Early or Late: A Comparative Sociological Study of Zero COVID Policy

Among the countries that have effectively implemented Zero COVID(ZC), why are they all been able to adopt similar policies to achieve the status of Zero COVID while the patterns of ending zero Covid are so different? The pattern of ending ZC falls into two general types. Type A (Australia and Zealand) were for countries that were able to gradually deregulate their social restrictions to terminate Zero COVID and move to enhanced medical logistics to face future death peaks from pandemics. Type B (China and Vietnam) were those countries that insisted on strong social restrictions and failed to strengthen medical logistics, resulting in the need to declare an end to the Zero COVID policy when the peak of deaths occurred. As a result, the pattern of ending in type A countries was a more orderly transition to the post-epidemic era, with less cost in lives paid for the epidemic. By incorporating both temporal and structural narratives, this essay suggests that regime legitimacy contributed to the different patterns of Zero COVID policy. In particular, the source of regime legitimacy affects whether policy-making is more value-oriented or instrument-oriented. Countries with instrument-oriented policies have strong professionalism that is more able to plan for long-term transition policies to reduce total costs. State capacity is a necessary condition for assessing a policy's implementation, but when state policy is dominated by value and ideologization, it can instead create greater negative consequences.