My understanding is the only diagnosis criteria are questions about how you feel now vs. how you used to feel. Most people remember the past better than it was.
Latest research paper says that Long Covid is about the same as long other stuffā¦ I feel vindicated in thinking that it was because people had nothing better to notice. My kid had a cough for a year. Iāve had coughs that lasted more than a monthā¦ it happens, and the doc says āyou have to wait it out.ā
I guess the protesting worked. Theyāre completely reversed all the Covid policies now.
Thatās one way to pay it for a profit.
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I havenāt been following Chinaās covid mutations recently, but Iām curious what variant is going through China if there are still a lot of deathsā¦
Impossible to get good data. My feeling is that lockdowns slow herd immunity and donāt change the ultimate outcome. They are marginally effective at changing the shape of the curve when health care systems are getting overwhelmed.
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Agreed, but the ancestral variant and Delta definitely seemed to have higher rates of death and hospitalization. I wonder if they still have those wandering around because they havenāt opened their borders to allow the newer variants in. That would ironic.
18% of Chinese are older than 60 years old. That is, nearly 250 million.
About 60% of them has one shot, very few are fully vaccinated.
Youth can withstand omnicron easily. Elderly usually with weakened immunity can be seriously sick and even die from the infection. Given the high R0 of omnicron, lockdown is futile. Might as well drop lockdown and let omnicron runs its course. The only defense against omnicron is herd immunity.
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There are ways to gradually reopen, and prep the society by increasing hospital capacity and vaccinating the old. Pretty much all advanced economies did that.
And then there is the Chinese way that just reopens the whole country over night with no preparations, in the dead of winter when all sorts of respiratory diseases are at their peak.
I suspect culling the old population may not be a totally unwelcome consequence for the Xi regime. It will lighten the burden of pension and healthcare if a bunch of the old folks just drop dead. Never underestimate the cruelty of the CCP.
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Canāt you think more kindly?
You might as well claim that the top echelons have secretly taken the MRNA vaccine.
Now that you mentioned it, I agree I made a mistake. Xi is not capable of thinking that far ahead. He is just dumb and thought reopening with zero prep will magically be OK. He may also believe in the super power of Chinaās traditional herbal medicine.
Looking at the experience of every other country, there will be multiple waves down the road. This is barely Wave Number 1 for China. Suspect a pretty sizable of Chinaās old will be wiped off.
Allow me to teach you 
A kind way of saying it is: āNeed to be cruel to be kindā.
Chinese are very filial piety. It is fairly common for a couple to support two set of parents (4 elderly). With less to support, the couple can focus on making babies.
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There is no escape for that. Lockdown is futile.
On the other hand, because of filial piety, many families will spend a godly sum of money to save their old parents. Chinese hospitals are overcrowded, yes, but for the rich and powerful there are always ways to get around it. For example, Paxlovid is widely available in China. But you have to pay a monthās salary for a single dose. Unlike in capitalistic America where itās free.
Itās quite sad to see the government (Xi) be so unprepared and with no strategy. I still donāt understand how/why China didnāt execute a thorough vaccination campaign. Seeing the pictures in the NYTimes article, it seems like 100s of thousands of old folks will now die with the sudden relaxation of testing but no vaccine protection (similar to the scale of what happened in Europe in the early phase of covid or in india in 2021).
The Chinese government has a very low governing capacity. It can only do big hammer stuff like blanket closure of cities. But a fine-grained campaign with detailed planning is beyond its capability. Over the last 10 years of Xi rule, I have seen Chinaās governing capacity, which was poor to begin with, eroded considerably. Xi is a micromanager and surrounds himself with sycophants. Unlike the technocrats of the older eras, these officialsā only credentials are their manifest loyalty to Xi and Xi alone.
Yes, we are seeing replay of 2020/1 in China today. Millions will die, but the real numbers will never be known. I donāt think even the CCP knows how many died, circling back to its poor governance capacity.
You wonāt increase hospital capacity. They canāt even fully staff ICU units as it is. Thereās no way they can have more hospital beds added. You have have beds but no staff.
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Chinaās vaccine didnāt work (even less than ours did). No point in pushing a thorough vaccination campaign if itās no good.
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The elder population can stay home if needed. itās pointless to make healthy young workers stay home though. And itās destroying their nation economically and morale is low. The mistake isnāt reopening now, the mistake is not reopening when Omicron became prevalent 9 months ago.
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The choice should not be complete shutdown vs āletting it ripā. Reopening can be carefully planned out with vaccination drive and healthcare capacity buildout. China did not do any of those in its 3 years of lockdown. Xi just suddenly decided to do a 180 one day.
Chinaās vaccine is less effective than mRNA but itās not complete garbage. A large study done in Hong Kong showed that 3+ doses of Chinese vaccine gave good protection against hospitalization and death. Itās much less effective protecting against infection though.
Chinaās living condition is also much denser than Americaās. Vast majority of people in the cities live in condos, and grandparents often live with their grown children to take care of the grandkids.
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And if anyone could have done it, itās China. Didnāt they build a hospital in 3 days?
Letās face it. Xi caved to the protestors. It makes you wonder what might happen if this re-opening completely backfires. Very interesting times to see Russia and China stumbling so badly.
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