Impact of the COVID-19 on chemical fiber industry from the "law of entropy increase"

The law of entropy increase is one of the most classic laws in traditional physics. It means that the isolated system always tends to increase in entropy, and finally reaches the maximum state of entropy, that is, the most chaotic and disordered state of the system. In fact, this law applies not only to the physical field, but also to the social and economic fields.

As far as the evolution of the COVID-19 is concerned, the continuous spread of the epidemic is a manifestation of entropy increase. There are theoretically two outcomes in responding to the epidemic. One is to adapt to the increase in entropy, and the society pays a certain price to realize new entropy increase matching earlier and achieve coexistence. The other is to do work for society and control the spread of the virus, which is embodied in the strong intervention of government organizations and bear the cost of doing work.

Specific to different countries, we can see that western countries generally choose the first option. The price is that the mortality rate of some elderly people and people with basic diseases increases amid the COVID-19. However, as the mortality peak passes, society is close to returning to normal. China and North Korea, etc. obviously prefer to the second choice as the government strongly controls and changes the normal order of society, and cuts off the entropy increase process of the virus by bearing the costs of blocked circulation and partial economic suspension.

The novel coronavirus has broken out for less than three years, and it has continuously broken through human cognition through evolutionary capabilities, strong infectivity, and uncertain sequelae. The Omicron variant of strong infectiousness has penetrated Shanghai, one of the cities with the strongest prevention and control capabilities in China. This means that China needs to put more efforts on the prevention and control of the epidemic. The exploration of epidemic prevention and control by Shanghai is undoubtedly worthy of encouragement. However, due to insufficient awareness of the epidemic, the lack of timely grasp of the bottom line, and insufficient preparation for extreme situations, the Yangtze River Delta was forced to face shutdown at a critical time of economic development. Moreover, there is also resurgence of COVID-19 cases in North China, South China, Northeast China and Xinjiang.

The failure in Shanghai is undoubtedly depressing. Although the diagnosis and treatment of the COVID-19 has been updated to the 9th edition and the whole-course vaccination rate of China has exceeded 87% by the end of Feb 2022. However, in addition to high-intensity control methods, we still have not found new and more effective ways to deal with the impact of COVID-19. Even due to the high infectivity of new variants, we can see an escalation of control measures everywhere. Due to the different levels of medical support, surrounding infection risks and logistics, in fact, the intensity of epidemic prevention implemented in different parts of China is not the same. In the process of fighting against the epidemic, logistics is obviously in a state of easy transmission. For the chemical fiber industry, different prevention and control policies in different regions have led to extremely abnormal logistics. At present, the logistics disorder in China has basically reached the highest level since May 2020. On the one hand, the logistics cost is increasing rapidly, and on the other hand, the logistics efficiency is significantly lower, which makes the Chinese economy characterized by supporting the whole industry chain and efficient infrastructure face periodic challenges. In addition to logistics, human resources and domestic consumption are also greatly negatively affected.

Fortunately, the Chinese government still has a very strong organizational capacity, and there are strong mutual support actions between different cities. Take Hangzhou for example, a top medical team of 3,000 people was dispatched to Shanghai at the first moment when the epidemic in Shanghai was out of control. Other provinces and cities also sent support forces. We believe that China will surely overcome this round of the epidemic, although the costs are increasing in the process of resisting entropy increase. The chemical fiber industry needs to share these costs from the perspective of cost, market, demand, and operation, but it is unknown how much it will bear in the future.