Too much time has been wasted in China

The Omicron variants have produced new COVID-19 infection patterns around the world: in 2020 and 2021 there were infection waves coming and then gone in typically a month, but in 2022 Omicron infections drop from the peak, but stay much higher than in 2020/2021.  Sometimes it feels like a wave lasts two or more months.  Take HK as an example.  HK infections started up in June, 1K, peaked in Sept over 10K, only dropped to 5K two months later.  A reason may be that there are multiple Omicron variants circulating simultaneously, all able to infect and re-infect, so two or more waves overlap and pile up.

Since the worst in Shanghai passed in April 2022, almost every province in mainland China has been in a low-level COVID-19 wash, with national daily infections centering around 1K.  Recently the cases are slowly climbing above 2K, so local lockdowns and mass testing return in October.  Compared to March and April 2022 the situation is handled better this time, due to lessons from the Spring: the lockdown areas are now smaller, and testing easier.  But facts remain that economy suffers unnecessarily, people’s living suffers unnecessarily, and mass testing is still a huge waste of time, material, work, energy, and money and awfully polluting. 

More disappointing is the fact that China has so far failed to prepare the people for the inevitable DZ reversal.  The reversal doesn’t mean acting like the US at all, but it does mean significant relaxation of the lockdown and testing policies.  Because China has never gone anywhere near 0 in over 300 days this year, clearly DZ is a misnomer and not going to work: it has never been 0 in 2022 and will never be 0 in 2023.  At the same time GDP which could have grown 5% will be lucky to grow at 3% this year.  China’s official media justify DZ by saying it saves many more lives with a higher GDP growth than the US.  True, but irrelevant: China is not competing with the US and the world in 2020 or 2021 any more, but in 2022 and beyond.  The rest of the world has opened up, SE Asia, India, Africa, with faster economy growth than China and no repeat of the COVID-19 in 2020/2021.  DZ is putting China at a major disadvantage.  At the expense of the economy DZ is not even saving that many lives: the excess death in China in 2022 is likely >100K (1%), due to economic hardship, lack of medical care, and psychiatry problems.  In other words, DZ is simply trading one kind of deaths for another, except that DZ further leads to economy destruction and infringement on individual freedoms.  The government needs to ask: is China or Chinese so different from everybody else in the world? 

My 4/19/2022 blog laid out the reasons why China can absolutely do well without DZ and steps on how to prepare for the changes.  Which should have been done much earlier, but half a year later nothing of sort has been done. 

Illustrating this and the natural consequences is a major piece of news that many workers at the Foxconn factory in Zhengzhou, China have quit and are now walking homes, some >100 km away (https://news.sina.com.cn/c/2022-11-01/doc-imqqsmrp4473042.shtml).   The background is that Foxconn has a huge factory with >100K workers in Zhengzhou, where like everywhere in China has had a burst of cases in October.  A few workers were positive, so the company is moving the infected and close contacts around while at the same time keeps the machines running.  This is what everybody else in the world is doing right now and a small experiment of how to live with COVID in China.  But many workers (30%?), who are negative, became so scared that they fled the factory. 

If the workers left because they were afraid of the lockdown (actual or pending), it would have been understandable and reasonable to leave.  But Foxconn due to its sheer size is doing things a bit differently than the rest of Zhengzhou and is still operating and not shutting down internally.  So (most of) the fear is not for lockdown but for COVID-19, which is terribly misplaced.  COVID-19 in 2022 is far from COVID-19 in 2020.  Assume most workers have got three COVID shots, and obviously most if not all are young, <50-year-old, then even if they get infected, few if any cases will be serious, and almost certainly no one will die.  Yet so many people are still so scared of COVID-19, unnecessarily, that they behaved rashly.  This is the fault of the government and the media wasting so much time not educating the public the right information, while spending all their time touting DZ that makes life miserable and destroys the economy.

China has wasted too much time and lost too much with DZ.  Many Chinese are against DZ, but many others are undoubtedly for DZ as well.  The transition will come, since who can tolerate DZ forever?  If you need to do it and everything is in place, the earlier the implementation, the better.  But without the right information and preparation, once the government pivots from DZ, there will be a huge amount of confusion and even resistance in the society, which will again be bumpy and costly.  

PS: There have been monthly excess deaths in the US, UK, and a few countries in 2022, certain months even >10%, with reported COVID-19 deaths accounting for only a small percentage.  Most countries including China don’t report monthly, so have to wait for the annual data after Dec 31.  We need to see whether this trend holds for the whole world and figure out the causes, which always takes time.  Some of the unaccounted for excess deaths may be untested COVID-19 deaths or due to long COVID-19, but most are likely not directly virus-related.  The disruption of economy and society by the pandemic, such as the healthcare system and loss of qualified personnel and services, could be an important factor. 

The consensus in the US, a few misgivings from doctors and scientists notwithstanding, is that the pandemic is over.  300-400 people continue to die everyday, but in effect it is the price the American public, society, and system have decided willing to pay: just living my life, too bad for the unlucky, the weak, and the old.  If the excess deaths are real, not some erroneous statistics, then the policies from 2020 to 2022 and beyond could have deeper consequences than meet the eyes. 

China is just the opposite: DZ for COVID-19.  But why isn’t DZ for everything else that is bad?  There may have been a consensus in 2020 and 2021 to control COVID-19, but there is really no consensus in 2022 that keep doing the same thing over and over is the best way going forward.  Some Chinese support DZ, some oppose it.  Yet things have changed dramatically in the > 2 years’ time, both in terms of the virus and the means to handle the disease.  DZ may reduce COVID-19 deaths, but its current implementation will amplify other deaths, bringing down the economy and everything else along the way.  If the aftereffects of COVID-19 are universal (no reason to think China is unique), then China is expected to have significant excess deaths too, over the 1% mark mentioned above.