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Comment by alangibson | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to hear from someone in China on why the government still pursues a zero-Covid policy. Is it just face-saving at this point?

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Once a large bureaucracy gears itself up to solve a problem, it will keep trying to solve the problem even after it’s not a real problem anymore.

Earlier on municipal and provincial officials have lost their job over (perceived or not) incompetent handling of COVID. No one wants to be the next in line, so when the Beijing central gov tells them to do x, the provincial gov will to 2x and the municipal gov will do 8x just to make sure.

And they will tell higher up "everything is going to according to plan."

The (relatively) high number of deaths during the recent Hong Kong omicron wave must also have scared them. There are lots of non-vaccinated elderly people in China (if I'm not mistaken only about 60% of the over-80s are vaccinated), and as such even (the relatively lighter) Omicron variant would cause lots and lots of deaths around China among that elderly population (and China has lots of elders).

All things considered not the best situation to be in, because getting rid of the zero-covid strategy right now will cause lots and lots of deaths. Maybe China should have done as the rest of the world has done when it came to Covid and it should have tried to adjust gradually, as the pandemic progressed.

One slightly reasonable opinion is that Chinese population density is way higher than anywhere else in the world and it may go out of controll if not 0 policy

If SH did carrys out Centre Party's policy like most of other cities does, this bizzare wouldn't happen in the first place, if weepy kid always get what it want, what about the slient most?

SH's fault is not CN's fault. China has no face, we just have the biggest slient most, pardon my English if you may ;)

You sound like you’re jealous of Shanghai - that’s understandable, I’m sorry your hukou is from countryside.

appericate your kindess and you just made my day, "a man jealous of a city", how about a fish jealous of earbuds, I mean, it has to be the same species do we?

> slient most

silent majority?

the biggest silent majority..That would definitly make more sense but my shallow mind sticks to 'most', more poetic it says.

You see, if you pardon my jibber jabber, 'most' is statistic but 'majority' implies some political asset..

The Chinese vaccine is substantially less effective than the mRNA-based ones, and it hasn't been mandated so the vaccination rate is still low in some areas/populations.

Yeah. I mean if it had a purpose it has been served. Why don't they use all that massive CCP infrastructure to have zero tolerance for not getting vaccinated instead? It's ludicrous.

They are 1.5 billion in china it's not that easy even if you are using a protein based vaccine...

Their vaccine doesn’t work - forcing everyone to get it would only highlight that fact.

They have the spycraft and resources to steal moderna and pfizer or even J&J if they wanted it. If that fails, they probably have the money to just buy the rights to produce it. I mean didn't sputnik at least prove somewhat effective?

China already has an indigenously developed vaccine (from CanSino) that uses the same technology as J&J and AstraZeneca. It's just as effective.

> I mean didn't sputnik at least prove somewhat effective?

Sputnik V was one of the most effective vaccines. It was more effective than J&J and AstraZeneca in phase-3 trials.

> they probably have the money to just buy the rights to produce it

A Chinese company, Fosun, invested in the development of the BioNTech vaccine early on, and has the rights to produce and distribute it in China. The vaccine hasn't been approved in mainland China, though.

The efficacy of Chinese vaccines isn't a major issue. They're plenty effective, and 3 doses of Sinovac actually turned out to be just as effective as 3 doses of BioNTech in Hong Kong.[1]

The issue is that old people in China have been hesitant to get vaccinated at all. So far, old people in China have been protected by the zero-CoVID policy, so this hasn't been an issue. If the virus starts spreading, however, it will become an issue.

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v...

The various Chinese vaccines have actually proven to be highly effective at preventing severe disease and death.

In Hong Kong, 3 doses of Sinovac turned out to be just as effective (in fact, slightly more effective, though that could be statistical noise) as 3 doses of BioNTech.[1]

Yet the idea that Chinese vaccines don't work is incredibly widespread in the West. It's pure prejudice, in my opinion.

1. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.22.22272769v...

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