Laurie Garrett Profile picture
Former Sr Fellow @CFR_org. Recipient of Pulitzer Prize, Polk (3Xs) and Peabody Awards. Author: IHeard theSirensScream, TheComingPlague, Ebola & BetrayalofTrust.

Jan 10, 2022, 5 tweets

Let's compare NYC & Hong Kong #COVID19 experiences.

NYC population = 8.4 million; HK = 7.5M.
NYC is averaging >40K cases/day, totaling nearly 2M since Jan2020, with 35,883 deaths.
HK has had zero-to-7 daily COVID cases over last 8 mos, 12K since Jan2020 w/200 deaths.
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2/ What's the difference?

HK has strict border controls, testing, tracing and mandatory quarantines in hotels & detention centers, under observation, with jail for violators.
NYC, like rest of USA, has near-nil track/trace/test/quarantine in use. NY "control" - persuasion.
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3/ Of course, China shut the border with HK, sealing the City off from Mainland. And over last 2 yrs PRC has imposed a police state on HK. People have no choice but to obey mask, vaccine, quarantine laws.
But, most vaccination is with lousy Sinopharm & Sinovac which offer...
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4/...zero protection against #Omicron & weak defense anti-#DeltaVariant .
While USA is trying to "learn to live with the virus" HK and PRC say only zero virus is tolerable.
Two of the many shames in the #pandemic are in this NYC vs HK saga.
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5/
1.) You can't stop a respiratory #pandemic by begging for public compliance, or with #vaccines + masks, alone.
2.) But imposing track/trace/test/quarantine strategies means setting limits on civil liberties, which faces stiff resistance in most nonauthoritarian states.

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