Collective action needed to beat coronavirus

"In China's fight against the COVID-19 outbreak, which part impresses you the most?" China's Xinhua News asked via Twitter on Feb 27.

If you ask me, it's the solidarity. Everyone was taking precautions and looking out for each other. Everyone wore face masks when they went out, and people did not go out often. "Don't leave your home!" most of my Chinese friends texted me. "Pay attention to health!"

Once, when I was running low on face masks, a friend delivered more to me.

Everyone was paying attention to winning the people’s fight. Doctors and nurses from across the country volunteered to go to the frontlines in Wuhan. Others, staying in their own hometowns, volunteered to join teams keeping watch over their local communities. Donations flooded into hospitals.

This is the kind of solidarity other countries must adopt, too, to defeat coronavirus. We have seen it has been effective in China, as the number of cases continues to decline.

Unfortunately, now, many countries in Europe and the United States have higher numbers of new cases than China and a higher caseload as a ratio of population. In the United States, the number of cases has already surpassed 3,300 as of March 15. And it will continue to increase if we do not act now. If Americans follow the model of China, they might still limit the spread.

First, Americans need to stop crowding bars and restaurants. Some young people in Manhattan and across the country harbor misconceptions about this virus that make them not care. They think because they are young they cannot catch it or will not become sick. In fact, the risk of dying from COVID-19 even for people aged 20-40 is 10 times higher than the risk of dying from influenza.

Second, even if individuals don't end up getting sick from coronavirus, they can still spread it. The virus takes an average of five days to manifest symptoms, and many cases of asymptomatic transmission have been observed.

This is a public health crisis, not an individual one. That is to say, regardless of how much risk one person is willing to take to drink (or how uninformed they are about the science), they are putting other people at risk by increasing the likelihood they will become infected with the virus and spread it to others.

One New York resident at a bar said, "I'm not worried because I'm not immunocompromised." That's a textbook example of lack of solidarity, and that's how the virus got out of hand in Italy and Spain, where hospitals are now so crowded even people who are facing unrelated diseases are not able to find beds.

One problem is from the start, America's leadership did not take the pandemic seriously enough.

Starting in January, US President Donald Trump said, "We have it totally under control," and that we shouldn't listen to media coverage about coronavirus because it is "the Democrats' new hoax.” He continued to compare COVID-19 to the flu, which spreads slower and does not pose as great of a health risk, into March. People listened to him—and to other media personalities who told the public not to worry—and had the false impression they were not at risk.

Now local leaders, including the governors of New York, California and Colorado, have started to take matters into their own hands, ordering restaurants and ski resorts to close down. If individuals will not choose to stay away from crowds, then the government (as in China) needs to take action.

China's successful response was a combination of individual decision and government action. Americans must take similar precautions, too, in order to save lives.

Mitchell Blatt is a columnist and a recent graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

The opinions expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of China Daily and China Daily website.