Those Killed Indirectly by COVID-19

Today I saw a set of figures released by the International Labour Organization: the novel coronavirus has already put more than 1.2 billion people out of work worldwide, and the situation is still developing. In the period ahead, even more people will lose their jobs. Since people across the globe now live in a single interconnected supply chain, such massive unemployment will affect the great majority of people worldwide. Nearly everyone will face reduced income; no one can stay out of it, and some impoverished people may lose their income entirely.

The world economic situation is dire. We are in fact already in the era of the Great Depression, not merely about to enter it; the good days of public servants who still enjoy decent incomes will not last much longer.

This means that global life expectancy will plummet. I have witnessed the history of steadily rising human life expectancy, and now I am witnessing the history of its plummeting; the quality of human life will be far worse than before. For most people alive today, this is a crisis they have never experienced. It has been 75 years since the end of World War II; overall, human life after the war kept improving. But in 2020 this positive trend abruptly stopped, and we turned toward another reality.

People who would not have died before 2020 may now have to die prematurely, in 2020 and after. Even if medicines remain in ample supply, people without money for treatment still face only death. The Great Depression will also drive more people to suicide; some have already killed themselves because of it. Not long ago a beekeeper in Yunnan was an example, and I have also heard of several small-business owners taking their own lives; I am sure some psychologically fragile people have committed suicide without anyone even knowing.

The longer the COVID-19 epidemic lasts, the greater the risk of war. If the epidemic does not ease by this summer, global chaos may well be unavoidable by then.

Who will bear responsibility for this? I do not know, and I do not want to discuss it, but time will give everyone the answer. I need not debate the question; as the crisis deepens, more and more people will be affected and more and more will die, and no matter how cunning or high-handed someone is, they cannot escape being held to account. There may be many people around the world who must answer for this; in the chaos, people will pass judgment with the weapons in their hands.

Now many people are trying to muddy the water; once the water is muddy, no one will call them to account. So I hardly watch the news these days-propaganda news always has its hidden agenda and is full of lies. The louder people shout, the more fearful they are deep down; they want to cover their inner fear by shouting. All who gain illicit profit will face the fate of being called to account.

A professor at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and former head of global health at the U.S. Agency for International Development wrote an article arguing that, while flattening the curve for the elderly, we should let healthy people accelerate the buildup of herd immunity; keeping everyone at home merely delays the virus's return while causing economic collapse. Two virology professors at the University of Copenhagen argued likewise, holding that counting on a vaccine is unrealistic and that the only solution is herd immunity. This may be seen as a show of support for the herd-immunity idea floated by British scholars a while back.

These are the views of European and American scientists, and scholars who hold them have been denounced by many around the world. But the scientists who advance such views are weighing all the causes of death: some people may die directly of COVID-19, but far more will die of it indirectly. At present, the number of indirect COVID-19 deaths should already be more than three times the direct deaths, and as time goes on the indirect toll will grow.

The number of people who starve for lack of money for food, and the number of patients dying of other diseases for lack of medical resources, will far exceed the maximum death toll from COVID-19 running its natural course. Perhaps, I think, it is on this basis that some scientists advocate herd immunity. But to the public, such scientists look like cold-blooded murderers.

Even if food and medicine are plentiful, if people have no money to buy them, they will still starve and sicken to death. Lately, the case fatality rate among cancer patients worldwide has risen to unprecedented levels. As someone who has long worked with cancer patients, I have gradually grown numb to such deaths; in the past, a rising mortality rate would have saddened me greatly. But under present conditions I realize that the individual is utterly powerless to turn things around.

Likewise, patients with other major diseases are dying faster. No one knows this better than doctors, who deal most with those dying faster. As for those who starve to death, that has already begun in India and Africa; I believe, as the COVID-19 epidemic drags on, this phenomenon will become more common.

Even if the first wave eases this summer, humanity will still face the threat of a second wave returning in autumn and winter. So this disaster is profound; to emerge from the effects of COVID-19 within two years would already be good. There can be no V-shaped recovery worldwide; at best a U-shaped one, and we will linger at the bottom for a long time. There is no ideal outcome for the COVID-19 epidemic; humankind is forced to choose the relatively lesser of several extremely cruel outcomes.

COVID-19 may put more than 40% of the global workforce out of work; such dire conditions will kill many people through the secondary disasters of the epidemic and may cause systemic social collapse. The catastrophic consequences of a great plague take generations to erase. COVID-19's impact is perhaps no less than that of plague, because this is the first great plague in human history to sweep the globe rapidly.

A while back I was also talking about reflection, but now I am indifferent to it. Many people in this world will die in this crisis; perhaps we ourselves may not survive it. Then, after the crisis, let those who still live reflect. In so vast a disaster, there can be no absence of reflection and accountability; all humankind will not allow it, and history will not allow such a thing.