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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

> China seems to have no issue continuing with their Zero-Covid approach

I imagine it's politically difficult. If they open the floodgates, it's going to be worse than for most other countries because they haven't had a chance to build natural immunity from exposure, only from vaccines. And any wave of infections is going to be seen as a failure of zero-covid, making the hardships of it meaningless; a failure of the party.

I'm not sure how they are going to get out of it without letting some heads roll. Maybe a wonder vaccine that will make all of China immune.

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It's more about saving face. China has being beating the drum for 3 years that it's covid policy has been successful and it should be the poster child of covid response and every other country is wrong and sucks.

If they end zero-covid policy it's admitting they were wrong and that its failed.

On the flip side their covid vaccine has also being a failure.

> On the flip side their covid vaccine has also being a failure.

I think this is the bigger one -- studies indicate it's not nearly as effective as the western (mRNA) Covid shots, but China refuses to use the western shots. If they open the floodgates and (to absolutely no one's surprise) death rates spike, it proves that the Chinese shot was indeed mostly useless.

I do think that their covid policy (though not the way it was implemented) was the right way to go in the first two years. But with Omicron, the game has changed, as it is extremely contagious.

Implementing strict hygiene precautions is still important - especially in dense populated regions and at work places with close contact. But this isolation at all costs and without taking proper care for the isolated, is just a disaster. Especially, if it can only slow down the spread, but no longer contain it.

> natural immunity from exposure

Note that you can't get immunity from exposure without .. being exposed, which means you get the side effects of exposure.

Exactly. And somewhere in 2021 many countries shifted to something that could be described as controlled exposure, weakening measures and causing more people to be exposed (whether vaccinated or not), at a level the health care system could cope with. Of course it was unfashionable to describe it like that, but the effect was a population better capable of dealing with it.

Effective vaccines exist but China refuses help due to nationalism.

The Chinese vaccine is pretty good, so their population is already well protected, assuming they have been vaccinating everyone as thoroughly as they have been locking them down…

I think one problem in China is that old people have resisted being vaccinated because they don’t trust the authorities. And old people are obviously the most at risk of dying or being seriously ill. It’s a made in China problem, for sure.

is it? i keep hearing otherwise: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-02796-w

A Chinese post-doc came to join my group 1 year into the pandemic. He took an antibody test, which should have shown antibodies due to his 2 doses of Sinovax.

Nada.

The first thing he after he arrived in the US was to get vaccinated.

Perhaps you have evidence that Sinovax works?

About 50% of 80+ Chinese citizens are unvaccinated.

It’s really quite amazing China hasn’t forced them to vaccinate.

It is a chicken and egg problem. When you have no COVID cases, the risk of taking a vaccine for older people (its side effect) may outweigh the benefits. However, once it cannot contain COVID cases anymore, the benefits/costs calculation will change drastically and they cannot get vaccinated fast enough then. It is a dilemma that the China government needs to resolve, there is no way they can continue with this zero COVID policy forever.

Why does it not? The ethics of forced vaccination notwithstanding, if China is okay with using its authoritarian rule to impose massive lockdowns repeatedly, surely it'd be comfortable using its power to force vaccination?

Because their vaccines aren’t good enough compared to mRNA. And that would show the world they aren’t a leader.

I don't understand. How would forced vaccinations make either of those situations worse?

Because it would embarrass China. Their failure would be on display for the world to see.

Why would forced vaccinations make their failure more visible?

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