Finding Stability in the Chaos

Doctor zhou December 5, 2022

In Lianhe Zaobao's annual "Character of the Year" poll, the character receiving the most votes this year was "chaos" (luan). This character aptly captures the state of the whole world in 2022.

Since abandoning its zero-COVID policy on April 27 and choosing to coexist with the virus, Taiwan went through 222 days before finally, on December 5, 2022, reporting its lowest case count of those 222 days: 10,029 reported cases with 22 deaths.

During its plateau period Taiwan was losing one to two hundred people a day. After seven and a half months of coexistence, the numbers of both confirmed cases and deaths have at last fallen to a relatively low level. What will our future look like? I think Taiwan is probably the best reference. The population of the Chinese mainland is roughly sixty times that of Taiwan; multiplying Taiwan's figures by sixty gives us a rough picture of what lies ahead. These past seven-plus months in Taiwan have been anything but calm, and the economy and people's livelihood have been badly affected. So we cannot expect that, the moment we open up, life will immediately become good again; we still have a difficult stretch ahead, and we should be mentally prepared for it.

Pharmacies in Beijing have been opened up, and residents are no longer restricted from buying cold, fever, and diarrhea medications; I hear that many people are flocking to pharmacies to snap up drugs. Today many people asked me whether I had stockpiled medicines this time. I answered honestly that I did not join the rush. For one thing, my home has long kept a supply of common medications (this is my habit, predating the pandemic), so there was no need to rush; for another, to be frank I don't feel there is much point in hoarding medicines.

The medicines that relatively frail patients need to keep are quite individualized, because everyone's underlying disease is different. So I only advise them to keep a modest supply of fever reducers; what matters most is to stock up on a certain amount of the drugs that treat their underlying conditions, so that getting refills at the hospital is not inconvenient when a medical crunch hits. I believe internet medical services will catch up, and medicines can be delivered by courier—but when huge numbers are infected, couriers may not be available in sufficient numbers. Patients already in a critical state will be the most vulnerable group; for them, hoarding medicine is of little value, and what matters most is hospitalization and the professional care of medical staff.

For a family of three like ours in Beijing, it is hard to avoid infection, because after all the child and his mother still have to go back to school and work normally. If many people in the population are infected, campuses will become important transmission hubs, so it may be hard for them to escape. If we do get infected, I plan to deal with it mainly by sleeping and drinking lots of hot water; if the fever is severe and cannot be brought down by water, I'll use ice packs for physical cooling. My refrigerator has quite a few ice packs, which I've saved up from the freezer packs I receive with grocery shopping.

For ordinary people in reasonably good health like us, there is really nothing to panic about; we can get through it. Cancer patients whose condition is basically stable should also be all right; those with end-stage cancer may be at greater risk. Rest well, keep your emotions relaxed, wear your mask properly, and leave the rest to fate.

Someone asked me whether long COVID aftereffects exist. My answer is yes. The media always swings to extremes with public emotion: earlier they reported one-sidedly on how terrible infection and its aftereffects are, and now they have suddenly swung to the opposite extreme, reporting that infection is no big deal and the aftereffects may just be psychological, that there are no aftereffects at all. The words of such "medical experts" are unreliable; we cannot count on them to say anything serious or credible. Even my own child says that they talk sense one moment and nonsense the next, and that they have no credibility at all.

Many large studies from various countries now show that the various variants of COVID do indeed cause aftereffects, and Omicron is no exception. It is just that most aftereffects resolve on their own over time, though a subset of people are left with more troublesome, long-lasting effects. These data are published in serious medical journals and cannot be dismissed by anyone's offhand remarks.

A college classmate of mine in Australia has had lower stamina since being infected with Omicron. Although Omicron's fatality rate is low, because of its high transmissibility its death toll to date is in no way inferior to that of other variants. Even so, we have no choice; we must ultimately coexist with the virus on this planet, and society cannot stay locked down indefinitely.

If we care a great deal about our health and do not want to be infected, then by following the points I mentioned in my earlier article "Meeting Every Change with Constancy", there is still a good chance of dodging the virus and never being infected. In Europe and America, too, many health-conscious people have never been infected from start to finish, even though their societies long ago chose to coexist with the virus.

Some Chinese immigrants I know in the United States and Canada have not been infected once to date, even though many people around them have been infected many times. This shows that as long as an individual wants to avoid it, they can. There is no need to become anxious just because society has opened up. Eat well, sleep well, exercise moderately—the sky will not fall.

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