The problem is that once they lift it up / fail to contain an outbreak, it will be a devastating one since their population isn't immunized.
China borders 14 countries. If there’s “no COVID” it’s because it’s being suppressed, with or without Beijing’s knowledge.
It won’t be only COVID-19 popping when that artificial suppression ends. RSV, influenza, etc.
To date NZ has suffered just 2,212 covid deaths (just 0.0004% of population).
What evidence is there that the lockdowns in China are effective at doing anything at all?
What evidence is there that COVID hasn’t already passed through the population like it has in every other country?
What evidence is there that the “people who will die if the lockdowns are stopped” didn’t perish long ago?
The main evidence appears to be the existence of the zero-COVID program itself. Surely a country wouldn’t pursue such a damaging policy unless it was effective, right?
What we do know: post-omicron variants of the virus are extremely transmissible and defeated all other attempts at zero COVID.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1279024/china-coronaviru... vaccination-rate/
I don’t think this paper is a great source for that idea - the ratio of people with one infection (440,000) to people with three or more infections (1,000) is so different that I wonder if demographics or behavioral characteristics differ between the groups.
Empirically, their conclusion can’t really be true or each COVID-wave would be worse than the preceding one
I need to read the full paper when I have more time, but it does not seem to be dealing with symptoms? And the sequelae seem most troubling since those could take a long time to manifest.
(I’m ignoring whether the paper is correct in the first place.)
“The evidence shows that reinfection further increases risks of death, hospitalization and sequelae in multiple organ systems in the acute and postacute phase.”
Lets say that infection #1 puts the risk of outcome A at 40%
Infection #2 puts the risk of outcome A at 60%
Infection #3 puts the risk of outcome A at 70%
Each infection increases the risk of outcome A, but it isn't an increasing rate.
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This would be very different from
Infection #1 having a risk of outcome A at 10%
Infection #2 having a risk of outcome A at 30%
Infection #3 having a risk of outcome A at 70%
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The first case that I described matches Figure 5: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-02051-3/figures/5
Note the difference in the rate of increase between the infections.
Yes, multiple infections increases the risk. However, each subsequent infection has a lower rate of increase of the chance.
As you mentioned their own vaccine is not very effective but they have also approved no foreign vaccines yet [2]
They have far too few ICU beds to manage the surge if restrictions are dropped to, say, average EU levels [3]
They seem to be trapped
[1] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/22/WS637c2416a3104917... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/china-covid-... [3] https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/icu-beds-...
You're still here justifying current deaths from starvation, fires, suicides with potential future deaths to covid. If an individual thinks like this they're a sociopath, but if governments do it they are "trapped".
Trapped meaning the available choices are limited to things the CCP don’t seem to want; unrest, use of foreign vaccines, or massive deaths etc.
Again for the avoidance of doubt, I am not suggesting what they should do or how they should do it.
There are three reasons they probably don't do this:
1) Their vaccines don't provide high enough protection to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system.
2) They have fostered mRNA conspiracy theories and pushing an mRNA vaccine would be a huge embarrassment to the communist party.
3) Beating the US by a wide margin on Covid deaths is a point of pride.
[0] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-18/only-half... [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/11/11/stunnin...
Sorry about the low quality source links. I'll try harder to find CDC links in the future.
I think it's easier to gain this information via hacking and data theft or paying insiders for documents than actually reversing the vaccine.
People in China are still posted about that.
In any case there are multiple paths available and so far they seem stuck on the failing one. It's strange.
You know how some old people believe all sorts of conspiracy theories about the government? Because their government was actually evil during their lifetime, it becomes much harder for them to believe that this one time the government really does want to give them medicine for their own good.
I have relatives in Bulgaria, a country with full access to all western vaccines thanks to EU but is among the least vaccinated countries in the world and among the top deaths of COVID-19 per capita.
I was shocked when I visited Bulgaria once travel become possible. Everyone knew someone dead but they also were telling stories about this one person who went to get a vaccine and their veins turned blue and died shaking. People in villages were tellings tories how Bill Gates will monitor them or that the virus and the younger ones were saying that the vaccines are a sham and the governments orchestrated it to reduce the population(Bulgaria is also a top country in population decline, the government and EU are actually trying very hard to increase the population).
When people want to believe things, they believe things.
The CCP may not be the Kiwanis Club but they're not the Legion of Doom either. It's not a democracy but they still need some degree of popular support, and letting everyone's grandparents die is not a great way to engender it.