An op-ed in The New York Times: China’s Zero-Covid Policy Is a Pandemic Waiting to Happen. Much as I respect Drs. Emanuel and Osterholm, I'm nervous about their use of terms like "have to live with it" and "endemic." They sound at this point like acceptance of high mortality and morbidity rates, which will be endured much more by working-class people and people of colour. Excerpt:
As the Winter Olympics approach and some 3,000 athletes, their retinues and the media converge in and around Beijing, the Chinese government has gone to extraordinary lengths to prevent the 24th version of the games from becoming a Covid super spreading event.
Though athletes and coaches will be required to be vaccinated, they will face severe restrictions. Those who receive a medical exemption from vaccination are being required to quarantine for 21 days after entering the country. Even the vaccinated will have to present two negative tests. Olympic participants must submit to daily Covid tests and will be restricted to an Olympic bubble where they will be confined to prevent spread to the local population.
These extreme measures are in line with China’s zero-Covid policy. President Xi Jinping and his government seem to believe that the country can be sealed off until the virus is eradicated around the world.
But that goal is unattainable with the highly transmissible Omicron variant and has set the nation up for disaster. The coronavirus is not going to disappear — the world will have to live with it. Making matters worse, China’s vaccines are much less effective against Omicron. And the Chinese health care system simply is not equipped to care for millions of people sickened by the virus.
Yes, China has weathered the pandemic well so far. Even with about four times the population of the United States, China has had fewer than 140,000 confirmed Covid cases and fewer than 6,000 deaths since January 2020, according to the World Health Organization. A vast majority of factories continued to operate. Early in the pandemic, China added thousands of hospital beds to its health care system in days.
All of this seems like an enormous success when compared with the messy and often chaotic response to the virus in the United States, where more than 860,000 people have died and some 2,000 more die each day. Many hospitals are under siege. The economy has been disrupted.
But this may very well be the future China is facing. Its pursuit of zero Covid will prove to be a huge mistake. The policy has left it wholly unprepared for what will become endemic Covid.
