Because it has a zero covid policy. It is trying to project an image of itself as being this ideal society where covid isn’t running wild while america is out of control.
The lockdown they are having is horrible tho. My coworker is based there and what I’ve heard from her is scary. She wants to move out of China when she can.
I mean, assuming they can contain it in Shanghai, then China really is an ideal society where Covid isn't running wild. We are yet to see the full burden of disease and disability from (repeated) Covid infections - it may be very serious.
Certainly it is awful in Shanghai right now, but it will be for a limited time period, and the benefits (of zero Covid) will out weigh this cost of this investment in public health.
I would say that in an ideal society you do not get suddenly locked down wherever you happen to be with no notice and no way to return to take care of pets or loved ones. Additionally said ideal society would not send me off to some covid hospital and kill my dog if I tested positive. I backed the mild but effective lockdowns we had and defended them when people called them dystopian or said they were worse than Covid. I cannot get behind these lockdowns in China, they are dystopian and I cannot fathom your sunny disposition towards them
It doesn't work that way. Covid will always find its way in China since it's not a locked down island, so the pain from a zero covid policy won't be short lived at all. And that's not considering hard to track pockets of the virus within the country.
How is China in any way ideal. Here in the west, with very high voluntary vaccination rates, everything for the most part is back to normal.
Even the vaccination verification process is gone.
We dealt with covid in a reasonable, science-first way, which also allowed us to have the freedom to not get vaccinated, talk about what's happening, etc. Sounds much more ideal than the shitshow going on in Shanghai currently.
Edit: there’s not a lot being talked about in terms of multiple infections over time. It’s not that the MRNA vaccines are effective it’s that the West pivoted to an entirely different public health policy.
Australia and New Zealand tried lockdowns against Delta. They didn't work until vaccination rates got high enough. Then omicron came and not even 90% vax rates were enough to stop the spread. So the vaccines without lockdowns is more a pragmatic move because lockdowns stopped working. Besides, the vaccines work, there just isn't the same need to have lockdowns anymore.
AU and NZ lockdowns were less ugly than this Shanghai description though. I went outside to cycle and run literally every day of the NSW 2021 lockdown.
The Aus and NZ approach worked well to keep pressure off the health system until enough were vaccinated.
Data seems to show those that had 3rd shot pfizer have very low risk of hospitalization compared with unvaxxed. The 3rd shot (booster) really makes a difference, something I myself was quite skeptical about early on. I had initially thought if the 2nd doesn't work then the third is probably placebo but glad to be proven wrong.
I think we need to stop calling MRNA solutions vaccines because they are gene therapies. You need regular administration for them to be effective on a public health level which is not logistically feasible as we found out. They know this but they’re playing along as a matter of publicity and politics. We got incredibly lucky with Omicron.
The mRNA vaccines are absolutely vaccines and not gene therapies. The mRNA is turned into protein and it is that protein that your immune system is trained to attack.
If we consider mRNA, or any vaccine, to be a gene therapy it would because the immune system has to modify its own DNA to generate antibodies. But we might then call the common cold a gene therapy or becoming allergic to something an accidental gend therapy. Obviously this is silly.
The mRNA vaccines literally expose your immune system to a foreign antigen, the longstanding definition of a vaccine. They use a nice trick to get your own body to manufacture the antigen, but it's not gene therapy, they don't go anywhere your genes, they give ribosomes some extra instructions.
The boosters have been extremely effective at preventing severe infections, which is plenty useful for public health even if it isn't as good as preventing transmission entirely.
Not quite. There’s a good reason why efficacy falls off sharply after just 2-3 weeks. Again, it’s a “vaccine” not a vaccine. They just call it that because they want the public to buy-in. I say this as someone who’s been in biotech for a decade plus.
Edit: I am not antivax. I believe you should get all the shots even a second booster despite all its shortcomings.
Their vaccine is not very effective against omicron, and they have far less hospital beds per capita than the west. So a 'flatten the curve' strategy will cause a lot more deads than it has in Europe and the USA.
I don't think the number of deaths is the problem now but the speed at which they occur. If we assume about 0.2% death rate for China on average that would almost be 3 Million. Of those 1.5 Million would occur in 4 weeks (assuming speed is similar to Hong Kong and lower medical capacity). That's 50000 dead per day on average. Especially in the first half it's scary because the number just keep on rising to the sky with a peak of 100000 per day (or more? we don't know until they fall again).
The difference in effort between keeping that kind of curve flat and ZeroCovid is small. I would even assume that ZeroCovid is easier than flattening the curve. While ZeroCovid is not an exit strategy in some areas it works better while waiting for an effective vaccine or some other exit strategy. So presumably that's what they do right now.
Because covid running rampant poses an unacceptable risk to social stability and therefore to the CCP’s grip on power. This is a function of propaganda they have been pumping out of the last 2 years wrt the effectiveness of the Chinese response & domestic vaccines. The policy response they have been touting as evidence for the superiority of the social contract they impose on citizens (lack of rights in favour of stability and growth) is now shown to be as susceptible as every other countries to the unescapable biological facts/reality of viral spread. This directly calls in to question the CCP’s credibility. Also Xi, needs to maintain the status quo until Q3 when he is up for re-election… It is a horrible situation for the Chinese people.
Zero Covid policy, their own vaccine isnt very good and many people especially in high risk categories havent been vaccinated and not much natural immunity in the population. But primarily the Zero Covid policy.
Hong Kong had the highest death rate per capita globally in the last weeks when their containment policy failed. Leading to a mortality of over 0.1% in a short time. Hong Kong is a very rich area. Many other areas would fare much worse.
The rest of the world is not "all-in" with vaccines. Vaccines are combined with waves of infection for the unvaccinated and vaccinated which lead to the death of 0.1% to 0.6% of the population in many countries. With each infection the immunity rises - leading to less severe infections in the future. The deaths are a high price to pay but many people think it's worth it to have a somewhat normal life again.
As we know now, China was not very wise with their choice of vaccine and seemingly has no exit plan. Omicron is spreading very fast and due to a low prior immunity it would put an immense load on their medical system for months.
Only because HK's elderly are not widely vaccinated, and also because Sinovac makes up about half of their vaccinations and this vaccine is not as good at preventing mortality. A very similar situation to Mainland China, actually.
So the question still hasn't been answered. Why is Mainland China insisting on pursuing this inferior strategy? The hard-lockdown zero-Covid low-vaccination approach has been shown to be inferior to the alternative approach of ensuring 99% of the elderly are vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna, and then allowing society to open up once this is achieved. My understanding is their vaccination rates haven't gone up much since this outbreak started, which signals that they are not intent on changing course.
The imcumbent cabinet and politburo are going out of term later this year and a new list of names needs to be appointed and rubber stamped by the upcoming 20th CCP National Congress. The government essentially operate in caretaker mode for several months before the congress and any major policy reversal would be taboo as it could disrupt the political horse trading happening in the background. This is just not the time for course change.
Ironically, a very similar situation played out in Wuhan . By mid December 2019 it was very clear that a deadly respiratory disease is in the community but the politicians were too preoccupied with the ongoing provincial party congress. Nobody in power was willing to take a bullet for announcing a pandemic until their posts are confirmed and secure. The rest is history.
It says that the congress is in the second half of 2022. That's still months into the future. With Omicron it could be some "interesting times" in those months. Until when does the situation need to appear under control? When could they announce a change of course?
>Until when does the situation need to appear under control?
Barring major catastrophe, thing will continue to drift in the current direction until the Congress is "concluded in triumph" and the new government sworn in. So probably no sooner than October/November.
They are already doing that and it will take some time. However no vaccine is 100% effective against mortality. Bear in mind that China had almost no covid deaths post-2020. Any covid death now is considered a failure as it would have been "preventable" under a strictly zero covid policy.
This is why the figures out of China is looking too good to be true right now with 150K+ recent cases, very low intensive care admission and only 2 deaths so far(both had very serious underlying conditions including end stage renal failure and cerebral infarction). One might argue that the officials have an incentive to hide the true figures to save face, but keeping the numbers low does not necessarily make them look any better as the lockdown appears overly harsh and disproportionate to the risks. The only options is to try and return to the zero covid days, no plan B allowed.
The economist has some aged grouped vaccination data from the end of March that actually shows pretty good vaccine coverage for the 60-79 age group. I couldn't find a source but the numbers are consistent with a prior press release.
> "Hong Kong is a very rich area. Many other areas would fare much worse."
Being rich or poor doesn't have too much to do with it. Hong Kong is badly affected because it has a very high population density combined with low vaccination rates.
And it's not population density either, otherwise Bangladesh and India would be leading the packs in deaths, but they're comfortably in the middle while much of Europe pushes the top.
Where this falls apart is in government reaction to the disease, that has absolutely eviscerated the middle and poor classes.
Despite having high overall population densities and some dense cities, India and Bangladesh are still largely (60-80%) rural populations. Totally different to Hong Kong where the population is >99% urban, living in cramped and often poorly-ventilated apartment towers.
What do you feel the "choice" with vaccines was? So even if they overlooked the politics/"optics", I don't think they could go to the Western pharmaceutical companies and just ask for 3 billion doses. With boosters it's looking like there isn't enough vaccine capacity for the world as it is. I don't think there was ever a real alternative other than a "zero covid strategy"
What seems strange is that they haven't been able to quickly make an mRNA vaccine of their own. Supposedly South Africa has managed to pull it off, and I'd guess China has a much more advanced research/production capacity. Though it's also very possible it's happening and I just haven't heard of it :)
> I don't think they could go to the Western pharmaceutical companies and just ask for 3 billion doses.
Ramping up production was a problem in the beginning but now it should not be a problem to produce enough shots to supply China. Even a single shot mRNA would improve immunity by a lot when combined with other vaccines. If China had ordered it in 2020 they would have received multiple doses per person by now.
The numbers you listed may seem scary at face value but viewed in the right context including compared to other mortality risks like flu and inhumane lockdown conditions where some people run out of food and other basic supplies or turn suicidal, the numbers do not support the conclusion that lockdown is the best way forward.
I don't say that lockdown is the best way when viewed in the rear mirror. But right now it's just a logical continuation of the policy they enacted in the past.
Their vaccination rate among elderly is quite low, their vaccine isn't as good as the main Western vaccines, and their hospital system in rural areas isn't very good. If/when COVID runs rampant they will have a lot of deaths. That's a particularly big problem given the upcoming Party congress where Xi will be crowned as dictator-for-life.
When is the Party congress? Can it happen that, after the congress, they let the Covid run rampant, to get rid of the elderly and have better figures for a few years after that?
Because Chinese propaganda has always tried to shift blame away from the cccp. cccp propaganda continually pushed the message that corona infections were due to contaminated foreign goods (i.e. Not due to the cccp's bad healthcare policies). So to keep in line with propaganda instead of vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable they focused their efforts on vaccinating factory/Dock workers and other that handle a lot of goods. They've basically backed themselves into a corner with their propaganda, and to backtrack now would show weakness and basically admit that they care more about saving face than saving lives.
As long as they can keep censoring angry citizens, and as long as they can keep the cccp in power, as far as they are concerned their covid-policy is working
TLDR: Xi Jin Ping will soon be up for his third term, and he has staked his legacy at least in part on how well China has handled COVID. There will be no changes in China's COVID policy anytime soon.
> Keeping everything locked down has a huge human cost too.
That really depends on what's your personal definition of "keeping everything locked down".
European countries like Spain and Italy showed that lockdowns work quite well in quickly halving infection rates with negligible externalities, but their lockdown focused on non-essential work and everyone was allowed to do basic provisioning things such as going to the supermarket.
Also, if I recall correctly Spain also had in place a kind of stimulus program where people could apply for a guaranteed minimum income scheme.
It boggles the mind how some people conflate a quarantine with solitary confinement under house arrest where people are left to starve to death.
Look, I’m in Barcelona right now. A huge chunk of the population here would be deeply offended by your “negligible externalities”. In fact, I’m not sure who wouldn’t be.
Almost half the restaurants are just gone, other sectors are absolutely devastated too.
The hospitality industry is absolutely fucked, while most hotels still operate they usually have less than half the staff on payroll they used to have before lockdowns.
Because of the economic damage, the security situation in the city has gone to hell. Violent robberies are way up, it’s now normal to get robbed at knifepoint while driving your car. Cars with broken windows are everywhere.
I hate this trend of downplaying how harsh the lockdowns were, even in Western countries. If you think they were worth it because you personally put a high importance on longevity, fine, that’s a legitimate policy position (though I disagree with it). But what happened in Spain and Italy was a catastrophic disruption to normal life by any reasonable standard.
> But what happened in Spain and Italy was a catastrophic disruption to normal life by any reasonable standard.
I lived in Spain through the pandemic. I saw from my apartment the army trucks racing across Madrid, the police cars with loudspeakers advising everyone to stay indoors, and army patrols going through the city to enforce the lockdown.
Do you actually know what was a catastrophic disruption to normal life by any reasonable standard? Having to commandeer the local ice rink to have a place to store all the excess dead bodies, and setting up a huge makeshift hospital in the city's expo hall to accommodate the patients.
Knowing that, do you have any idea what finally managed to reign in the outbreaks under control? Lockdowns. Two weeks since their onset, infection rates dropped to residual.
