China's Covid-19 ‘success’ is a mirage that continues to deceive the West

jordanschachtel.substack.com

9 points1experience2 comments

tl,dr: China didn't defeat coronavirus, the virus just isn't that serious:

"The reason why Chinese society can be open and productive during the coronavirus pandemic is simple: COVID-19 is not particularly dangerous to an open society."

Which seems to fly in the face of hospitalization and icu admission rates. Also interesting to me is countries like Taiwan, which have very low case rates currently and relative normalcy.

ICUs are by default expected to operate at a near-full occupancy rate, the average occupancy rate in the Western world is about 75%-80% and it's not unusual for them to be overrun during a bad flu season (especially in places like northern Italy, which has one of the worst air pollution problems in all of Europe and has undergone drastic cuts in health care spending in recent years).

[1]2018 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

[2]2015 https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...

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