Covid-19 cases in China are dramatically surging, leaving the Chinese government with no choice, but to ease restrictions, because of widespread protests. What can happen now is intriguing.
The protests
The protests began as a mere show of mourning for the ten people killed in a fire in a building in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang region, as strict COVID-19 rules hindered their rescue, which led to their death. Since then, the protests have started gathering steam until they are spreading across China, as a growing national dissatisfaction against the authoritarian stance of the Chinese regime.
These protests, as we speak, have no longer remained isolated protests against China’s Zero COVID policy. They have become mass resentments against curbing people’s voices.
The Catch-22 for China!
The Zero COVID policy of the Chinese government had been shielding people for the past three years from COVID, but now, with the Chinese government easing restrictions, people suddenly find themselves exposed to the virus.
Unlike other countries that learned to live with it and got Herd immunity, China never did, and its population never learnt to deal with it, therefore, it surprised China when the lockdowns eased recently, as their level of preparedness was unsatisfactory.
With most of its attention in the past on containing COVID and not tackling it, there have been insufficient beds, fewer vaccinations and generally a poor infrastructure in coping with COVID.
After the easing of the lockdown, COVID testing in China has also reduced significantly, and is now no longer at a scale that it used to be when the government was in a curbing of the pandemic mode. With numbers rising rapidly, there is very little data on what the virus is doing to populations, as cases have been rising.
China’s Health system maybe bracing for a serious problem?
Although the country’s extreme COVID stance with restrictions has left populations unhappy, lifting them now does not build a rosy picture. Models doing the round are pointing to massive waves of COVID infection and disease with the lifting of the country’s “Zero COVID policy.”
China, so far, has not attained full vaccination for its population. It has not even communicated to people that the eventual need is to focus on mitigation rather than elimination.
A study published in Nature Medicine in May said that lifting zero covid restrictions at that point would unleash a tsunami of infections over six months, with 112 million symptomatic cases,2.7 million intensive care unit admissions, and 1.6 million deaths. It further says that peak demand for hospital beds would hit 1 million, which will be more than 15 times more than China’s current capacity. That is some indication of the nightmare that might play out in China.
What looms in China is frightening, but the Chinese government now finds itself in a catch-22 situation. It can no longer go back to its decision of enforcing Zero-COVID restrictions again, while on the other hand, it has very little bandwidth to deal with what is coming.
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