Download pdf
“Children are the Biggest Victims in the Covid-19 Pandemic” – A Reflection on the Zero-covid Policy and Strict City Lockdown Regulations in China
- 1 University of Virginia, VA, the United States, 22904
* Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
Abstract
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in January 2020 in China, the Chinese government has been implementing zero-covid policies and strict city lockdown regulations to control the spread of the pandemic. Nevertheless, the emergence of a new strain of virus – the Omicron - has changed the situation. According to the WHO, the Chinese government’s zero-covid approach is not “sustainable” facing the more transmissible Omicron variant. Therefore, in order to confront and adapt to new circumstances of the pandemic, it is imperative to evaluate and reconsider the zero-covid policies and lockdown regulations and inspect their harms and benefits on the society. Besides huge economic loss due to lockdowns and quarantines, lockdown policies have detrimental impacts towards the psychological well-beings and cognitive development of children and adolescents. From the standpoint of children and adolescents, this paper is going to evaluate the zero-covid policies through Cost-Benefit Analysis. Moreover, the pandemic is perceived by many governments, especially the Chinese governments,as involving a moral dilemma: the Trolley Problem, which involves either sacrificing a group of people or one person. The Cost-Benefit Analysis of this paper is going to expand around the framework of the Trolley Problem and discuss the impacts of zero-covid policies of the Chinese government, especially on the two groups of people: the children and adolescents and the elderlies.
Keywords
Zero-covid policies, Cost-Benefit Analysis, The Trolley Problem, Adolescents’ mental health
[1]. Nectar Gan (2022). Chinese cities rush to lockdown in show of loyalty to Xi’s zero-covid strategies. CNN World
[2]. Naff, D., Williams, S., Furman-Darby, J., & Yeung, M. (2022). The Mental Health Impacts of COVID-19 on PK–12 Students: A Systematic Review of Emerging Literature. AERA Open, 8. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584221084722
[3]. Qin Z, Shi L, Xue Y, et al. Prevalence and Risk Factors Associated With Self-reported Psychological Distress Among Children and Adolescents During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China. JAMA Netw Open. 2021;4(1):e2035487. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.35487
[4]. Egan, S.M., Pope, J., Moloney, M. et al. Missing Early Education and Care During the Pandemic: The Socio-Emotional Impact of the COVID-19 Crisis on Young Children. Early Childhood Educ J 49, 925–934 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-021-01193-2
[5]. Rogers, A. A., Ha, T., &Ockey, S. (2021). Adolescents’ per- ceived socio-emotional impact of COVID-19 and implications for mental health: Results from a U.S.-based mixed-methods study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 68(1), 43–52. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2020.09.039
[6]. Jeremy Mark and Michael Schuman (2022). China’s Faltering zero covid policies: Politics in Command, Economy in Reverse. Atlantic Council, Geoeconomics Center ISBN-13: 987-1-61977-230-4
[7]. Unicef (2022). Child mortality and Covid-19. UNNICEF DATA
[8]. Mary Van Beusekom (2020). Children’s Covid-19 risks unique, Chinese studies find. CIDRAP News
[9]. Linda Lew (2022). Covid deaths among Hong Kong’s young children alarm parents. The Japan Times
[10]. Kahane G. Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment. Soc Neurosci. 2015;10(5):551-60. doi: 10.1080/17470919.2015.1023400. Epub 2015 Mar 20. PMID: 25791902; PMCID: PMC4642180.
[11]. Li, W., Zhang, Y., Wang, J., Ozaki, A., Wang, Q., Chen, Y., & Jiang, Q. (2021). Association of home quarantine and mental health among teenagers in Wuhan, China, during the COVID- 19 pandemic. JAMA Pediatrics, 175, 313–316. 10.1001/jama- pediatrics.2020.5499
[12]. Shira Ackerman (2019). The Ultimate Guide to Preschool. Scholastics
[13]. Human Rights Watch (2022). China: Treatment for Non-Covid Illness Denied. HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH
[14]. Singh K, Xin Y, Xiao Y, et al. Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Chronic Disease Care in India, China, Hong Kong, Korea, and Vietnam. Asia Pacific Journal of Public Health. 2022;34(4):392-400. doi:10.1177/10105395211073052
Cite this article
Luo,C. (2023). “Children are the Biggest Victims in the Covid-19 Pandemic” – A Reflection on the Zero-covid Policy and Strict City Lockdown Regulations in China. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media,6,742-749.
Data availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
Disclaimer/Publisher's Note
The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s). EWA Publishing and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.
About volume
Volume title: Proceedings of the International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies (ICIHCS 2022), Part 5
© 2024 by the author(s). Licensee EWA Publishing, Oxford, UK. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license. Authors who
publish this series agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the series right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this
series.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the series's published
version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial
publication in this series.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and
during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See
Open access policy for details).