I think it WAS successful for a while; afaik they didn't get much Delta cases or deaths, and their economy could keep going while the rest of the world was going into lockdown.
At some point when thinking about the value of preventing death you need to introduce QALYs and then you need to think about the the duration, impact and breadth of lockdowns.
4 million excess deaths is a ton no matter which way you look at it.
Since it is now more or less endemic in the rest of the world it will be interesting to see how long they will maintain it.
Ultimately zero covid is a thing you do to buy time for your healthcare system or for better vaccination coverage (or just to kick the can, maybe you get better tech).
The 4 million deaths are inevitable unless you can maintain zero COVID forever or fundamentally change the situation for people who are very vulnerable to COVID-19.
Preventing healthcare systems from being overwhelmed is a big factor.
Otherwise you are just doing "accounting" to choose what year your excess deaths happen in, for political purposes.
All that said, I'd always take an extra year over dying right now.
the situation is already fundamentally changed in terms of treatment efficacy than what it was in 2020.
I guess they are delayed and will be averted in future? Maybe there will be further tech shift, or a healthcare surge?
I suppose what I am trying to express is that zero covid is not a viable long-term strategy, it's a thing you do to buy time for your actual strategy, whatever that is.
Serious I cannot get over how many people think this kind of response is ever justified. It is incredibly myopic thinking.
According to [0] they've got 1,287,195,000 fully vaccinated, how is that an awful job?
AIUI their failing is more along the lines of not using the mrna vaccines, but despite having a huge population they seem to have put jabs in most arms.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_vaccination_in_mainla...
https://archive.ph/Ww9o3/a0fe4ca441387dca37b8beebe30ac260501...
You have to take the size of China into account, with 1.5B people, 4M is 2% of their population, it would be similar to 700k deaths in the US. While yes it is a ton, think about what effect the lockdowns will have. Some have speculated that more people have died thus far in Shanghai from the lockdowns than from Covid itself.
Which only shows how few covid deaths China has had.
Missed a decimal point: 0.267%
It is far too early to be calling that a failure.
You don’t get to rob people of their basic human rights. Ever. That is why they are called “human rights”. It means you don’t get to take them away.
Pretty much every country on earth disagrees with such a binary statement, unless you can point me to one that doesn't have prisons.
(I'm not saying prisons are wonderful or arguing for/against them here, nor saying that everyone in each country agrees with the current policies, just pointing out that all of our countries have laws that say you DO get to rob people of their basic human rights in certain situations.)
That is a bad argument with no bearing on the current situation.
As the virus has mutated the strategy to deal with the virus needs to change. Early on China's strategy was effective at preventing deaths (the costs to achieve this could be debated), but now the virus has changed and that strategy is proving to be a terrible one with a massive cost to the country and their population. The significantly higher transmissibility means that spread cannot be prevented (only controlled) and the availability of vaccines means that deaths are far less common now.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2022/01/02/beijin...
The Economist "model" your article relies on is seriously, seriously flawed. It is laughable to see it reported on as if it is ground truth. I highly encourage you to look into the details of how they get the numbers your article is citing.
If they'd already been hammered by coronavirus and covered it up, then they'd have high levels of natural immunity and wouldn't need to be pursuing this zero covid policy.
Any what exactly do you think the end outcome will be when a) it is impossible to stop omicron and b) the CCP isn't ramping up the vaccination effort on the 80+ yr olds?
If live in a tinderbox with frequent lightening strikes, spending billions on firefighting isn't going to change the end result. HK got to 1/3 the US's death rate in __weeks__.
Even that wouldn't work, there are covid reservoirs among wild animals now (e.g. deer).
How is it not an absolute violation of inalienable human rights? How can you even call human rights “inalienable” when your government is willing to toss them out the window for some respiratory virus?
Do people still think Covid is some kind of airborne Ebola or something?
People have lost their minds over this. It is scary how willing humans are to commit an atrocity like what is happening in Shanghai when they are pumped full of nonstop over the top fear.
Covid myopia is worse than Covid.