Except that is not possible, because:
1. Zero COVID policies are instead "Delay COVID" policies, as exemplified by Australia and New Zealand. You can get it now or you can get it later, but until a certain proportion of your population develops good immunity (which unfortunately is variant dependent) your population is at risk. You can play a waiting game, or not. The waiting game wastes time and destroys your economy, but it might delay things until a less severe variant appears. You can run, but you can't hide from extremely contagious respiratory viruses.
And the vaccines also delay things for a few months, then make you more susceptible to COVID. So vaccines contribute nothing to a Zero COVID policy.
2. While you play wait and hide, central governments can tighten their control over the population, and implement other programs while you are under house arrest. Like installing 5G everywhere?
3. It would be folly to underestimate the knowledge and intelligence of the Chinese leadership. They know what they are doing and it is not Zero COVID.
4. Are various social control methods being tested and prototyped in China, before they are rolled out to the rest of the world? Didn't the COVID pandemic prove that China's technical elites are deeply enmeshed with those of the west?
5. I suggest we start paying attention to how China managed its lockdown strategies differently in Wuhan, Beijing, Tianjin, etc. Listen to the Chinese people affected. What are the Chinese authorities really trying to accomplish?
What do you think of the theory floating around that the extreme measures are due to the Chinese "knowing something" about long-term consequences of getting Covid. In dramatic terms, that it's "airborne AIDS" and most who contract it will be dead after about five years, so they are doing everything possible to stop it.
ReplyDeleteYet another theory is that, like all other totalitarian regimes, and anyone with extreme power over another human, it brings out crazy behavior. Inevitably and most importantly, unconsciously. It was something Russian writers commented about as the Bolsheviks took over - they did crazy things that in no way made sense, even if the effort was to be unpredictable.
ReplyDelete"Bombshell'!
NIH National Library:
COVID UPDATE: What is the truth?
The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939/