7 ms·

What is the CCP’s exit strategy? Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid?

substation13 4y ago
I see two options: 1. Figure out a working vaccine of their own (or maybe just license and rebrand a western one) 2. Become increasingly authoritarian - like a high-tech North Korea
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  China already has several highly effective vaccines. The problem is that a significant fraction of elderly people don't want to get vaccinated. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the exact same problem with vaccine hesitancy among the elderly. It's a cultural thing.
  - yreg 4y ago
    Then the option would be to make the vaccination mandatory. CCP doesn't like to do unpopular things, but the lockdowns are not popular either.
    - rhaway84773 4y ago
      China also requires everyone to have an app which gives you a color coded status based on the results of COVID tests taken by you and by those in your family and neighborhood, which defines what activities you’re allowed to engage in and what areas you’re allowed to access. Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.
      - yreg 4y ago
        Vaccination offers good protection against death / serious illness, but isn't that great against catching the virus and being able to infect someone else. Their motivation is to prevent an outbreak. (Which is perhaps impossible long term).
      - chrisbaker98 4y ago
        And to the surprise of no-one, this system has also been used to control the movements of political dissenters for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopped-by-health-codes-turning-red-depositors-say-2022-06-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopp... Anyone who doesn't think that western vaxpass systems could be coopted for similar ends is horrifyingly naive.
        rippercushions 4y ago
        Except that the Western vaxpass systems have all been wound down.
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - j16sdiz 4y ago
    Those "highly effective vaccines" are around 75-80% effective, compare to 90-95% for the best vaccines https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      The best numbers for this come from Hong Kong, which uses both Sinovac and Biontech/Pfizer.[0] Three doses of Sinovac are actually marginally more protective for >80-year-olds (97.9% vs 97.5% effectiveness at preventing death), though the difference is probably not statically significant. 0. Study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00345-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00345-0
  - puppymaster 4y ago
    Not Taiwan. 78% of >75 years old has second shot. 70% has 3rd shot. Source: https://covid-19.nchc.org.tw/dt_002-csse_covid_19_daily_reports_vaccine_city2.php https://covid-19.nchc.org.tw/dt_002-csse_covid_19_daily_repo...
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      Taiwan has had the same struggle as mainland China, when it comes to vaccinating old people. First of all, mainland China's numbers are similar to those of Taiwan. As of March 2022, 82% of people aged 70-79 in China had two shots, while 51% of people aged 80 and up had two shots.[0] These numbers have probably come up a bit since then. Second of all, Taiwan has a similar curve of vaccination rate vs. age. In Europe and the US, vaccination rate generally rises with age. In mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, it's the opposite, and quite dramatically so. 0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306112/china-elderly-population-covid19-vaccination-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306112/china-elderly-po...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  - mozman 4y ago
    I don’t think vaccines are nearly as effective as advertised. I don’t know how this data can be torn apart but it seems plausible. https://drpanda.substack.com/p/whats-causing-all-these-excess-deaths https://drpanda.substack.com/p/whats-causing-all-these-exces...
  - gnfargbl 4y ago
    China's indigenous vaccines (Sinovac and Sinopharm) are based on inactivated virus technology. Describing them as "highly effective" is a bit of a stretch: the WHO [1] put the effectiveness at about 50% against symptomatic infection, and a study in Hong Kong [2] concluded that three doses were required to gain a similar level of efficacy to the mRNA vaccines. The Chinese government has resisted importing Western mRNA vaccines [3], and their own mRNA efforts are not yet up to speed [4]. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinovac-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin... [2] https://archive.ph/TY9if https://archive.ph/TY9if [3] https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-bet-on-homegrown-mrna-vaccines-holds-back-nation-/6587593.html https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-bet-on-homegrown-mrna-vacc... [4] https://archive.ph/ifvbC https://archive.ph/ifvbC
  - gus_massa 4y ago
    That's strange. My father was a voluntary in the polio vaccination in Argentina in ¿1956?. My mother also remember that epidemic. I guess old people here is one of the more conscious groups about how important are the vaccines.
    - StreamBright 4y ago
      The polio vaccine is different though. First it is not a mrna vaccine, second it is ~100% efficient in case of 3 doses. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-dur... "Two doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against paralytic polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective."
      - lelanthran 4y ago
        I don't think parent was comparing vaccines, he was comparing attitudes towards vaccinations. Old people (i.e. those who saw the benefit of polio vaccinations and the horrors of non-vaccination) should be more inclined to vaccinate. Younger people, many of whom have never seen the value of vaccination in their lifetimes, might be more inclined to distrust vaccinations.
      - gus_massa 4y ago
        > The polio vaccine is different though. We used the oral polio vaccine that has attenuated (aka ""live"") virus. A few years ago we switched to use only the injectable polio vaccine that has inactivated (aka "dead") virus. For Covid-19, we use a mix of vaccines. Inactivated virus, vector virus and mrna. It was somewhat random, and each member of my family got a different mix. (I got AstraZeneca , AstraZeneca, Moderna.) Reading only the description, a mrna vaccine looks safer than an attenuated virus vaccine. Anyway, all of them have been testen in clinical trials to ensure they are safe and effective. And anyway, the WHO is trying to use the polio attenuated virus vaccine as few as possible because there are some problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule
    - saint_fiasco 4y ago
  - bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
    It’s a cultural thing for sure. The older generation in China went through the Cultural Revolution and distrusts the government.
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      On the contrary, I find that the older generation has much greater trust in the government than the younger generation, but also believes much more strongly in Chinese traditional medicine. In my experience, people in China nowadays do not associate the post-Mao government with the Cultural Revolution, particularly since the people who took over in its aftermath had themselves been persecuted. Deng Xiaoping was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping's father was purged and imprisoned. Even Xi Jinping himself was affected, in that he was "sent down to the countryside." There's a broad rejection of the Cultural Revolution in China, but that isn't the same as a rejection of the Party or government.
- zpeti 4y ago
  3. Xi gets overthrown, takes the blame for the covid hysteria, new power is installed in China. I have no idea how likely or realistic that is, but seems like an option too.
- powerapple 4y ago
  vaccine does not help. The death rate is very low, and mostly old people with some existing conditions. The party is trying to keep the death number lower than what is happening around the world, which is almost impossible.
smcl 4y ago
They probably could've slowly dialled back the lockdowns and declared that they're doing so because they've managed to get the situation under control. But they can't do that now, it'll look like they're giving in to the protesters. So they're stuck with zero covid for a while longer
i67vw3 4y ago
Even without vaccines, the current covid strain is not even that harmful. If they had done complete lockdown during 1st wave or during Delta wave it was one thing (which they already did at that time and majority of world). But after 2 years it is something else. There literally is a world cup happening half around the world, with maskless people and stadiums filled to the brim. I have read online they are doing this nonsense due to various factions within CCP fighting with each other. This 'zero-covid' stuff as far as I know first started in Shanghai, which I heard the Shanghai CCP faction was fighting against the Xi faction. (Just some rumour I read on internet, no idea if it is true.)
- mschuster91 4y ago
  > Even without vaccines, the current covid strain is not even that harmful. Among the unvaccinated (of which there still exist a shocking amount), it absolutely is harmful. Even amongst the triple or quadruple vaccinated, it can be dangerous. My s/o's sense of smell was impacted for months, we were out of work for two weeks - but a friend of ours for six months and she's still not at the performance mentally that she was prior to catching that virus. There's estimations that anything between 5 to 50% of cases end up as "long covid" [1] - and in a country like the US, which has had about 98 out of 331 million people infected with COVID, even going for the lower end with 10% still means almost ten million people whose productivity will be seriously impacted for a long time. Add on top of that that many people of labor intensive jobs moved on during the pandemic to better employment conditions... and you see the problems like we do in Germany: public transport has gone utterly downhill to outright collapsed in some regions because so many people catch COVID, RSV or other bugs and there aren't enough staff left to replace them, the medical system is ablaze because the workers are burnt out after three years of pandemic with the last two years having to listen to politicians that "the virus isn't bad" while they see in their daily work that the politicians are lying. The death toll was immense as well - for healthcare workers it's one thing if an old person dies of cancer or of old age because that's how life tends to end, but so many young and healthy people died as well. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01702-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01702-2
  - 4y ago
mschuster91 4y ago
> What is the CCP’s exit strategy? For a long time, a combination of lockdowns and mass vaccination to keep the virus at bay at home and hope that the West would follow suit out of its own interests - which did work reasonably well for a long time in China, but collapsed with Omicron as Sinovac and the other domestic vaccines were/are ineffective against it and its sub-lines and they had gone all-in way too early in the pandemic by claiming that their domestic vaccine was good and no Western experimental technology needed. Additionally, Western governments lost the popular support for COVID containment measures after the second or third waves (begin of 2021) thanks to Russia-backed misinformation campaigns, which led to a ton of deaths and the development and spread of Omicron. The problem is, their original exit strategy doesn't work any more, but the CCP can't change course without Xi Jinping "losing face" - they made him effectively a half-god, he can't admit to mistakes, even improvements (since that would mean the old course was not perfect). > Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid? Again, until Omicron appeared, I would say so, yes - and factually, there was at least one line of influenza that was eradicated as a side effect of the anti-COVID measures, and RSV was also kicked down hard (although it came back with a vengeance the last months as there currently is no vaccine). Even taking into account that the COVID numbers were fudged in China on all levels out of political motivations, it is clear that the general idea of border closing and strict isolation for positive people worked (e.g. New Zealand).
- jtc331 4y ago
  Strict isolation and border closing can work if you catch it before community spread. The cases cited of this working (NZ, AU) are notably already geographically isolated and also were in the summer season when mass spread elsewhere began; it’s not at all obvious that strategy could have applied with the same effect in the northern hemisphere at the same time.
- gadders 4y ago
  >> Additionally, Western governments lost the popular support for COVID containment measures after the second or third waves (begin of 2021) thanks to Russia-backed misinformation campaigns, which led to a ton of deaths and the development and spread of Omicron. Is it Russian misinformation causing Chinese people to rebel against containment measures?
DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
China did eradicate CoVID for long stretches of time. From about April 2020 - April 2022, there were only isolated outbreaks, caused by imported cases, which were quickly contained. The vast majority of people in China could live relatively normally, as long as they didn't have to travel internationally. Most people didn't experience any lockdowns during this period. A couple of things have happened that have made things more difficult. The rest of the world has decided to "live with CoVID," and China has reduced border quarantine times to make international travel easier, so there are much larger numbers of imported cases in China than before. Omicron spreads faster, and since most Chinese people (particularly young people) are vaccinated, they have fewer symptoms, meaning outbreaks are not identified as quickly. Finally, the government has tried to take a lighter touch, which means they have let outbreaks grow to larger sizes before imposing lockdowns. A few weeks ago, after the Party Congress ended, the government announced 20 new measures aimed at loosening CoVID restrictions. When the latest outbreak began, local governments did not react nearly as aggressively as they previously would have. That meant that the outbreak has spread much more widely than any previous outbreak (even the original one in Wuhan). Some cities have responded by reversing some of the 20 measures, leaving people confused about what the policy is. One major issue is that while China's overall vaccination rate is quite high, the vaccination rate among the elderly is quite low. For whatever reason, it has been very difficult to convince old people in mainland China (but also culturally similar places, like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) to get vaccinated. If China allows the virus to spread widely, a lot of old people will be at risk.
- andybak 4y ago
  My understanding is that the additional piece of the jigsaw is the refusal to import more effective vaccines as it would reflect poorly on Sinovax and the prounouncements around it. No idea how significant this aspect is but I thought it was worth mentioning for completelness.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    The vaccines in use in China are already highly effective. The best data on this comes from Hong Kong, which uses both Pfizer/Biontech and Sinovac. Three doses of either vaccine is roughly equally effective at preventing death. The problem isn't what vaccines they're using. The problem is that many old people don't want to get vaccinated, period.
stefan_ 4y ago
It's not eradicated until its eradicated worldwide.
obscurette 4y ago
I think that it's misunderstanding that dictatorships need any.
- smcl 4y ago
  I don't know if it's correct to call China a "dictatorship" but I'll humour you for a moment. The idea that dictatorships have everything under control and can conduct themselves however they please is true ... until the point that it isn't. So while a dictator technically doesn't necessarily need to justify themselves or to have a reasonable, fair plan for some given situation that pleases their subjects - they probably don't want to needlessly push things too far if they can help it. However in this case a badly managed change in their Covid strategy doesn't collapse the country or cost the CCP their control over China, but it could cause a bit of a power struggle within the party as factions jostle for position and attempt to shift blame and some higher-ranking politicians will probably lose their position or go to jail for reasons. If you're one of those people, you probably want some kind of plan.
  - ohbtvz 4y ago
    > I don't know if it's correct to call China a "dictatorship" but I'll humour you for a moment. Seriously? What's your definition of "dictatorship"? Let's take Wikipedia's one for example: > A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader or a group of leaders which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. Can you sincerely say that it doesn't apply?
    - smcl 4y ago
      China is a lot of things, it's nominally communist but that doesn't quite capture the whole situation on its own, it's technically a "dictatorship" by that definition (probably more so recently with Xi Jinping consolidating power) but that also doesn't quite capture it all either. I don't want to debate terminology because it's tedious and detracts from the actual point I was making - that just because the CCP has a lot of power, doesn't mean they don't believe they need a face-saving way out of zero-Covid.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
powerapple 4y ago
They could easily declare victory, death number is significantly lower. End of story.

I see two options: 1. Figure out a working vaccine of their own (or maybe just license and rebrand a western one) 2. Become increasingly authoritarian - like a high-tech North Korea

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
China already has several highly effective vaccines. The problem is that a significant fraction of elderly people don't want to get vaccinated. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the exact same problem with vaccine hesitancy among the elderly. It's a cultural thing.
- yreg 4y ago
  Then the option would be to make the vaccination mandatory. CCP doesn't like to do unpopular things, but the lockdowns are not popular either.
  - rhaway84773 4y ago
    China also requires everyone to have an app which gives you a color coded status based on the results of COVID tests taken by you and by those in your family and neighborhood, which defines what activities you’re allowed to engage in and what areas you’re allowed to access. Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.
    - yreg 4y ago
      Vaccination offers good protection against death / serious illness, but isn't that great against catching the virus and being able to infect someone else. Their motivation is to prevent an outbreak. (Which is perhaps impossible long term).
    - chrisbaker98 4y ago
      And to the surprise of no-one, this system has also been used to control the movements of political dissenters for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopped-by-health-codes-turning-red-depositors-say-2022-06-14/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopp... Anyone who doesn't think that western vaxpass systems could be coopted for similar ends is horrifyingly naive.
      - rippercushions 4y ago
        Except that the Western vaxpass systems have all been wound down.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- j16sdiz 4y ago
  Those "highly effective vaccines" are around 75-80% effective, compare to 90-95% for the best vaccines https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    The best numbers for this come from Hong Kong, which uses both Sinovac and Biontech/Pfizer.[0] Three doses of Sinovac are actually marginally more protective for >80-year-olds (97.9% vs 97.5% effectiveness at preventing death), though the difference is probably not statically significant. 0. Study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00345-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00345-0
- puppymaster 4y ago
  Not Taiwan. 78% of >75 years old has second shot. 70% has 3rd shot. Source: https://covid-19.nchc.org.tw/dt_002-csse_covid_19_daily_reports_vaccine_city2.php https://covid-19.nchc.org.tw/dt_002-csse_covid_19_daily_repo...
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    Taiwan has had the same struggle as mainland China, when it comes to vaccinating old people. First of all, mainland China's numbers are similar to those of Taiwan. As of March 2022, 82% of people aged 70-79 in China had two shots, while 51% of people aged 80 and up had two shots.[0] These numbers have probably come up a bit since then. Second of all, Taiwan has a similar curve of vaccination rate vs. age. In Europe and the US, vaccination rate generally rises with age. In mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, it's the opposite, and quite dramatically so. 0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306112/china-elderly-population-covid19-vaccination-rate/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306112/china-elderly-po...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- mozman 4y ago
  I don’t think vaccines are nearly as effective as advertised. I don’t know how this data can be torn apart but it seems plausible. https://drpanda.substack.com/p/whats-causing-all-these-excess-deaths https://drpanda.substack.com/p/whats-causing-all-these-exces...
- gnfargbl 4y ago
  China's indigenous vaccines (Sinovac and Sinopharm) are based on inactivated virus technology. Describing them as "highly effective" is a bit of a stretch: the WHO [1] put the effectiveness at about 50% against symptomatic infection, and a study in Hong Kong [2] concluded that three doses were required to gain a similar level of efficacy to the mRNA vaccines. The Chinese government has resisted importing Western mRNA vaccines [3], and their own mRNA efforts are not yet up to speed [4]. [1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinovac-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin... [2] https://archive.ph/TY9if https://archive.ph/TY9if [3] https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-bet-on-homegrown-mrna-vaccines-holds-back-nation-/6587593.html https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-bet-on-homegrown-mrna-vacc... [4] https://archive.ph/ifvbC https://archive.ph/ifvbC
- gus_massa 4y ago
  That's strange. My father was a voluntary in the polio vaccination in Argentina in ¿1956?. My mother also remember that epidemic. I guess old people here is one of the more conscious groups about how important are the vaccines.
  - StreamBright 4y ago
    The polio vaccine is different though. First it is not a mrna vaccine, second it is ~100% efficient in case of 3 doses. https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-duration-protection.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-dur... "Two doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against paralytic polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective."
    - lelanthran 4y ago
      I don't think parent was comparing vaccines, he was comparing attitudes towards vaccinations. Old people (i.e. those who saw the benefit of polio vaccinations and the horrors of non-vaccination) should be more inclined to vaccinate. Younger people, many of whom have never seen the value of vaccination in their lifetimes, might be more inclined to distrust vaccinations.
    - gus_massa 4y ago
      > The polio vaccine is different though. We used the oral polio vaccine that has attenuated (aka ""live"") virus. A few years ago we switched to use only the injectable polio vaccine that has inactivated (aka "dead") virus. For Covid-19, we use a mix of vaccines. Inactivated virus, vector virus and mrna. It was somewhat random, and each member of my family got a different mix. (I got AstraZeneca , AstraZeneca, Moderna.) Reading only the description, a mrna vaccine looks safer than an attenuated virus vaccine. Anyway, all of them have been testen in clinical trials to ensure they are safe and effective. And anyway, the WHO is trying to use the polio attenuated virus vaccine as few as possible because there are some problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule
  - saint_fiasco 4y ago
- bitxbitxbitcoin 4y ago
  It’s a cultural thing for sure. The older generation in China went through the Cultural Revolution and distrusts the government.
  - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
    On the contrary, I find that the older generation has much greater trust in the government than the younger generation, but also believes much more strongly in Chinese traditional medicine. In my experience, people in China nowadays do not associate the post-Mao government with the Cultural Revolution, particularly since the people who took over in its aftermath had themselves been persecuted. Deng Xiaoping was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping's father was purged and imprisoned. Even Xi Jinping himself was affected, in that he was "sent down to the countryside." There's a broad rejection of the Cultural Revolution in China, but that isn't the same as a rejection of the Party or government.
zpeti 4y ago
3. Xi gets overthrown, takes the blame for the covid hysteria, new power is installed in China. I have no idea how likely or realistic that is, but seems like an option too.
powerapple 4y ago
vaccine does not help. The death rate is very low, and mostly old people with some existing conditions. The party is trying to keep the death number lower than what is happening around the world, which is almost impossible.

smcl 4y ago

They probably could've slowly dialled back the lockdowns and declared that they're doing so because they've managed to get the situation under control. But they can't do that now, it'll look like they're giving in to the protesters. So they're stuck with zero covid for a while longer

i67vw3 4y ago

Even without vaccines, the current covid strain is not even that harmful. If they had done complete lockdown during 1st wave or during Delta wave it was one thing (which they already did at that time and majority of world). But after 2 years it is something else. There literally is a world cup happening half around the world, with maskless people and stadiums filled to the brim. I have read online they are doing this nonsense due to various factions within CCP fighting with each other. This 'zero-covid' stuff as far as I know first started in Shanghai, which I heard the Shanghai CCP faction was fighting against the Xi faction. (Just some rumour I read on internet, no idea if it is true.)

mschuster91 4y ago
> Even without vaccines, the current covid strain is not even that harmful. Among the unvaccinated (of which there still exist a shocking amount), it absolutely is harmful. Even amongst the triple or quadruple vaccinated, it can be dangerous. My s/o's sense of smell was impacted for months, we were out of work for two weeks - but a friend of ours for six months and she's still not at the performance mentally that she was prior to catching that virus. There's estimations that anything between 5 to 50% of cases end up as "long covid" [1] - and in a country like the US, which has had about 98 out of 331 million people infected with COVID, even going for the lower end with 10% still means almost ten million people whose productivity will be seriously impacted for a long time. Add on top of that that many people of labor intensive jobs moved on during the pandemic to better employment conditions... and you see the problems like we do in Germany: public transport has gone utterly downhill to outright collapsed in some regions because so many people catch COVID, RSV or other bugs and there aren't enough staff left to replace them, the medical system is ablaze because the workers are burnt out after three years of pandemic with the last two years having to listen to politicians that "the virus isn't bad" while they see in their daily work that the politicians are lying. The death toll was immense as well - for healthcare workers it's one thing if an old person dies of cancer or of old age because that's how life tends to end, but so many young and healthy people died as well. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01702-2 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-01702-2
- 4y ago

mschuster91 4y ago

> What is the CCP’s exit strategy? For a long time, a combination of lockdowns and mass vaccination to keep the virus at bay at home and hope that the West would follow suit out of its own interests - which did work reasonably well for a long time in China, but collapsed with Omicron as Sinovac and the other domestic vaccines were/are ineffective against it and its sub-lines and they had gone all-in way too early in the pandemic by claiming that their domestic vaccine was good and no Western experimental technology needed. Additionally, Western governments lost the popular support for COVID containment measures after the second or third waves (begin of 2021) thanks to Russia-backed misinformation campaigns, which led to a ton of deaths and the development and spread of Omicron. The problem is, their original exit strategy doesn't work any more, but the CCP can't change course without Xi Jinping "losing face" - they made him effectively a half-god, he can't admit to mistakes, even improvements (since that would mean the old course was not perfect). > Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid? Again, until Omicron appeared, I would say so, yes - and factually, there was at least one line of influenza that was eradicated as a side effect of the anti-COVID measures, and RSV was also kicked down hard (although it came back with a vengeance the last months as there currently is no vaccine). Even taking into account that the COVID numbers were fudged in China on all levels out of political motivations, it is clear that the general idea of border closing and strict isolation for positive people worked (e.g. New Zealand).

jtc331 4y ago
Strict isolation and border closing can work if you catch it before community spread. The cases cited of this working (NZ, AU) are notably already geographically isolated and also were in the summer season when mass spread elsewhere began; it’s not at all obvious that strategy could have applied with the same effect in the northern hemisphere at the same time.
gadders 4y ago
>> Additionally, Western governments lost the popular support for COVID containment measures after the second or third waves (begin of 2021) thanks to Russia-backed misinformation campaigns, which led to a ton of deaths and the development and spread of Omicron. Is it Russian misinformation causing Chinese people to rebel against containment measures?

DiogenesKynikos 4y ago

China did eradicate CoVID for long stretches of time. From about April 2020 - April 2022, there were only isolated outbreaks, caused by imported cases, which were quickly contained. The vast majority of people in China could live relatively normally, as long as they didn't have to travel internationally. Most people didn't experience any lockdowns during this period. A couple of things have happened that have made things more difficult. The rest of the world has decided to "live with CoVID," and China has reduced border quarantine times to make international travel easier, so there are much larger numbers of imported cases in China than before. Omicron spreads faster, and since most Chinese people (particularly young people) are vaccinated, they have fewer symptoms, meaning outbreaks are not identified as quickly. Finally, the government has tried to take a lighter touch, which means they have let outbreaks grow to larger sizes before imposing lockdowns. A few weeks ago, after the Party Congress ended, the government announced 20 new measures aimed at loosening CoVID restrictions. When the latest outbreak began, local governments did not react nearly as aggressively as they previously would have. That meant that the outbreak has spread much more widely than any previous outbreak (even the original one in Wuhan). Some cities have responded by reversing some of the 20 measures, leaving people confused about what the policy is. One major issue is that while China's overall vaccination rate is quite high, the vaccination rate among the elderly is quite low. For whatever reason, it has been very difficult to convince old people in mainland China (but also culturally similar places, like Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore) to get vaccinated. If China allows the virus to spread widely, a lot of old people will be at risk.

andybak 4y ago
My understanding is that the additional piece of the jigsaw is the refusal to import more effective vaccines as it would reflect poorly on Sinovax and the prounouncements around it. No idea how significant this aspect is but I thought it was worth mentioning for completelness.
- DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
  The vaccines in use in China are already highly effective. The best data on this comes from Hong Kong, which uses both Pfizer/Biontech and Sinovac. Three doses of either vaccine is roughly equally effective at preventing death. The problem isn't what vaccines they're using. The problem is that many old people don't want to get vaccinated, period.

stefan_ 4y ago

It's not eradicated until its eradicated worldwide.

obscurette 4y ago

I think that it's misunderstanding that dictatorships need any.

smcl 4y ago
I don't know if it's correct to call China a "dictatorship" but I'll humour you for a moment. The idea that dictatorships have everything under control and can conduct themselves however they please is true ... until the point that it isn't. So while a dictator technically doesn't necessarily need to justify themselves or to have a reasonable, fair plan for some given situation that pleases their subjects - they probably don't want to needlessly push things too far if they can help it. However in this case a badly managed change in their Covid strategy doesn't collapse the country or cost the CCP their control over China, but it could cause a bit of a power struggle within the party as factions jostle for position and attempt to shift blame and some higher-ranking politicians will probably lose their position or go to jail for reasons. If you're one of those people, you probably want some kind of plan.
- ohbtvz 4y ago
  > I don't know if it's correct to call China a "dictatorship" but I'll humour you for a moment. Seriously? What's your definition of "dictatorship"? Let's take Wikipedia's one for example: > A dictatorship is a form of government which is characterized by a leader or a group of leaders which holds governmental powers with few to no limitations on them. Can you sincerely say that it doesn't apply?
  - smcl 4y ago
    China is a lot of things, it's nominally communist but that doesn't quite capture the whole situation on its own, it's technically a "dictatorship" by that definition (probably more so recently with Xi Jinping consolidating power) but that also doesn't quite capture it all either. I don't want to debate terminology because it's tedious and detracts from the actual point I was making - that just because the CCP has a lot of power, doesn't mean they don't believe they need a face-saving way out of zero-Covid.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

powerapple 4y ago

They could easily declare victory, death number is significantly lower. End of story.