Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?
Here's a well known person in Shenzhen discussing it. Obviously be aware that any source in China can't speak too directly against the government, especially the central government. However I feel rather confident that this thread is a pretty good representation of her actual opinion having read a lot of her tweets on the topic.
https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151481834568977614...
I don't get the impression that the people in charge, or the people not-in-charge in China, agree with this assessment.
I.e. to quote from the thread
> If you're telling Chinese "Omicron can't be beaten" it's a hard sell because the West has been telling us COVID can't be beaten for two years- and most provinces here already have beaten Omicron.
...
> being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy
As above, to again quote from the thread I linked
> Most Chinese have experienced few significant restrictions in the last two years due to COVID-Zero, fast lockdowns, and mass testing done at under 100 cases. The first time we hear about something new being tried- straying from that, it's an unforgivable human rights catastrophy.
> We've been basically living a normal life for two years while we watch the rest of the world meltdown in a furnace of exceptionalism, overconfidence, and science denial. It's going to very, very hard to convince Chinese that we're doing it wrong.
And what a disgusting comment to make. Yes, how dare they stop producing goods for us to consume! Do you also discuss our obligations to the global economy like this? What is our comeuppance to be for our comically poor COVID policies reducing global demand?
[0]And quite probably large parts of Asia, including countries bordering China if not China itself. [1]Or rogue/lucky virus. I don't recall if it was substantiated, but I believe New Zealand at one point credibly hypothesized an outbreak had resulted from a virus preserved in a frozen food shipment.
On the first point, I think that the Chinese vaccine is much worse than the mRNA vaccines against Omicron, but I'm not sure what that would mean for death rates. On the second point, well, I guess the Chinese government tried that to some degree, but didn't feel it was going well.
* Can't admit the original plan isn't working without appearing weak.
* Operating on information corrupted by "compounding optimism" from every level of subordinates.
* Repercussions for bad outcomes are unlikely.
Once you become willing to die, to let others die if needed, and to kill, for freedom or other purposes, you're no longer an "easy to manage sheep" ;)
I personally believe that Zero Covid was a great strategy right out the gate but it's no longer appropriate since this is clearly a global pandemic... but maybe Xi is afraid of looking wrong in retrospect.
What I just wrote must sounding disgusting, but let's not forget we're talking about country which until very recently practised forced abortion upon women choose to have more than a single child (pursuing an absurd and nonsensical policy which might imply that the CCP is not the most rational bunch...) and is still sending thousands if not millions of people in to concentration/reeducation camps merely because of their ethnicity and religion.
Of course engineering a virus for that purpose would be highly impractical and utterly absurd (one would hope so at least...).
Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.
There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.
why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...
Also, in the US, the CDC estimates that for every 10 people who get it who were confirmed/counted, there were 32 who were not counted. Since many states have had >20% of their population confirmed, that suggests that >85% of many US states have already had Covid-19, vaccinated or not. The ratio of "immunologically naive" in China is probably much higher.
Not saying that makes it a sensible or even moral policy, just that's the most likely scenario as to why they are doing it.
- lower vaccination rates
- vaccine drives prioritized the young and healthy (the idea being they can handle side effects so this seemed like the best way to achieve herd immunity)
- the newer strains are super infectious and would overwhelm the healthcare system
They don't have a good way out now. They should have used the time they got last year to buy MRNA vaccines, but they did not.
The central government has likely given up on zero COVID but are sticking with those policies for now to "flatten the curve" while this wave takes its course.
It's clear this is going to end extremely badly. Take a look at Hong Kong's death rate climb when it got out of control there - and HK is much richer than mainland China, with some of the best medical care in the world, and HK did have a fair bit of mRNA vaccine usage, whereas China has close to 0.
China seems to have a perfect storm of a healthcare system already stretched thin, low immunity among the population, and a super infectious strain.
The lockdowns are probably their best option but they also need to ramp up mRNA vaccinations in tandem. Zero COVID is unsustainable.
Something like 50% vs 90% though that could be old data.
Most recently, a minor window of exposure got my oldest sick (double shot vaccinated), and taking care of both of them eventually got me sick (double shot vaccinated, boosted, AND took care of my toddler in isolation for weeks at a time during his most infectious times the prior 3 times). I’ve had side effects/immune response before obviously, but never tested positive. This time I tested positive.
No major adverse symptoms at least, but sick like with a moderate flu for a week+ despite all that is no fun.
Folks with no prior exposure and a weaker vaccine? Yikes.
Glad to hear your infection came with no severe symptoms.
Being able to come in contact without worrying about being the unlucky person who gets hospitalized is something to be thankful for. The vaccines have been a gift.