國則是3103人），這清楚地表明其政策將其公民、尤其是貧窮者的生命放在首位。

在與複雜的變異病毒的鬥爭中取得如此驚人的成績，需要對病毒傳播規律有高度的科學認識，對預測模型的侷限性有深刻的理解，需要有先進的統計學知識，瞭解各國的國情，擁有分析預防經驗的高超技術，並實時調整計劃。毛澤東曾精闢地闡述“大仁政”與“小仁政”的辯證關係：不可以因為照顧了小仁政妨礙了大仁政。鑑於非典類型病毒（新冠和中東呼吸綜合徵都在此譜系上）可能涉及大量的生命損失，動態清零政策可以説是大仁政。

動態清零政策的成功還需要人民理解和尊重科學，放棄個人主義思想，並願意為自己和他人的長期利益做出個人的短期犧牲。它要求人民相信其領導人會通過深思熟慮的自我批評來學習並改進、最終贏得勝利。多家研究機構的數據顯示，90%以上中國人信任其政府。中國人民有更長遠的眼光，能對別人的痛苦和困難感同身受，並無私地採取行動，這是先進文明的標誌。

科學在資本主義和社會主義制度下扮演着截然不同的角色。美國向世界證明，在資本的統治下，科學被用來為利潤最大化服務，被用來發展荒唐的進攻性核武器和軍事武器，被用來監視世界上大多數人的通信和社交媒體——每個巴西人的電子郵件和社交媒體賬户的數據都被儲存在猶他州布拉夫代爾（Bluffdale）等地的大規模數據中心。但由於沒有足夠高的利潤率，科學沒有被用來解決貧困患者的醫療需求，也沒有被用來幫助基層開發安全的抗疫措施。

大型壟斷企業有意限制科學進步的擴展，作為保護其壟斷地位的防禦機制。當事實阻礙了利潤，科學就會被妖魔化，人們就會被灌輸謊言，比如“氣候變暖是虛構的”。直到今天，30%的美國人仍然不相信全球變暖主要是由人類活動造成的。

在社會主義中國，科學得到尊重和發展，最重要的是被視為推動人民和社會需求的僕人——這一點在疫情中得到了多方面的體現。例如在全國實施動態的數字健康碼平台聯網，在主要城市都部署了可移動的小型核酸檢測亭，其中配備了保護醫療工作者的設備，使檢測更加便利快捷，這只是科學為人民服務的一個小例子。

外國人常常無法理解中國如何解決這些困難任務的細節。西方媒體每天給他們灌輸所謂“中國威權政府”的虛假信息。他們沒有看到，在過去的十年裏，隨着中方領導人習近平對羣眾路線的重申，400萬個基層黨組織得到了重振。這些基層黨組織在社會的最底層——每一個居民社區——開展活動。中國共產黨一直非常重視發展幹部的思想和組織能力，加強幹部與羣眾的聯繫，構建有效的溝通渠道。在數億人的規模上有機地管理和組織食品供應、隔離並護送感染者去醫院、定期探訪老人的系統，這是人類最偉大的組織成就之一。

西方媒體大肆宣稱：與美國的抗疫政策相比，中國的動態清零政策在經濟上失敗了。但根據全球經濟指標（Trading Economics）網站和美國經濟分析局的數據，經濟學家羅思義指出：從2019年10月到2022年3月的9個季度，中國的GDP增長了11.5%，而美國只增長了2.8%。在疫情期間，中國經濟的增長速度是美國的四倍多。這一時期的比較包括中國最糟糕的一個季度（2020年第一季度，GDP增長-10.5%），武漢和上海等地區受疫情的影響也包括在內。

影響GDP增長率的因素有很多。並非中國所有地區在第二季度都受到同樣的影響。即便中國2022年第二季度整體增長率可能降低，其影響放在整個疫情期間來看並不顯著。高盛的分析師預測，儘管第二季度受疫情影響，中國2022年的GDP增長將保持在4%以上，2023年將增加到5.3%。其他投資銀行，如花旗銀行、摩根大通和摩根士丹利預測中國2022年的GDP增長將超過4.2%。使用西方的邏輯，人們必須得出結論：美國對高死亡率的極端容忍政策才是真正的GDP增長破壞者。

就在本文截稿之前，2022年6月20日，中國大陸地區僅發現9例本土新增新冠確診病例。這個數字再一次彰顯了中國共產黨、中國政府和中國人民抗擊疫情取得的非凡成就。

為何抹黑中國“動態清零”抗疫策略？

4月12日，據路透社報道，日本投行野村國際稱“中國45個城市實施了完全或部分封鎖，佔全國人口26.4%”——筆者未能找到野村國際這項數據的原始出處。隨後《金融時報》做了一個簡單的乘法計算，聲稱“45個城市中的3.73億人被封鎖”。首先，這是一個荒謬的數字，不僅因為它沒有任何出處，而且即使把全中國人口最多的45個城市（其中絕大部分今年完全沒有疫情發生）加在一起，人口總數也只有2.93億。西方媒體只是基於未知的消息源憑空捏造了“3.73億”這個數字。

而且，將曾實施過某種形式封控的城市總人口相加、宣稱這些人都被封鎖，這種方法是巧妙而險惡的數據操弄。在大部分發生疫情的城市，實際遭遇封鎖的人數只是總人口的一小部分，封控時間也相對較短。以受上海疫情外溢影響暴發奧密克戎疫情的四川省廣安市為例，實施封控的鄰水縣人口只佔全市人口21.7%，封控時間僅為14天。而據稱由野村國際發佈的數據卻暗示這些城市的所有人口在2022年第二季度的疫情中都被封鎖，顯而易見這與事實偏離極大。

實際上，中國政府在“動態清零”的過程中不斷學習並調整其策略。即使北京這樣的超級大城市因為一家酒吧的違規營業造成又一輪嚴控，但在不到10天時間內疫情即得到控制，實際被封鎖的只有大約170個地點（其中大部分是單一樓棟），估計被封鎖的總人數不超過20萬人（不到北京常住人口1%）。整個北京市大部分人的生產生活仍能正常進行。有幾個星期，部分區域的健身房和餐館都關閉了，但超市和外賣仍然保障了食品供應。人們可以戴着口罩在户外行走。西方媒體將這些都錯誤地描述為“專制的封鎖”。

儘管是這樣明顯虛假誇大的數字，西方媒體仍然如獲至寶。彭博社、CNN、日本共同社爭先恐後地引用“3.73億”這個數字，同樣的數字到《紐約時報》那裏就成了“接近4億”。美國的石英財經網（Quartz）在5月評論中國經濟時，“近4億中國人因新冠被封鎖”就像是無需討論的事實一樣被使用。隨之而來的就是“中國人的行動自由被限制”（儘管美國學童損失的課時幾乎是中國的3倍）、“中國經濟將被封控摧毀”（儘管自2020年以來中國經濟增速是美國的4倍，且美國的多家投行預測中國經濟增速仍將高於美國）等一系列謊言。

這是一場有預謀的針對中國“動態清零”抗疫策略的宣傳戰，其目的就是要抹殺中國社會主義在公共衞生領域取得的成就。這些謊言在英文媒體和社交網絡裏被廣泛傳播，讓數十億人忘記了美國對疫情的防控是如此糟糕、以為“動態清零”是錯誤的策略。這正是安東尼奧·葛蘭西意義上的文化霸權：通過對認知和解釋的操縱，美國統治精英意在延續其對全世界的支配。

公共衞生的社會主義方案

2003年的非典大流行揭示了公共衞生領域一個新的趨勢：隨着全球化進程的深入，傳染病的全球性大流行也必定越來越頻繁地發生。美國在新冠疫情中的表現已經證明，只顧短期經濟利益、不顧人民生命健康的資本主義制度無法應對像流行病大暴發這樣的災難——它既犧牲了生命，又損失了經濟發展，只有少數資產階級精英從中獲益。而以中國為代表的社會主義制度為人類未來如何應對公共衞生災難指出了一條可行的路徑。幾乎免費的常態化全民檢測，結合早發現、早報告、早隔離、早治療的動態清零策略，不僅對於防疫有效，而且給防控任何未來出現的新型危險病毒提供了方案。

無論是在國內有效控制新的大流行病，還是迅速向世界上最貧窮的國家提供低成本的疫苗，都證明中國的社會主義正在推進人類保護自己免受未來災難的能力。上百萬條生命、相差數百倍的致死率，如此直觀而強烈的對比會直接挑戰“資本主義制度優越性”的彌天大謊。對於依賴資本主義制度收割全球的美國而言，這是動搖根本的挑戰。因此他們發起針對中國抗疫政策的輿論戰，掩蓋其國內抗疫失敗的現實，並寄望欺騙中國人對全球抗疫形勢的認知、甚至在中國引發反對政府抗疫政策的“顏色革命”。

儘管由於各種客觀條件的約束，並非所有國家都能像中國這樣實施有效的“動態清零”政策，但中國的經驗向世界證明：面對傳染病大流行，尤其在對於病毒瞭解並不充分的疫情早期階段，“羣體免疫”“與病毒共存”既不是最佳選擇、也不是唯一選擇。只要將人民的基本權利而非資本的短期利益放在第一位，發展中國家也完全可以做得比美國等西方發達國家更好。

（黛博拉·韋內齊亞爾是美國籍的記者和編輯，三大洲社會研究所的研究員。本文的英文版將於近期在國外媒體發表。）

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