Hwaseong, South Korea – As Omicron pushes Western nations to reopen, Asia looks down, widening East-West divisions at a level of social, economic and human rights and fundamental freedoms.
Although the highly contagious coronavirus variants are more likely to be COVID-19 in Europe and North America, life in many parts of the Asia Pacific is less – and sometimes more restrictive – than the onset of the epidemic.
This division comes even though many Asian Pacific countries boast that vaccines are higher than their Western counterparts.
The region’s intense awareness of the two years of the epidemic raises questions about its extinction such as border controls and stricter social laws, despite the fact that they have created the lowest threats in the world, leading to economic and social costs.
“There is another section on COVID-related deaths that people are willing to accept,” Cho Sung-il, a professor of epidemics at Seoul National University in South Korea, told Al Jazeera.
“Individually, there is a COVID risk that a person may be willing to accept, to agree on what he or she should pay, in terms of distance and vaccination. Asians may consider life to be more valuable than freedom, if culture does not matter. risk lives for freedom. ”
In China, government officials have become increasingly sophisticated in their pursuit of permissiveness that has led to the closure and closure of foreign trips and frequent closures.
Hong Kong, which is battling the effects of the Great Depression, has closed schools, bars and gymnasiums and banned eating in restaurants after 6pm. The Chinese-dominated region, long known as “Asia’s World City,” is one of the regions many remote cities due to the strict laws governing borders and borders around the world. With a little refreshment, the government on Thursday announced it would reduce the city’s official curfew to 21 to 14 days.
In Japan, with an estimated 80,000 cases every day, borders are closed to all non-residents, while “quasi-emergency” measures to restrict the opening hours of bars and restaurants are in 34 of 47 places.
South Korea, which if Japan avoided major closures during all this time, wants immigrants to stay in isolation for 10 days, ban secret meetings for six people, and banning restaurants, bars and gymnasiums from functioning after 9pm. Authorities, who on Friday pleaded guilty to more than 16,000 counts, are expected to reconsider their actions on February 6.
New Zealand, one of the world’s most remote countries during the epidemic, earlier this month halted the release of a new lottery on its hard-earned lottery machines – worries thousands of displaced citizens overseas who are already experiencing difficulties getting home.
In Europe, Denmark on Wednesday became the most recent country to announce the end of almost all epidemics, even about 50,000 daily, high-profile cases, following UK and Ireland earlier this month. Danish officials say the incidence and severity of the disease have decreased, while 30-40 percent of hospitalized patients with COVID-19 were present for some reason. France has also announced that it will upgrade its hospitality list from next week.
Unlike most Asians, Europe and North America are the most open free tours for those vaccinated.
In 2021, Asia-Pacific airline’s fleet dropped by 93.2 percent compared with 2019, according to the International Air Transport Association, at the highest rate in the world.
‘The cost of humanity’
Roadblocks in many Western economies come amid growing speculation that regulating the spread of these species may or may not be necessary to further the financial and social fabric of society.
In the Netherlands, where some of the strongest measures in Europe are being curtailed after failing to stop rising cases, Health Minister Ernst Kuipers said long-term restrictions could damage “our health and our team”.
Although Omicron has pushed for health systems due to the spread of lightning, these changes have resulted in fewer people dying than in previous waves of the virus. Although they believe they transmit two or three times more than the Delta genus, Omicron is associated with fewer infections than its predecessor, some health experts estimate how they treat people with the flu and the flu.
Speaking to AFP reporters earlier this week, the head of the World Health Organization in Europe, Hans Kluge, said it was “reasonable” that Omicron was pushing the region towards the end of the epidemic, although he insisted it was still early. declaring COVID-19 a pandemic.
Jeffrey Kingston, dean of Asia Studies at Temple University in Tokyo, told Al Jazeera that international politics had taken action, and the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s border policy was affected by the collapse of his two leaders in dealing with the epidemic.
“This brings a lot of money to people – especially students who want to study here and families who want to reunite,” Kingston said. “It is also ruining the economy, ruining the hospitality business, creating economic tensions between small restaurants and locally operated bars and making the hospitality business a reality. . ”
But Mr Kingston said there were “significant reasons for evasion” in East Asia after the region had avoided mass casualties in Europe and North America, with only a handful of people seeing “western models as accommodation”.
Air travel in Asia Pacific was suspended during the epidemic [File: Lam Yik/Reuters]Although costly, the Asia Pacific epidemic is preventing significant loss of life even during the Omicron period, after vaccination. The weekly death toll reported by China, Hong Kong, Japan and South Korea combined is still less than one-20 percent of all deaths in the UK – though that difference should be small as Omicron starts in the region.
Differences in the management of plagues are no longer evenly distributed along East-West lines. In Asia, other economic powers that rely on tourism such as Thailand have taken a bold step toward reopening borders. And some European countries, such as Sweden and Poland in recent days, have imposed restrictions on the growing number of diseases.
“I think Asian countries are looking forward to a resurgence, but more cautiously than in other parts of the world,” Ben Cowling, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Hong Kong, told Al Jazeera.
“Banners are only part of the warning. In the next few months I hope to see an increase in crime cases, followed by a brief respite from public health. ”
Cho Sung-il, a professor at Seoul National University, said he also hoped that divisions among the free people would decrease as Omicron’s divisions spread.
“I think Omicron hasn’t taken it here yet, due to its gradual expansion due to restrictions,” he said. “Once Omicron replaces all cases, the process will be put in place to reduce the number of cases.”
