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Comment by pengaru | Hacker News Reader

A few days ago I read on a news aggregator somewhere:

"Nearly 37 million people in China may have been infected with Covid-19 on a single day this week, according to estimates from the government's top health authority, making the country's outbreak by far the world's largest"

At that rate they'd infect the entire population in 38 days, which is kind of unbelievable. There's no way their entire population still has zero immunity at this point, so if we assumed this rate were real and persisted - how long could it really last for? It seems like it'd be over within weeks to my totally unqualified understanding...

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Back of the envelope maths is that yes, it really can spread that fast. If it was just a mild cold, nobody would care, but the risk is that China’s health system could get totally overwhelmed.

The currently circulating strains are milder than the original but spread much faster. Even with improved treatment plans based on years if experience, it’s going to be a sudden shock to the system.

The omega might be. But not wuhan and delta which still with china. The question so whether omega has a chance to win the war behind the collapse. I am anti-communist china but not anti-human. Sad they even tried to use that to argue again the white paper movement, instead of inappropriate action last few years - starting from let people fly out form wuhan and killing Italian in the first stop, among others.

Will jan 8 not just an issue in china as they let out chinese to the world (like via Hong Kong etc) … btw.

They also made it up as this hyper deadly disease, that basically has killed of half the world outside of china. They even tried to censor the audience in the soccer worldcup, to prevent the mainlanders realizing what a bullshit stories this was. Well, it didn't work and now the ccps official narrative causes whiplash.

Much much sooner than 38 days. Most of the big cities have already peaked, as measured by Baidu searches. Half of Beijing was already infected last week.

> Much much sooner than 38 days. Most of the big cities have already peaked, as measured by Baidu searches. Half of Beijing was already infected last week.

Have they ID'd the strain? Because given China's aging population, and the higher mortality susceptibility, could this really be the the thing makes them justify their lockdown measures again if the deaths get high enough?

I saw it mentioned offhand recently in a way that indicated it was an Omicron (BN.5? BA.3?), but don't know where that strain ID came from. I would assume 1.4B new hosts provides plenty of possibilities for the virus to explore the space of possible mutations, and a new variant is thus pretty much inevitable.

Edit: apparently there are 50 or so strains that have been identified in China and no detailed data is coming out right now.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-covid-19-surge-new-corona...

They are quite obviously going for a rapid saturation approach to catch up to the rest of the world. This will kill a lot of the old and sick, it will break the health system, but it will be done in a month or two, which is ultimately good to restore Chinas economy and health systems to normal. 2.5 years covid history and multiple waves compressed into 2-3 months. Huzzah!

What you're missing is that a person can get COVID repeatedly. Prior infection provides less protection than vaccination, and neither provides completely protection.

Wait, reinfection is supposed to be months later, not weeks, right? I thought I'd read that post-infection immunity lasted around 10 months?

Yep, although I'm not sure about that exact figure. (However, even if mild, the direct consequences of the initial infection could cause issues for weeks.)

But I read the parent comment as saying that after a few weeks Covid would no longer be a problem, and would continue not being a problem indefinitely.

> thought I'd read that post-infection immunity lasted around 10 months?

Isn’t that strain specific? I know unvaccinated folks who had back-to-back cross-strain infections inside a few months.

Ugh that sucks. Now I need to go back and check recommendations on booster/vaccines and prior infections...

>Prior infection provides less protection than vaccination

Citation needed.

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