The aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic in China: Rejoinder of Wu’s post on social media and her disappointment with my daughter Evelyn
Matthew Bossons is a journalist and an editor based in China. He has lived in China since 2014. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
After living through a wave of xenophobia during Covid-19 time in China in the spring of 2020 it was no surprise that the threat of disease by foreigners was immediately brought to his attention.
Wu blasted the advice out to his nearly half a million followers on Weibo, China’s heavily censored version of Twitter, and it was quickly picked up and further publicized by state-backed media outlets.
Last week I returned to Shanghai from Guangzhou — a city in southern China dealing with a Covid-19 outbreak — and left the airport without so much as a peep about quarantining or self-isolating.
Infamously, many of the city’s African residents were expelled from their residences and denied access to hotels despite having not left the country since the pandemic began. Expats in the city were turned away from the subway, the gym denied non- Chinese patrons and taxi drivers refused to pick up foreigners due to fear of contracting the disease.
The memories came flooding back when Wu posted his social media post. And while I pondered how local commuters may receive me on the bus to work the following Monday, a bigger concern loomed: How would my five-year-old daughter be treated by her peers at the local kindergarten she attends in our new home base of Shanghai. We had moved from Guangzhou to Beijing in July 2020 and from Beijing to Shanghai in July 2021.
Despite having Chinese ancestry, my daughter, Evelyn, does not look particularly Chinese, a fact that is often pointed out to my wife, who hails from Jiangsu province in eastern China. As such, she stands out among her classmates, who are all ethnically Chinese.
My worst fears were seemingly confirmed the following Monday evening when Evelyn returned from school and told her mom that she wanted more than anything to “look Chinese.” She said she was taunted with calls of “waigouren,” meaning “foreigner” in Mandarin Chinese, by her classmates.
Evelyn was only three years old and not yet attending school in the spring of 2020, helping to insulate her from Guangzhou’s wave of Covid-induced discrimination. This time, she is more at risk of health-related hysteria.
Words from power carry weight, and careless comments or malicious statements risk othering segments of society and fueling xenophobic attitudes. The rise of anti- Asian incidents in the US and other Western nations was likely due to Donald Trump using terms like “Kung flu” and ” Chinese virus” to mask his racist views.
It’s an affront to science and common sense, yet — reminiscent of the mindlessness of the Cultural Revolution — officials and citizens around the country go to ridiculous lengths to execute it. Entire cities are shut down even for small outbreaks, and coronavirus tests are conducted on fish and other food products, cars, even construction materials. It has brought a lot of misery and chaos to China, as people have been locked down for missing corona viruses and businesses have lost money. When Chengdu, a city of 21 million people, was locked down in September, residents were blocked from leaving their flats even when an earthquake struck.
A video that shows her shouting abuse at workers dressed in hazmat gear on a social media platform went viral recently and appears to show why the Chinese public is fed up with the government.
The woman has been under quarantine for half a year since returning from university in the summer, she shouts at the workers. They stare back, seemingly unmoved.
Observers of the China Day of the Zero-Covid Test: An Outburst from the First Day of Reionization
Most Asian economies are abandoning restrictions on travel due to the flu, but Chinese authorities are still adamant that the battle is not over.
Observers around the world will be watching the meeting for signs of the party’s priorities when it comes to its zero- covid stance, which has been blamed for causing problems in the economy and a collapsing housing market.
“Say no to Covid test, yes to food. No to be locked up, and yes to freedom. No to lies, yes to dignity. No to cultural revolution, yes to reform. Yes, no to a great leader. Don’t be a slave, be a citizen,” one banner read, while the other called for the removal of “dictator and national traitor Xi Jinping.”
The site of the protest was immediately deleted from search results by Weibo. Key words including Beijing,Haidian, warrior andbrave man were restricted from being searched.
Numerous accounts on Weibo and WeChat, the super-app essential for daily life in China, have been banned after commenting on – or alluding to – the protest.
Still, many expressed their support and awe. Some shared the Chinese pop hit “Lonely Warrior” in a veiled reference to the protester, who some called a “hero,” while others swore never to forget, posting under the hashtag: “I saw it.”
China’s zero-Covid crisis has come to an end: the case of 47 Covid-19 in Inner Mongolia and far western Xinjiang
But, now, as Xi steps into an expected new era of his rule, that system – known today as the “dynamic zero-Covid” policy – is facing both social and economic pushback.
In Shanghai, where 25 million people have already endured two months of the world’s strictest lockdown, residents are now on edge at any signs of a repeat as authorities begin to tighten measures once again.
On Thursday the city had 47 Covid-19 cases, one day after the authorities ordered six districts to shut down entertainment venues. Disney resort in Shanghai has suspended its live performances and attractions since Sunday.
Spooked by the possibility of unpredictable and unannounced snap lockdowns – and mindful that authorities have previously backtracked after suggesting that no such measures were coming – some people in the city have reportedly been hoarding drinking water.
The announcement that the water authorities have taken action to ensure water quality after discovering saltwater in the water has made panic buying even worse.
The country has seen an increase in cases in domestic tourist destinations despite the strict restrictions on travel that were in effect for China’s Golden Week holiday.
According to a deputy director of the Department of Education, there are more than 240,000 university students locked down in Inner Mongolia because of the latest outbreak. The university communist party boss was fired after 39 students from his institution tested positive for the disease.
Then there is the situation in far western Xinjiang, where some 22 million people have been banned from leaving the region and are required to stay home. Xinjiang recorded 403 new cases on Thursday, according to an official tally.
Beijing appears unwilling to budge from its hardline stance. commentaries from the Communist Party’s People’s Daily stated that China would not let its guard down.
It claimed that the battle against Covid was winnable. The countries that had reopened and loosened restrictions had to because they had failed to effectively control the epidemic.
HONG KONG — As anger simmered in Wuhan over the mishandling of the first coronavirus outbreak in early 2020, the Communist Party sent top officials to deal with the growing political crisis. One of them, Sun Chunlan, stayed for three months, rallying local cadres and sourcing protective gear for health workers and hospital beds for patients.
She warned that any deserters would be made to appear as traitors in the eyes of the world.
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As the rare woman in the upper echelons of Chinese politics, it is a role to which she has become accustomed, driving the Communist Party’s will and bearing the country’s criticism. “Women most of the time get pushed to the frontline when male politicians don’t want to deal with a crisis,” said Hanzhang Liu, assistant professor of politics at Pitzer College.
Nearly three years later, however, Xi is poised to cement his place as China’s most powerful leader in decades, when he is anointed with a likely norm-breaking third term as the party chief on Sunday.
As China’s Communist Party National Congress meets this week to approve the party’s priorities for the next five years, many are watching for signs restrictions could be loosened. But with Xi having personally tied himself to the policy, any change would need to come straight from the top – and from a leader, who throughout his rule, has sought to extend, not curtail, the party’s control on daily life.
China’s advanced online ecosystem – run on mobile phone superapps and ubiquitous QR codes – has offered arguably unrivaled convenience for consumers to shop, dine and travel. Technologies have a role in constraining daily life.
The system, which is separate from the health code scanning system still required in a reduced number of places in China, had used people’s cell phone data to track their travel history in the past 14 days in an attempt to identify those who have been to a city with zone designated “high-risk” by authorities.
Basic activities, such as going to the grocery store or riding public transportation, depend on holding an up-to-date negative Covid test and not being flagged as a close contact of a patient.
A risk that goes with being in public is the risk of being barricaded into a building as part of a snap shut down, if someone in the general vicinity ends up testing positive.
“(You see) all the flaws of big data when it has control over your daily life,” said one Shanghai resident surnamed Li, who spent a recent afternoon scrambling to prove he didn’t need to quarantine after a tracking system pinned his wife to a location near to where a positive case had been detected.
Li, who had been with his wife but did not get a message, said they were able to reach a hotline and explain their situation and give her a green health code.
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“The essence of persisting with dynamic zero-Covid is putting people first and prioritizing life,” read a recent editorial in the People’s Daily – one of three along similar lines released by the party mouthpiece last week in an apparent bid to lower public expectation about any policy changes ahead of the Party Congress.
“What makes you think that you won’t be on that late-night bus one day?” read a viral comment, which garnered more than 250,000 likes before it was censored – one of a number of glimpses into rising frustration with the cost of the policy.
Last week, a rare political protest in Beijing saw banners hung from a bridge along the capital’s busy Third Ring Road that zoned in on social controls under the policy.
The changes move China “in the right direction”, says Adam Chen, a public-health researcher at the University of Georgia in Athens. They try to balance the need to protect the most vulnerable people from infection, while also reducing the economic and social harms of lockdowns, he says.
But for the citizens back home who are trapped in lockdown, recurring issues like accessing prompt medical care or enough food and supplies, or losing work and income – have over and over again led to hardship and tragedy, including numerous deaths believed to be linked to delayed access to medical care.
In the run up to the Party Congress, controls amplified – as local authorities around the country sought to tamp down on outbreaks coinciding with the major political event.
“At the same time, the threat posed by Covid is reduced because of the higher vaccine coverage and the availability of antivirals. Taken together, I think the point has already been crossed where continuing zero-Covid could be considered a cost-effective strategy,” he said, adding that maintaining high vaccine coverage was key for a planned transition away from zero-Covid.
Health experts say increasing vaccinations is a key part of the way forward if the government hopes to minimize the impact as the virus inevitably spreads.
China has not imported any foreign-made vaccines, which are widely seen inside the country to be more effective than China’s homegrown jabs. And data on the Chinese vaccines has been conflicting. Scientists report Sinovac Boosters can prevent illness in old people. This month, though, Singapore-based scientists concluded that three or four doses of mRNA vaccines offered better protection for people over 60 than China’s inactivated virus vaccines for COVID-19.
“The vaccines take time, the ICU expansion takes time – and if you don’t see effort to prepare for the change, that implies that they are not planning to change the policy any time soon,” said Yanzhong Huang, a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
The Censor of Pandemic Control: New Actions by the Chinese Government to Ensure Covid is Enforcing Social Laws
The health codes system has been used to diffuse social protest, with people who lost their savings in rural banks banned from protesting after their health codes inexplicably turned red.
A weekend of angry street protests last month against Beijing’s hardline pandemic control policy, known as “dynamic zero COVID”, seems to have nudged the authorities to take more risks. The policy’s strict elements are being rolled back by the authorities.
There was the Great Leap Forward, the industrial reform campaign begun in 1958 that precipitated a devastating famine; the political witch hunts of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, which nearly tore China apart; and many more, some more damaging than others, and each targeting some political, social or economic imperative of the day. Their cumulative effect is one of the Communist Party’s greatest achievements: a near-perfect symbiosis between dictatorial government and subservient population.
The campaign of mass control has come and gone in the past, but its most undeserving aspect is that it allows citizens to be tracked by authorities, their movements circumscribed, even though it’s meant to suppress Covid. This system was used by government officials to keep people from participating in a protest in central China. Those officials were later punished, but the fact remains that the government now has a system that Mao Zedong could only have dreamed of, powered by data and algorithms, to monitor and control the people.
China has reduced the amount of time travelers entering the country must spend in quarantine and removed a major restriction on international flights, in a sign of a limited easing of its stringent zero-Covid policy.
The new measures were announced Friday following a meeting by the ruling Communist Party’s top decision-making body, during which leaders vowed to maintain Covid protocols while stressing the need to minimize economic and social disruptions.
The Covid-19 epidemic is coming back with a vengeance: monitoring, testing and quarantine in the United States and across borders
Escalating challenges from highly transmissible new variant and heavy economic and social costs have drawn mounting public backlash to the zero tolerance approach.
The easing of the measures will see authorities scrap the so-called “circuit breaker” mechanism, under which China-bound flights were suspended if an airline was found to carry a certain number of passengers who tested positive for Covid upon landing.
International travelers will see their requirement reduced from two to one and their centralizedQuarantine cut from seven days to five days after arriving in the US.
Markets responded well to the changes, despite the Covid-19 restrictions keeping international investors jittery. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index shot up 7% just after the noon break local time, while mainland China’s benchmark Shanghai Composite Index rose 2.5%.
Under the new guidelines, people who are identified as close contacts of Covid-19 cases will also have shortened quarantine at centralized government-operated facilities, down from seven days plus another three days at home, to five days and three days at home.
Furthermore, the guidelines do not lift testing and quarantine requirements for international travellers, which “doesn’t have a rationale if the objective is no longer zero COVID”, says Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong.
The government reported 10,535 new domestically transmitted cases on Thursday, the highest in months, and the authorities girded for the situation to worsen.
The commission said that the epidemic is likely to expand due to the winter and spring weather factors.
But COVID-19 restrictions started being lifted last year. The surge is only kicking in now. Hensley was concerned that flu and RSV would rebound last year. The Northern Hemisphere had a mild flu season. The peak of infections did not come until the summer of 2021 which might have helped to curb the spread of the virus. Factors such as temperature and humidity play a part in transmitting the virus, and that peak “was not [at] a time that was environmentally favourable to RSV”, says Virginia Pitzer, an epidemiologist at the Yale School of Public Health in New Haven, Connecticut.
“These viruses are coming back, and they’re coming back with a vengeance,” says Scott Hensley, an immunologist at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. “It is possible that this year will be sort of the granddaddy of them all in terms of flu.”
Some scientists have also posited on social media that the surge in RSV hospitalizations might be the result of SARS-CoV-2 infection causing immune deficiencies that leave people more susceptible to other infections. But Miller says hasn’t seen any evidence for that either, and the surge in hospitalizations could be explained by the large number of people who missed exposures in the past few years. “There’s a slightly bigger naive population, all of whom are at risk. So you’ve got more numbers going into the system.”
Children and adults who have been previously hospitalized for an illness are at increased risk of waning immunity. The levels of Antibody levels decline in the absence of a Viruses. In a typical year, John Tregoning says we might get exposed to a small amount of virus and our body fights it off. It has been a few years since that type of boosting has happened.
Researchers still don’t understand seasonal viruses. For example, COVID-19 restrictions seemed to have little impact on one type of seasonal virus, rhinoviruses — which are the most common cause of colds — for reasons that aren’t entirely understood. That might be because of their hardiness, Miller says. They are less prone to desiccation and can last longer in the environment.
Another open question is how these viruses compete and interfere with one another. When one virus is raised with another, it can prevent infections with other viruses. Hensley points out that last year’s first wave of influenza declined soon after the Omicron surge began. Omicron may have provided some short-lived protection against flu. Or maybe the Omicron surge simply convinced people to mask up and keep their distance.
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Pitzer expects that next year’s peaks and valleys might look much more like those that occurred before the pandemic. She isn’t placing any bets. But she says: “I do expect that this winter is probably going to be the last unusual winter.”
Students in China are going back to class on their laptops. My girl is off school for a second week because her kindergarten is closed because of Covid-19 restrictions. At this point, she has spent more time at home in 2022 than in the classroom.
It is nearly impossible to plan more than 20 minutes in advance of the event. It is bad for business and it also affects ordinary people’s ability to go about their lives since they might get locked down in their apartment, workplace or even Shanghai Disneyland.
Some friends of a friend who have suffered through an unexpected lock down or other similar event have taken the liberty of carrying a backpack full of their belongings, if they get trapped in the pub.
One in five urban youth in the country are jobless, business meetings and trade shows are being postponed or canceled, and workplaces are regularly shuttered over concerns about the coronavirus, including the recent lockdown at a Foxconn manufacturing center — which left employees literally fleeing down a highway.
You would presume that traveling from a city with a well-publicized disease outbreak would be enough to warrant immediate notice of self-isolation upon debarking the plane. Alas, not.
My wife and daughter were allowed to leave the apartment and roam around the city while I was out of town for four days. I suppose I was bitten by the bug and it was my family that were carriers, so why wouldn’t a policy protect people’s health to the greatest extent possible?
During Shanghai’s marathon two-month lockdown this year, phones were reportedly ringing off the hook at the offices of mental health specialists. In my apartment complex, two people tragically took their lives during the citywide shutdown, and speculation in our community chat group is that the lockdown was at least partially to blame.
A woman suffering from anxiety disorders died after jumping from a locked-down apartment building in the capital city of China.
On the same day Zhou lost his father, a young boy died of gas poisoning in a locked down compound, which was blocked from being sent to a hospital. A baby girl died in a hotel in Zhengzhou due to a delay in medical care.
“None of the fans are seen wearing face masks, or told to submit proof of Covid test results. Are they living in the same way as we are? asked a Wechat article questioning China’s insistence on zero-Covid, which went viral before it was censored.
Following the young boy’s death in Lanzhou, the internet rage machine was running at full capacity, with related hashtags on Weibo racking up hundreds of millions of views.
Protests erupted Nov. 25 after 10 people died in a fire in the northwestern city of Urumqi. Many believed COVID-19 restrictions may have impeded rescue efforts. The claims were denied by authorities but demonstrators voiced longstanding frustration in cities such as Shanghai that have had severe lock ups.
Unfortunately for those hoping for a swift end to zero-Covid, negative public feedback is unlikely to result in any immediate changes. But if the economic situation does not improve and discontent grows, it could force the government to reevaluate its position — it has happened before.
Covid Guangzhou Protests intl-hnk (Euclidean censorship, quarantining, and the era of the pandemic): A social media protest
The residents of Guangzhou have taken the streets in defiance of local orders after they took down barriers meant to confine them to their homes, according to images and videos circulating on social media.
The city placed three districts under lock down last week in order to stem the spread of the disease. That was followed in recent days by additional measures on neighborhoods designated “high risk.”
The clanging sound of metal barriers falling reverberates across the neighborhood and mingles with cheers in the footage, in scenes multiple social media users said took place late Monday evening on district streets.
It is not clear how many people were involved in the protest, or how long it lasted. The Chinese internet censors quickly removed related posts.
At a news conference Monday, the deputy director of the Guangzhou municipal health commission said that the pandemic containment measures would be enhanced in the entirety of Liwan and Panyu districts.
Top officials in Beijing, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping, have pledged that the measures should be balanced with economic and social interests. Authorities last week revised the policy, including discouraging unnecessary mass testing and overly zealous classification of restricted “high risk” areas.
The time close contacts must spend in central quarantining was lowered and the quarantining of secondary close contacts was largely scrapped.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/china/china-covid-guangzhou-protests-intl-hnk/index.html
A video of a migrant worker protesting in the urban areas of Guangzhou, China: “It’s not possible to seal!”
Those measures came as Xi prepared for a week of diplomacy attending summits in Southeast Asia in a signal that China was ready to return to the world stage, with Xi meeting with key Western leaders in person this month for the first time since the pandemic began.
Migrant workers reside in the densely packed buildings of the urban villages in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, where images showed nighttime protests.
Their circumstances can add to the hardship of the oppressive measures as the true number of residents who need to get supplies in a given housing block may not be known. There’s also no option of remote work to preserve income for those employed in factories and on construction sites.
Observers noted that residents of Haizhu were originally from outside Guangzhou and pleaded for help from the officials.
The man in the video can be heard yelling that the people in the area want to eat. Us Hubei people want to be unsealed!” referring to another province in China, where many migrant workers in the district come from. He is part of a crowd that’s gathered facing a Covid workers in hazmat suits.
In a separate clip of the same scene, a man asks the workers if their parents have been sick. If your children are suffering from fever and prevented from leaving (for the hospital), how would you feel?”
People in another video can be heard yelling and desperation as the man who says he is the neighborhood director tries to help them. A resident rushes forward and says that as a non-local they are left to wait for hours for Covid-19 testing and that the meat sold to them by the government has gone bad.
“Nobody came to explain and the community’s office line is always busy. And our landlord doesn’t care if we live or die. What should we do?” the resident says, while the other members of the crowd start to shout together: “Unseal! It’s not possible to seal!
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/15/china/china-covid-guangzhou-protests-intl-hnk/index.html
The Last Times of November 1: The Haizhu district official tells CNN that the snap Covid restrictions had been violated and that it had not been announced
In the city news conference Monday, a Haizhu district official acknowledged criticisms that restrictions could have been announced earlier and with more clarity on areas affected by the measures.
A version of this story appeared in CNN’s Meanwhile in China newsletter, a three-times-a-week update exploring what you need to know about the country’s rise and how it impacts the world. Sign up here.
On the afternoon of November 1, Zhou last saw his father alive in a video chat, after his home on the far outskirts of Beijing was locked down.
At the time, they didn’t even realize the snap Covid restrictions had been imposed – there was no warning beforehand, and the apartment building where Zhou’s parents and his 10-year-old son lived did not have any cases, he said.
Zhou told CNN that his father had been killed by the local government. He said he’s received no explanation about why the ambulance took so long to arrive, just a death certificate stating the wrong date of death.
Zhou said he contacted several state media outlets in Beijing to report on his story, but no reporters came. Despite knowing the risk of repercussions from the government, he turned to foreign media. CNN only used his name to mitigate the risk.
The Chinese public is angry with the zero-Covid lockdown: “If you can’t live without freedom, I’d rather die!”
The world’s biggest iPhone assembly factory got into a fight with security officers because of delayed bonus payments and chaotic Covid rules.
And on Thursday, in the sprawling metropolis of Chongqing in the southwest, a resident delivered a searing speech criticizing the Covid lockdown on his residential compound. “Without freedom, I would rather die!” He shouted to a cheering crowd, who hailed him a hero and wrestled him from the grasp of several police officers who were trying to take him away.
These acts of defiance echoed an outpouring of discontent online, notably from Chinese football fans – many under some form of lockdown or restrictions – who have only been able to watch from home as tens of thousands of raucous fans pack stadiums at the World Cup in Qatar.
There are indications that Chinese officials are feeling the heat of the growing public discontent, which came at top of the heavy social and economic tolls inflicted by the widening lockdowns.
Local officials are reverting to the zero-tolerance style of control in an attempt to eradicate infections as soon as possible.
The city of Shijizhuang was one of the first to cancel mass testing. It also allowed students to return to schools after a long period of online classes. The authorities ordered residents to stay home on Monday after cases rose over the weekend.
On Tuesday, people arriving in the city were prohibited from entering restaurants, shops, supermarkets and gyms for five days. In half of the city, there were cultural and entertainment venues that were shut down.
The Baiyun district in Guangzhou has been locked down for the fifth time because of the protest.
Throughout the weekend, some businesses were closed in Beijing, and city streets were largely deserted, as residents either fell ill or feared catching the virus. The biggest public crowds seen were outside of pharmacies and Covid-19 testing booths.
For their part, Chinese officials have repeatedly denied that the 20 measures listed in the government guidelines were meant for a pivot to living with the virus.
Zhou, who is on the outskirts of Beijing, said that the zero- Covid policy is beneficial to the majority but it is too restrictive at a local level.
He does not want things like this to happen again in China or in the world. “I lost my father. My son lost his beloved grandfather. I am angry now.
The wake of China’s zero-Covid crisis: disbelief and rejoindy after the first day of the pandemic
Workers across China have dismantled some of the physical signs of the country’s zero-Covid controls, peeling health code scanning signs off metro station walls and closing some checkpoints after the government unveiled an overhaul of its pandemic policy.
But as many residents expressed relief and happiness at the obvious loosening of measures, some worried about its impact and questioned how the new rules would be rolled out.
“The world changed overnight, and that’s really amazing,” said Echo Ding, 30, a manager at a tech company in Beijing. We are getting back to normal life as far as I know. If I don’t get back to normal life, I might lose my mind.
“How can it change so fast?” “Ding, why did you ask?” “It gives me the feeling that we are like fools. It’s all up to them. They said it’s good, so then it’s good … that’s what I feel right now. It is incredible but I have to do what I have to. All I can do is follow the arrangement.”
David Wang, 33, a freelancer in Shanghai, said although the changes were welcome, they had also sparked a feeling of disbelief in the city, which underwent a chaotic, more than two-month-long, citywide lockdown earlier this year.
“Of course I was very happy about these new changes – (but) most of my friends are showing typical signs of PTSD, they just can’t believe it’s happening,” he said.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/08/china/china-zero-covid-relaxation-reaction-intl-hnk/index.html
Covid 19 Revisited: What to Do if a Patient Gets Omicron Spiked or Gives Up Before Taking Medication, and How to Reopen the Country
Changes to the rules were made according to evidence, including the spread of the milder Omicron variant, vaccinations, and China’s experience in responding to the disease.
Top health officials rolled back the rules that had helped control the spread of infectious diseases last Wednesday. Some aspects of those measures, such as health code use in designated places and central quarantine of severe cases, as well as home isolation of cases, remain.
The government and state media used the potential long-term effects of the virus to justify their restrictive policies.
A lot of articles about the less severe nature of Omicron have made for whiplash for some, and it isn’t like the kind of public messaging campaigns that other countries used before their own Pandemic policy changes.
On China’s heavily edited social media platform Weibo, topics and phrases about what to do if a patient gets Omicron spiked on Thursday, while reports of panic buying offever medications came in.
What kind of medicine should be used and what to do in case of an outbreak were not given to people. In fact, we should have started doing this a long, long time ago,” said Sam Wang, 26, a lawyer in Beijing, who added that the policy release felt “sudden and arbitrary.”
Bob Li was a graduate student in Beijing who was positive for the virus on Friday but his mother stayed up all night worrying about him. “She finds the virus a very, very scary thing,” Li said.
People in more cosmopolitan cities may be more likely to back reopening the country than people in less cosmopolitan areas if fears of Covid 19 are notayed.
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Meanwhile, his mother was now buying high-grade N95 masks and preparing for a “nuclear winter” until a potential initial wave of cases passed, Wang said.
Some are watching to see how the guidelines are implemented in their cities after some confusion with how the guidelines are implemented.
The Beijing authorities said that a negative Covid-19 test would still need to be entered at restaurants and other entertainment venues, in conflict with national guidelines.
After the government’s announcement last week that it was ending many of the most brutal measures, another move has been made. Three years of strict travel restrictions, mandated testing, and requirements that a clean bill of health be shown to access public areas have followed.
The goal of the policy isn’t stated, which could cause confusion. According to Huang, “These measures will likely lead to a messy and hasty transition process where local governments ditch all the zero-concentration measures without investing seriously in preparing for the transition.”
But researchers say some aspects of the new rules are ambiguous and open to interpretation by local governments, including when and where to test people during an outbreak, what defines high-risk areas and how to manage them.
It is very difficult to limit transmission in crowded high-rise buildings in China. Allowing people to quarantine at home will contribute to viral spread, says George Liu, a public-health researcher at La Trobe University in Melbourne, Australia. This could overwhelm hospitals.
Researchers say the reopening timing is not ideal. Winter is peak influenza season so hospitals will already be experiencing a rise in the number of patients. In the run-up to the lunar New Year and spring festival, many people will be traveling across the country and thus increasing the incidence of infectious diseases.
The government of China doesn’t have a strong system for primary medical care that would allow people to go to hospital for mild conditions according toXi Chen who hoped more details on how the government plans to triage care would emerge.
The sociologist at the university says that without additional support the easing of restrictions might not help businesses to recover from lengthy periods of lock ups. “I’m afraid that the health and socio-economic risk will be passed on to individuals.”
Urgent guidance is needed on how to curb transmission during a surge, such as through mask mandates, work-from-home policies and temporary school closures, says Cowling. And given the reduction in testing, it is not clear how officials will track whether cities are approaching, or have passed, the peak of an infection wave, he says.
There is concern that there won’t be enough time to increase vaccination among older people. Currently, some 70% of people aged 60 or older, and 40% of those aged 80 or more, have received a third dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.
The guidelines propose setting up mobile clinics, and training medical staff to address people’s safety concerns to boost vaccination. They don’t encourage local governments to increase their vaccine rate, but they do issue vaccine mandates. Whether the inevitable rise in infections will lead to a spike in deaths remains to be seen. The full impact still hasn’t been completed, he says.
Omicrons: How China’s FDA is dealing with “zero-COVID”? Tan Hua, a 42-year-old Chinese woman who was attacked by a dog in 2014
I don’t go to an office to work because I have an advantage. I don’t have a job at a company or in a government agency and don’t really come into contact with a lot of people,” she says. “Also I think I protect myself pretty well.”
China’s leaders had long praised “zero-COVID” for keeping numbers of cases and deaths much lower than in other nations, but health officials are now saying the most prevalent omicron variety poses much less of a risk.
For many, it has its roots in product quality issues that have for years plagued manufacturing in China — including its production of pharmaceuticals. Tan Hua’s case is very related.
Tan was bitten by a dog in 2014 at the age of 34. She was told by her doctor that the vaccine she was getting was the best on the market. But it didn’t go well.
Vaccination skeptics don’t understand what the government does about COVID-19: A case study of a real estate executive in China
She got a throbbing head and weakness in her legs that night. Her memory declined as well. She had convulsions. She couldn’t see; everything was dark for her. She couldn’t walk straight,” Hua told NPR by phone.
They blame the vaccine, and that’s when Hua began her crusade for justice. She no longer allows herself to receive any vaccines, even those approved by China for COVID-19.
There have been a lot of product quality scandals in China due to the lack of oversight and corruption.
Yanzhong Huang, a China health care expert at Seton Hall University, says the government has done a bad job of messaging around the virus and debunking myths — despite near total control of the media environment in the country.
“Many of those, the vaccine skeptics, are liberal-minded people. He says they don’t trust the Chinese vaccines and the government narrative about their effectiveness.
Jerry, a real estate executive in Shanghai, is 33 years old — and a good example of that. He did not want his full name used because he was sensitive to the topic.
There are some people who think it’s a flu thing and others who think it’s nothing too serious. He hasn’t gotten the vaccine and he believes – despite science to the contrary – there’s no point.
I believe the virus is changing so fast. He says that vaccines’ ability to prevent transmission rather than stave off deadly illness are the reason they can’t help.
Jerry estimates that the vaccination rate among his friends — educated, 30-somethings in China’s most cosmopolitan city — may be as low as 60%. He says couples trying to get pregnant are particularly fearful of possible side-effects.
A lot of people in Hong Kong were not immune to the omicron variant that hit in the spring. Hospitals were quickly swamped and the rate of deaths-per-100,000 people spiked to the highest in the world. Nearly all of those who died were over 60 and not fully vaccinated.
The government could make it easier for people to get the vaccine, as well as provide assurances of support in case something goes wrong.
The Beijing Emergency Center as a First-Principles System for Detecting Covid-19 in the Emerging 21st Century
The ” mobile itinerary card” health tracking function will be removed on Tuesday, as authorities announced a further change Monday.
It had been an issue of contention for Chinese people due to concerns around data collection and the use of local governments to restrict entry to those who have visited a city with a high-risk zone.
But as the scrapping of parts of the zero-Covid infrastructure come apace, there are questions about how the country’s health system will handle a mass outbreak.
Media outlet China Youth Daily documented hours-long lines at a clinic in central Beijing on Friday, and cited unnamed experts calling for residents not to visit hospitals unless necessary.
A hospital official on Saturday appealed to residents with mild or no symptoms of Covid to not call the emergency services line, after a surge in emergency calls, including many from Covid positive residents.
The number of emergency calls has increased over the last few days, according to Chen Zhi, the chief physician of the Beijing Emergency Center.
Covid was “spreading rapidly” driven by highly transmissible Omicron variants in China, a top Covid-19 expert, Zhong Nanshan, said in an interview published by state media Saturday.
Even though the prevention and control is strong, it will be hard to completely eradicate the transmission chain, as stated by the public voice of the early days of the Pandemic in 2020.
The rapid roll-out of testing nationwide has made it difficult to measure the extent of the spread because official data now appears meaningless.
China may be underprepared to handle the expected surge of cases, due to the surprise move to lift its measures, after nationwide protests against the policy, growing case numbers and rising economic costs.
Zhong, in the state media interview, said the government’s top priority now should be booster shots, particularly for the elderly and others most at risk, especially with China’s Lunar New Year coming up next month – a peak travel time where urban residents visit elderly relatives and return to rural hometowns.
Increasing medical staff for intensive care, setting up more clinics for the treatment of infections, and increasing the number of hospital beds are just some of the things that China will be doing.
Experts warn that a lack of experience with the virus, as well as years of state media coverage focusing on its dangers and impact overseas could push people who are not in critical need to seek medical care, further overwhelming systems.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/china/china-zero-covid-impact-beijing-intl-hnk-mic/index.html
China’s No-Go Theorem: The Status of COVID-19 in the Light of Recent U.S. Drug Delivery and Public Health Concerns
China’s market watchdog said on Friday that there was a “temporary shortage” of some “hot-selling” drugs and vowed to crackdown on price gouging, while major online retailer JD.com last week said it was taking steps to ensure stable supplies after sales for certain medications surged 18 times that week over the same period in October.
A hashtag trending on China’s heavily moderated social media platform Weibo over the weekend featured a state media interview with a Beijing doctor saying people who tested positive for Covid-19 but had no or mild symptoms did not need to take medication to recover.
“People with asymptomatic inflections do not need medication at all. It is good to rest at home and keep a good Mood and physical condition. A doctor working at a Beijing hospital said in an interview he had seen more than 400 million views on a piece of technology.
China is dropping a requirement for travel tracing as part of its uncertain exit from its strict “zero-COVID” policies that have elicited widespread discontent.
Last month in Beijing and several other cities, protests over the restrictions grew into calls for leader Xi Jinping and the ruling Communist Party step down, in a level of public political expression not seen in decades.
While the relaxation was met with relief, it also sparked some concern about a new wave of infections potentially overwhelming health care resources in some areas.
At the same time, the government reversed course by allowing those with mild symptoms to recuperate at home rather than being sent to field hospitals that have become notorious for overcrowding and poor hygiene.
The Chinese internet was tightly controlled by the government, but reports stated that restrictions would not be lifted and travel, dining and other economic activity would return to pre-pandemic levels.
Amid a drop in the amount of testing, China on Monday announced only 8,500 new cases, bringing the country’s total to over 350,000, with 5,235 deaths. There are over one million deaths of COVID 19 in the United States.
Implications of the Decreasing Chinese Economy for Large-Scale Disease Detection in the Three-Year End of the Fourth Quarter
Xi’s government promised to reduce the cost and disruption after the economy shrank by 2.6% from the previous quarter in the three months ending in June. Forecasters say the economy probably is shrinking in the current quarter. In November, imports fell 11.1% from a year ago in a sign of weak demand.
There is still a chance the ruling party will reverse course andimpose restrictions if a large-scale outbreak ensues.
Last week’s announcement allowed considerable room for local governments to assign their own regulations. Most restaurants in Beijing still need a negative test result in order to serve food, and government offices are even more strict.