Dynamic zero no more

Since the announcements of 20 points on Nov 11, 2022 and especially near the end of Nov, the term of COVID-19 DZ policy has totally disappeared from Chinese media reports.  While it has never been officially pronounced gone, it is 100% over.  Now the policy is not even new DZ or soft DZ.  Instead, it is called “optimization”.  DZ’s end is long overdue.  It should have been abandoned on June 1, 2022 when Shanghai emerged from its Omicron wave, if not in March or April, when the danger of Omicron was better understood.  Instead, the public and economy suffered unnecessarily for at least 6 more months.  If China had had diverted only 5% of its energy used for mass testing to vaccination, China would have been in a much better shape facing Omicron right now.  It is not that vaccination in China is bad, but it could have been much better: most Chinese could have got the 4^th shot (now only 3^rd), and elderly (>80-old now only 40%) at least three shots by Dec 2022.

Dec 7, 2022 saw 10 more official policy changes for wider opening, with the most significant one being that most infected can now isolate at home, a common sense apparent to everybody months ago.  The official media are now doing the mass education work, quoting experts saying no Omicron fear.  One has to wonder where were they during the summer? 

While it is good to follow the science, the rushes of policy changes have jolted the society, leading to much hope as well as confusion, naturally.  The official, daily infection numbers are no longer meaningful, just like the rest of the world, when many people are taking Ag tests at home and won’t report their results.  There are gushes of personal Omicron experiences on the Chinese news now, which serve good purposes.  The reality is that the public and governments haven’t found a new balance between COVID and normal lives under the so-called optimization yet, which is barely one month old.  Most old barriers against COVID-19 are dismantled overnight, but without any specific rules and safeguards for post-DZ.  For example, there are fewer RNA testing sites, and many mixed samples are tested positive, affecting a wider population of people because if one person in a 10-sample tube is positive, the other 9 people will receive an orange or red health code, must take the tests again, and can’t do anything until confirmed negative.  The outcome should have been expected, and the solution is one person, one test.  But because of the hassle, fewer people would want to take the RNA or Ag test, leading to more unknown positives and, hence, more undercurrent fear in the society.  Here lies a downward spiral dangerous for people’s health and the economy, and only time and policy adjustments will stem the chaos, naturally.

Because of the earlier and bumpy adoption of “optimization” policies in Nov and Dec, my numbers in the Dec 2, 2022 blog have become outdated.  For 2022 the real infections, reported and unreported, in China can be over 10 million, not the old 3 million.  For 2023 the number will be higher than 100 million.  But most Chinese won’t be infected in 2 months’ time as some “experts” predicted.  This is because many people are still afraid of COVID-19 and will venture out less, and other people will realize more unknown positives and danger out there and be more careful around.   It is likely that Omicron will infect and kill the same ballpark number of pre-2020 cold/flu people in China, dwarfed by the would-be excess deaths due to DZ.  China shouldn’t swing from one extreme to another.  China can’t go back to DZ, or even a soft DZ.  Instead, optimize the “optimization”.