China's move to dismantle its strict COVID regime, which unleashed the virus onto its 1.4 billion residents, could have led to nearly 2 million excess deaths in the following two months, a US study shows.
While I can’t question the numbers from the article, it’s completely missing the major point:
As someone living in China, it was very obvious that covid zero had ultimately failed when Omnicron and its mutations hit the mainland. They could spread faster than a 72-48h detection window (mandatory testing rhythm depending on the city) could detect new infections to isolate people.
Consequently, the reporting of new infections was stopped for about a week (thought testing continued) and then literally over night all testing booths, QR code apps and associated infrastructure disappeared completely from malls, office buildings, restaurants and whatnot.
The day after about 40% of my office were infected (either showing symptoms or reported a positive self-test), the next day another 30%, and by the end of the week we were all sick. And this is not merely anecdotal evidence, about the same spread pattern was observed in most larger cities. This could under no circumstances have happened if the virus hadn’t already spread far and wide, and merely the reporting had ceased so people were left in the dark.
Curbing the covid zero policy was the result of a spread beyond containment, not the root cause thereof.
It failed because the CCP didn’t spend the time gained by the strategy to vaccinate the whole population. They would have had plenty of time for that until Omicron hit.
In an unvaccinated workplace, a single infected person can easily infect everybody in a single day. In my country, by that time everybody already was either vaccinated or recovered (or dead), so it only hit half of the people (I was one of the ones who got it back then btw).
In my company everyone was vaccinated, but with the local juice. Fairly inefficient, and they knew it. But rather than approving mRNA vaccines for the local market, they played protectionist, as always.
I was lucky enough to have had a business trip to Germany a few months back where I got myself a Biontech booster. Consequently I had super mild symptoms (tired as fuck and fever .4 out of the normal range) and already fully recovered on the afternoon of day 2, while most of my colleagues where bedbound for 3-7 days. Unless some of them simulated and enjoyed a casual break…
Yeah, from what I gathered, the Chinese vaccination wasn’t much better than a placebo, especially with the rapidly evolving variants. This didn’t help at all.
Apparently that thing spread fast. Say one person goes to a meeting at a different company, get infected, comes back to the office, he can infect the entire office by noon. Who someone else can carry to a different company in the afternoon, etc. Any public transportation and it’s all over.
While I can’t question the numbers from the article, it’s completely missing the major point:
As someone living in China, it was very obvious that covid zero had ultimately failed when Omnicron and its mutations hit the mainland. They could spread faster than a 72-48h detection window (mandatory testing rhythm depending on the city) could detect new infections to isolate people.
Consequently, the reporting of new infections was stopped for about a week (thought testing continued) and then literally over night all testing booths, QR code apps and associated infrastructure disappeared completely from malls, office buildings, restaurants and whatnot.
The day after about 40% of my office were infected (either showing symptoms or reported a positive self-test), the next day another 30%, and by the end of the week we were all sick. And this is not merely anecdotal evidence, about the same spread pattern was observed in most larger cities. This could under no circumstances have happened if the virus hadn’t already spread far and wide, and merely the reporting had ceased so people were left in the dark.
Curbing the covid zero policy was the result of a spread beyond containment, not the root cause thereof.
It failed because the CCP didn’t spend the time gained by the strategy to vaccinate the whole population. They would have had plenty of time for that until Omicron hit.
In an unvaccinated workplace, a single infected person can easily infect everybody in a single day. In my country, by that time everybody already was either vaccinated or recovered (or dead), so it only hit half of the people (I was one of the ones who got it back then btw).
In my company everyone was vaccinated, but with the local juice. Fairly inefficient, and they knew it. But rather than approving mRNA vaccines for the local market, they played protectionist, as always.
I was lucky enough to have had a business trip to Germany a few months back where I got myself a Biontech booster. Consequently I had super mild symptoms (tired as fuck and fever .4 out of the normal range) and already fully recovered on the afternoon of day 2, while most of my colleagues where bedbound for 3-7 days. Unless some of them simulated and enjoyed a casual break…
Yeah, from what I gathered, the Chinese vaccination wasn’t much better than a placebo, especially with the rapidly evolving variants. This didn’t help at all.
Apparently that thing spread fast. Say one person goes to a meeting at a different company, get infected, comes back to the office, he can infect the entire office by noon. Who someone else can carry to a different company in the afternoon, etc. Any public transportation and it’s all over.
once again China government favors appearances over actually fixing things