A “Pandemically-different” CNY

The blogger’s note: Below is the English version of my Chinese column article entitled 今年春节不“疫”样 published in Nanyang Siang Pau today (9^th February, 2021), google-translated and edited by me.    

The Chinese New Year (CNY) is another 3 days away. As the Covid-19 pandemic continues to loom, Chinese people around the globe are going to celebrate a “pandemically-different” spring festival this year. 

In China, the “Spring movement” for this most important traditional festival of the year begins from January 28 to March 8, 2021, total 40 days. In the past, Chinese people moved around in large numbers in order to return to their hometowns to celebrate the Lunar New Year and is known as "the largest human migration on Earth". However, in view of the current recurrence of the pandemic in many places of China, the authorities have urged the people “to celebrate the New Year wherever they are now" this year and the Spring movement is expected to be the most dwindled one in history.

In early April last year, there was an amusing rhetoric about the attitudes of various countries towards the pandemic in the internet as follows: "China -- Human life concerns the SKY (人命关天, i.e. lives matter); Sweden -- Life and death left to the SKY (生死由天, i.e.  to be decided by God; Italy -- Groaning to SKY high (叫苦连天); Britain -- Unable to return to the SKY (回力无天, i.e. powerless); France -- Oh my old SKY (我的老天, i.e. Oh my God); India -— The sea of bitterness has no bounds (苦海无边); the United States — Crossing the sea to hide from the SKY (过海瞒天, i.e. to practice deception); Japan — Unable to see the sunny SKY (不见晴天); South Korea — Cries of grief shake the SKY (哀声震天, i.e. wailing). Now only in China the rain has gone and the SKY is clear (雨过天晴, i.e. the sun shines again after the rain)!" 

At that time, I also had my thought on the scenario in our country as "the SKY is uncertain (未定之天)", and prayed that "the clouds would soon go away to enable us to see the SKY (云开见天)". Unfortunately, things didn't turn out the way as desired. The Covid infection confirmed cases in our country began with 100 plus to 200 at first, decreased to double digit or even single digit (from April to September last year), then returned to 100 odd cases, and deteriorated to thousand plus since November last year. It reached new high of 4 to 5 thousand cases in mid January this year and is still high now. How can our people not groan to sky high? 

As we all know, Wuhan, the city where the pandemic first broke out in China and the hardest hit area, was locked down on January 23 last year and it ended on April 8 of same year after enduring 76 days and was declared to have won the battle against the Coronavirus. But China is apparently not enjoying complete clear SKY now, otherwise this year’s Spring movement should be given the green light! 

Our government has recently extended the Movement Control Order 2.0 to the 18th of this month, that is covering the CNY on 12th until the 7th day of the lunar calendar (assuming it will not be further extended). Last week it announced certain controversial and confusing CNY Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), restricting family reunion dinners, mutual visits, temple worship, lion and dragon dances and other cultural activities, and revised last Sunday. The CNY celebrated by us Chinese this year is surely very different from the previous years!

Anyway, there is never shortage of creative works on the social media. For example, there is a picture showing a table of sumptuous food surrounded by computers, depicting an online family reunion dinner.  Another picture displays spring festival couplets on a household door: "Relatives and friends don’t come and go“ on one side,  and "Coronavirus not gone spring doesn’t come" on the other, and "I don't want to die" on top. In the middle of the door is the word “Get lost”.  What a joke it is!

With the current development of Covid vaccines and the vaccination around the world, it seems that the victory over the pandemic is promising. 

My timeless friend Dr. Lim Ju Boo (pic left) has unique insights. He believes that the only way to overcome the Covid pandemic is herd or shared immunity.   

Absolutely no artificially-designed vaccine of any kind can outperform our body’s natural vaccine that defends itself continuously as a living body that works like a flowing river. 

He pointed out that by now after over a year of constant exposure to this virus, most of us would have already got small doses of this virus intermittently and also have acquired some natural herd immunity passed on by attenuated or weakened virus from person to person. 

As we have seen so far, the Covid pandemic has accelerated exponentially, just like the multiplication of bacteria or cancer cells. 

But as more and more people are infected, more and more immunity will also be shared and passed on to the rest yet to be infected. Meanwhile, the recovery rate becomes more and more too until it exceeds the infection rate. As such, the pandemic curve will gradually flatten out and people share their immunity to preserve the human species. This is the biological law of natural selection! 

Dr. Lim stressed that the virus will respond accordingly by matching their continuously changing natural “vaccines” to match up the virus ongoing mutations trying to survive. This is a tit-for-tat biological scenario for the survival of the fittest as prescribed by Natural Selection in Evolution. 

It is recently reported that there are around 4000 Coronavirus variants in circulation across the world, resulting the ongoing vaccination not only exhausted, but its reliability, safety and efficacy are not without doubt. 

He expressed optimistically that as the virus begins to deteriorate after being challenged by our combined and multiple immunological defenses, the number of new infections will become less and less, and the rate of recovery from infected people will begin  to rise very swiftly until everyone recovers completely. But he also cautioned that the world may have to sacrifice one-third of the population first for the remaining to survive. This is the principle of "bottleneck genetic drift". How frightening it is! 

Come what may, let us keep calm and celebrate the coming CNY with an easy mind. 

May I wish everyone good health, peace and happiness in this Year of the Ox, and bullish luck!