China

[Mike4]

News article on the steam radio this morning about people being evicted from their flats by the state so they can set up more quarantine centres. ANYONE with a positive covid test gets sent away to these apparently and Shanghai is into its third week of lockdown. This is not UK style lockdown with endless lists of reasons you can ignore it, some people are not allowed beyond their front doorstep, for others the limit is their front garden gate.

The thing that bothers me is why the Chinese authorities are treating it so seriously when here in the UK the average spod on the street regards covid as pretty much burnt out and harmless. Even the shoppers in Waitrose in Marlborough have broadly abandoned wearing their masks. Does China have a different sort of covid or do they take the risk of mutation more seriously than Boris and his team of covid experts? Or is it something else?

[SalvorHardin]

The thing that bothers me is why the Chinese authorities are treating it so seriously when here in the UK the average spod on the street regards covid as pretty much burnt out and harmless. Even the shoppers in Waitrose in Marlborough have broadly abandoned wearing their masks. Does China have a different sort of covid or do they take the risk of mutation more seriously than Boris and his team of covid experts? Or is it something else?

The Chinese vaccination program has been haphazard, with no prioritising of the elderly. A few weeks ago Reuters said that the over-80s vaccination rate had barely hit 20%. I reckon that China is at least a year behind us in its vaccination programme.

"Only 19.7% of people aged over 80 in China have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster as of March 17, and just 50.7% of that age group have completed their primary vaccinations, said Zeng Yixin, another NHC deputy director."

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/covid-vaccination-rate-people-aged-over-80-china-relatively-low-official-2022-03-18/

Local party bosses have almost certainly been doctoring the vaccination figures, faking statistics whilst pocketing much of the money that was to go towards vaccination programs. Combine this with the low quality of the Chinese vaccines, very low take up by the most vulnerable and the result is a huge outbreak.

As we've seen with the Russian military, a society where there is systemic corruption and a reluctance to tell the truth to higher ups produces a society which results in major screwups once something is put under pressure.

In contrast the coronavirus has become endemic in Britain, with most of the deaths being "with coronavirus" as opposed to being "from coronavirus", with the unvaccinated making up a lot of the cases. I reckon that the figures for people who die and tested positive for the common cold within 28 days would be much bigger.

[NotSure]

The thing that bothers me is why the Chinese authorities are treating it so seriously when here in the UK the average spod on the street regards covid as pretty much burnt out and harmless. Even the shoppers in Waitrose in Marlborough have broadly abandoned wearing their masks. Does China have a different sort of covid or do they take the risk of mutation more seriously than Boris and his team of covid experts? Or is it something else?

Funny you mention Waitrose. Same here - once our Waitrose became broadly mask-free, it seemed to mark the start of the 'living with Covid' era.

Regarding China, IMHO they had a pretty successful 'zero-Covid' policy from the off. Dictators are never wrong, so how can they change tack now?

AFAIK, their health service is patchy and over-stretched too, so they are not very resilient, plus by most accounts, their vaccine is a bit carp.

[servodude]

The thing that bothers me is why the Chinese authorities are treating it so seriously when here in the UK the average spod on the street regards covid as pretty much burnt out and harmless. Even the shoppers in Waitrose in Marlborough have broadly abandoned wearing their masks. Does China have a different sort of covid or do they take the risk of mutation more seriously than Boris and his team of covid experts? Or is it something else?

The Chinese vaccination program has been haphazard, with no prioritising of the elderly. A few weeks ago Reuters said that the over-80s vaccination rate had barely hit 20%.

That's 20% ish with a vaccine that might only just have passed approvals elsewhere
- with an economy that scrapes along in a just-in-time way

Basically they squandered their original suppression success

20% won't even touch the sides

For comparison we know the UK was looking at a smidge over 1.5% deaths with original COVID - given the age profile of the population
- and even though China don't have as many over 80s.. neither do they have facilities to cope
- and since then the virus got more deadly and more infectious but we all got jabs

it's not entirely clear how this variant of the virus might translate to virulence wrt the original... as even though it seems less problematic (to us) that stuff has all been measured in populations that have been well covered with effective vaccines
- so they're well worried given we do know that this variant (or the variants about) are MUCH more infectious (like seriously well more infectious) than the original strain that was pretty infectious anyway

and also it's China

-sd

[GrahamPlatt]

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/ ... -our-times

Referencing the plague in London
“If you fell ill, your house was boarded up with your whole family inside it for 20 days”.

[absolutezero]

Communists gonna communise.
Who would have thought the discredited notion of socialism would lead to authoritarian outcomes?

[UncleEbenezer]

Perhaps also China remembers the previous, much more serious, SARS? They succeed in confining that so it never reached us[1], but the fatality rate was an order of magnitude higher than covid's ever was.

Not that that's any excuse for what's reportedly happening in Shanghai.

[1] I seem to recollect when news first broke, our commentators expected a repeat performance. Not least our Prime Minister, before (with grim news coming from Northern Italy and later more areas) he switched to telling us how well-prepared we were so it wouldn't have any serious effect on us.

[look]

if they apply vaccines to elderly and use more foreign vacinnes all that bad things could be prevented.

[kempiejon]

Don't forget raw garlic, vitamin C & D, potassium and anti inflammatory drugs.

[pje16]

The thing that bothers me is why the Chinese authorities are treating it so seriously when here in the UK the average spod on the street regards covid as pretty much burnt out and harmless. Even the shoppers in Waitrose in Marlborough have broadly abandoned wearing their masks.

Because lots of people over here are too thick to take precautions (just my view)