After paying a huge human and economic price
South Korea reluctantly chose to lie flat
On April 15, South Korean Prime Minister Kim Fu-kyun announced that South Korea will completely cancel various social distancing restrictions from the 18th of this month, that is, to completely lift the policy of restricting the operation of public gathering places until 12:00 a.m., as well as the restrictions on private gatherings, large-scale activities, assemblies, and religious sites.
From the 25th of this month, the measures prohibiting eating and drinking in indoor public gathering places, including cinemas and indoor sports facilities, will also be completely lifted.
This means that South Korea's social distancing policy since its implementation on March 22, 2020, was officially announced after a lapse of 757 days.
On the same day, the South Korean government also announced the "Post-Omicron Response Plan", which mentioned that the level of infectious diseases in the new crown epidemic will be adjusted from Class A infectious diseases with the highest level of isolation obligations to Class B infectious diseases from the 25th of this month.
This means that the era of the new crown "pandemic" in South Korea is over, and the new crown pneumonia has been completely downgraded to "endemic".
However, from the data point of view, the epidemic in South Korea has not slowed down to a large extent.
At present, the cumulative number of confirmed cases in South Korea is 16,353,495, accounting for 31.2% of the total population of South Korea, nearly one-third, in such a situation, why does South Korea dare to lie flat?
01
Since March 2022, Omi Kerong has been raging in South Korea, and the previous increase in confirmed cases has been hundreds of thousands.
On April 18, according to the South Korean Central Epidemic Prevention Countermeasures Headquarters, as of 0:00 on the same day, there were 47,743 new confirmed cases of infection with the new coronavirus in South Korea, and 132 new deaths.
This is the number of new confirmed cases in a single day that has dropped to less than 50,000 after ten weeks.
From hundreds of thousands of new cases every day to tens of thousands of new cases today, south Korean epidemic prevention departments believe that the spread of this wave of Theomilon epidemic in South Korea has entered a downward momentum.
As of March 22, the one-shot vaccination rate of the new crown vaccine in South Korea has reached 86.8%, the proportion of complete vaccination is 85.9%, and the intensive vaccination rate is also 62.7%.
On the whole, the South Korean government believes that on the basis of the availability of special oral drugs, the strengthening of the vaccination rate of high-risk groups, the reduction of panic in the popularization of the virus, and the maintenance of the fatality rate slightly higher than that of the flu, the people can psychologically adapt to the life of "coexistence" with the virus in the future.
02
But in fact, South Korea's comprehensive cancellation of epidemic prevention and control policies is more due to helplessness.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, South Korea's healthcare system has been under significant pressure.
In the case of the continuous surge in new confirmed cases, the number of infections of patients and medical staff hospitalized for other diseases has increased significantly, many medical staff have been forced to isolate, a large number of normal diagnosis and treatment and surgery have been cancelled, and South Korea's medical system has gradually collapsed under the new crown epidemic.
In March this year, when the epidemic in South Korea was at its worst, there were many patients with the new coronavirus who died during home isolation in the Daegu area of South Korea. During this period, more than a thousand confirmed patients were forced to wait in isolation at home due to the shortage of hospital beds.
In the face of the collapse of South Korea's nationwide medical system, the "Post-Aumicron Response Plan" released by the South Korean government is also to ensure that the epidemic prevention and medical system remain normal for a long time.
It is reported that the "Post-Opmi-Kerong Response Plan" will mainly include specific plans for the return of the epidemic prevention and medical system to the daily system in the past two years or so due to the emergency state of the fight against the new crown epidemic.
After the implementation of the plan, the number of isolation wards in various medical structures will be gradually reduced, and the human resources invested in the management of isolation wards will be transferred to other places.
The number of life treatment centers receiving mild and asymptomatic patients will gradually decrease, and the number of infectious disease hospitals specializing in the treatment of severely ill patients will also be reduced in stages.
03
South Korea's comprehensive cancellation of epidemic prevention and control may also be due to the secondary disasters of the South Korean economic downturn caused by the new crown epidemic have already surpassed the Prevention and Control of Omicron itself.
On April 14, the bank of Korea's website published a resolution at a monetary policy meeting that stated that South Korea's annual economic growth rate would be lower than the 3% forecast in February.
In fact, since the COVID-19 pandemic, the gap between rich and poor in South Korea has been widening. On April 5, 2022, Shinhan Bank publicly released the "2022 Report on the Financial Life of Ordinary People". The report said that since the covid-19 pandemic, the income and asset gap between the South Korean people has increased, and household liabilities have soared.
The report divides household income into 1 to 5 levels (downstream 20% to upstream 20%), and through analysis, the income of the first-class, lowest-level households in South Korea in 2021 is 20,000 won less than in 2020. The income gap between Tier 1 and Tier 5 has widened to 5.23 times from 4.76 times in 2019.
In addition, the report also shows that the average household debt in South Korea in 2021 is 101.64 million won, an increase of 16.1% over 2020, and the monthly debt of households with debt is 20 times the household income.
House prices and prices in South Korea have also been soaring during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the end of November 2021, according to Korean media reports, the national average house price since 2021 has risen by 19.08%, the largest year-on-year increase in 14 years.
Due to the economic downturn in South Korea caused by the impact of the epidemic, South Korea began to implement monetary easing policies, which also led to the depreciation of the Won and the rise in prices.
According to The South Korean Statistics Agency, The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose more than 4 percent year-on-year in March to its highest level since December 2011.
On April 14, the Korea Institute of Rural Economics said that the average selling price of cold noodles in Seoul last month was 9,962 won, up 9.7% year-on-year; the average price of fried sauce noodles rose 9.4% year-on-year.
Pork with skin, 3,900 won/100g, RMB 195/kg.
As far as South Korea's export industry is mainly exported, if the COVID-19 control policy continues, it will soon be very likely that a large number of south Korean people will fall into unemployment.
Faced with nearly one-third of the population infected with COVID-19, a serious shortage of medical resources and a declining economy, a formal "compromise" with COVID-19 may be a helpless move by the South Korean government under the balance of various aspects.
The truth is that "lying flat" means an unpredictable cost of casualties, and behind the "herd immunity" is the death of countless innocent lives.
As Wu Zunyou, chief expert of disease control and epidemiology, said, compared with other "lying flat" countries, there are many Chinese, the vaccination rate is still not ideal, and there are differences in medical conditions in various places.