31–40 of 353 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
Or it could be that Chinese audiences & tastes aren't so big on watching cheering crowds. I am rather sceptical of this being evidence of censorship. Maybe, I could be swayed if it can be shown this is a clear break from tradition of showing crowds that started since the recent protests in china.
What is the CCP’s exit strategy? Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid?
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).
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
They also provided the genetic sequencing used to create the mRNA vaccines and then… didn’t use them.
A big driver of the problem however is that a regime built on controlling the population will almost always default to controlling the population as the answer to its problems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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.
Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's undoubtedly a lot of face saving going on, but that's because Sinovax isn't as effective as the Western vaccines. And quite a lot of the elderly aren't vaccinated at all. So they can't liberalize without the death rate skyrocketing. Maybe that would be more acceptable now? Difficult for the Chinese people to discuss.
Interesting that whilst they’re willing to violate human rights in a number of ways, they’re not prepared to force people to take the vaccine or e.g. take away employment for refusing. It’s probably easier that way to spin the situation as “your fault for not taking it”.
It’s of course compounded by the reportedly lower efficacy of Chinese vaccines compared to mRNA vaccines.
These two factors combine for a predicted high mortality rate among the most vulnerable group can be expected.
I find much more interesting how Twitter is now flooded with accounts which are suddenly posting NSFW escort tweets containing Chinese city names in Chinese characters and one account is able to post 3000 tweets in 24 hours to flood search results with nonsense. https://twitter.com/dong_mengyu/status/1596749168462401536