> Vaccines mean it's no longer the least worst option.
Millions of dead, and 100s of millions taken out of workforce for ~2 weeks during infection, possibly multiple times, possibly with long covid effects for years after, or we're coming up on winter where immunity weakest. It's far from clear vaccines isn't the worst option short term (0-3 years).
>flush the economy down the toilet
I mean sure? Except with confluence of global factors PRC economy, while underperforming is still outperforming most of western countries, as stated above. Hence status quo is currently sustainable, there is less pressure to deliver economically when everyone else is sinking. Obviously sustainable not long term, but I can easily see another year or two, especially with global slow down. The broader point being, all the western MSM reporting on PRC wrecking itself economically is avoiding the fact that it's not wrecking itself as much as most developing countries with RU sanctions, or dealing with US dollar, and US dealing with end of cheap money. Zero covid + three red lines on real estate + tech crack down, etc all deliberate policy choices are not as devasting as 10% inflation or end of cheap credit causing housing sales + tech valuations to crash like in PRC. It's not world ending, PRC is collapsing stuff.
>Do you want to stop the world until every disease is eradicated
No I think PRC wants to stop this specific disease that has demonstrably kills many people with linger side effects even in wealthy countries with access to better health care.
E: posting rate limited so @benj111
>So I don't even know what figures you are working with
Studies conservatively extrapolating TW/SKR post living with covid + mRNA numbers to PRC with modifier for lower per capital med care access. I don't know what figures you are working with to conclude ~3M would get covid when it will be 100s of millions since no vaccine prevent spread and majority of pop have no natural immunity. Estimates from scientists who actually crunched the numbers: a few million dead, significant % of which due to overhelming hospital infra.
1. Millions of dead (conservative estimate is ~2+) is still factually a lot of dead to deal with. If that can be avoided with accepted costs (which I'm arguing, currently is) then why not.
2. It's worse in that it comes with millions of dead bodies and at least 10s of millions long covid. Maybe zero covid is sunk cost and those figures are inevitable, but still no compelling reason for lifting short term.
3. Covid = flu? Are linger side effects of flu as well understood as covid? Annual influenza deaths is fraction of covid deaths. Extrapolating from US annual flu deaths, in PRC, influenza would kill ~100,000 per year vs again millions of covid deaths in same period. Like if PRC can get away with only 500k hospitalizations, Xi could personally go smother each covid ICU patient and still spin it as a win.