Authoritarian Cave-In Weekend: China Punting on COVID Restrictions

This appears to be cave-in weekend for authoritarians around the world. First, Iran's attorney general announced it would abolish its "morality police." Then China announced it was going to back off its zero-COVID policy.

It doesn't appear that all restrictions are being lifted everywhere. Instead the plan is to make the policy "more targeted and less onerous." Still the reversal seems significant, with restrictions—including the requirement to test negative before venturing anywhere in public—being lifted in most major cities.

The authorities are spinning this as evidence of a "win" of sorts. The idea is that China weathered the Delta storm and can now relax because the Omicron variant is less deadly. 

That is pretty much hogwash, according to Linda Bauld, professor of public health at Edinburgh University: “With Omicron, certainly from the studies [so far], there may be some small reduction in disease severity but not a huge one.”

It's good to see Mr. Xi take one up the posterior and it's nice for the Chinese people go get some relief. But public health people are fretting about a change of this scale.

The problem is that China has a low vaccination rate, with "only 68.7 per cent of people over 60 have had three doses of a Covid-19 vaccine, official figures show. For those aged 80 and over, only 40.4 per cent have had three shots."

Not only that, people there are vaccinated with the older-technology Chinese vaccines. These are less effective than Western mRNA vaccines, particularly with fewer doses. 

With China's huge population, low vaccination rates, and less effective vaccines, there is worry the country may provide a breeding ground for new, more deadly variants. “Gaps in testing ... and vaccination are continuing to create the perfect conditions for a new variant of concern to emerge that could cause significant mortality,” said WHO Director General, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Awesome!

So here's hoping the change in policy doesn't create the "China Virus" 2.0. If it does, Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR worries about China relaxing travel restrictions:

I don't know what their new rules are for international travel—most have not traveled for fear of what they have to go through when they get back to China. If the relaxed rules means most will travel, we are fucked.

Popular posts from this blog

Looks Like Immune Responses are Enduring After All

Image
 For some time, public health officials have fretted about whether immunity to COVID-19, acquired via infection or vaccination would stick.  Studies showed rapid declines in antibodies during recovery from infection and thereafter . It turns out that this concern was overblown. A study just released says bone marrow plasma cells are a persistent source of protective antibodies, and that "circulating resting memory B cells directed against the S protein were detected in the convalescent individuals."   Another study , yet to be reviewed, suggests that vaccines boost this effect. In fact, some are suggesting this situation this could actually mean  lifetime immunity .   Whether the same thing happens with vaccination is not clear. Most estimates suggest that vaccine immunity will last about a year . More pessimistic estimates putting the protection period at six months .  The possible shorter time frame, plus the appearance of the new variants, have the vaccine makers working
Read more

Another One Bites the Dust

Image
Hi all. Stepping out of retirement for a moment to say that the day has finally arrived. After four years of successfully avoiding COVID-19 infection I had a positive test yesterday. Symptoms are very mild—I've had worse colds. The provider at urgent care said almost all the cases they are seeing are the same. Mild symptoms may also be due to the fact that I had the original vaccine then the two boosters. All this time I thought I might be a NOVID —one of those people who never get the bug. But no, it must have been my assiduous mask wearing and avoidance of high-risk situations when things were bad. So here's double middle fingers to all the kooks who think masks don't work (I've not been wearing masks for months now). I don't know what variant I have but it's likely JN.1. It is said to be extraordinarily contagious and accounts for 60% of cases worldwide . It also tends to produce mild infections like the one I have.  This article claims that right now every
Read more

AZ Pandemic Numbers Summary for the Seven Days Ending November 9: Everything is Going South

Image
Here are the Arizona pandemic numbers and graph of statewide cases for the seven day period ending yesterday: Well this isn't good. The lull seems to be over. Virtually every number is up, both over a week and over four weeks. The most worrisome is hospital beds, which have been steadily trending up over the last several weeks.  Wastewater signals are all up except Tempe (dashboard is up again) which after going up last week (from 41 to 100) decreased by about 10%. The increases are worrisome because the latest data from ASU's Lim Lab (last updated October 31), where they sequence PCR samples to identify variants, shows that only about 46% of sequences showed BA.5. That is one of the Omicron variants the new bivalent vaccine was designed to protect against.  All the rest of the samples are BA.2.75 (7.7%), which I flagged several weeks ago, and BQ,1.1 (15.4%), and BQ.1 (30.8%), both of which I blogged about a couple weeks ago.  Those, new research confirms , are much more lik
Read more