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Comment by ttul | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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