Global Times editor's note: Austrian scholar Otto Kolbl has received attacks from right-wing extremists and several Western media outlets after publishing, in March 2020, a paper calling European countries to learn from China in containing the coronavirus disease. While Kolbl was later appointed as a member of the expert committee of the German Interior Ministry and co-penned a strategic report on how to contain the Covid-19, his views were not taken seriously in the West. One year on and many Westerns countries have given up their efforts to contain the virus while the US marked a tragic pandemic milestone after the loss of 1 million lives to the Covid-19. Global Times (GT) reporter Xia Xue talked with Kolbl again after a March 2021 interview with him to understand how he perceived changes in pandemic prevention over the past year and the problems in the West.

GT: What is your biggest impression of the epidemic response in China and in Europe over the past year?