Corona-zona

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, a ccording 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 g...

  Chinese Police Parade Pandemic Violators (2021) You have probably seen the video images of desperate residents of Shanghai , China. The entire city has been placed under quarantine for weeks in an attempt to stem a COVID-19 wave there.  According to reports, people are not allowed to leave their residences for any reason—not to shop, walk pets, fill prescriptions, get medical treatment—and they are arrested if they do.  There is no end in sight and people are running short on food and medicine. I have been surprised that the Chinese government would allow images like these to circulate. Normally they maintain tight control over the narrative, so they must intend for these scenes to get out into the wild. A guy writing an op-ed at Forbes  says the Shanghai shutdown is strategic, but for non-pandemic reasons. The idea, he claims, is to squeeze Western economies by shutting down China's biggest manufacturing and shipping port.  Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia ...

China-linked social media accounts are pushing a new conspiracy theory about COVID-19. See, it didn't originate in Wuhan at all. Instead it just appeared to originate there because it was riding on live lobsters imported from the US!   The disinformation campaign was spotted by a researcher at the University of Oxford who regularly monitors Chinese state media and diplomatic accounts.  A Chinese diplomat in India first tweeted the theory. But it didn't end with the tweet from the diplomat. Investigating further, the researcher found that the claim was flogged by a network of 550 Twitter accounts. They spread the same message at times equivalent to 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. China Standard Time.  Some of the accounts were so-called sock puppets  whose sole purpose is to amplify messages in order to get them promoted by social media platforms' algorithms. The messages were translated into English, Spanish, French, Polish, Korean and even Latin.  Wait...what?...

  China is distributing Sinovac and other inoculants widely as part of its vaccine diplomacy effort. It is able to ship vaccines because it has been successful in controlling its own infection rates. So it can afford to capitalize on goodwill it would gain for helping other countries. Meanwhile the West hoards vaccine for its own citizens. But the diplomatic effort may not be going so well.  About a two months ago Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia correspondent PBR had a post about how branding for China's vaccines, particularly Sinovac, is not working out very well in Asia. People openly question China's motives and especially the vaccines' effectiveness.  As for the latter, there is widespread recognition that the vaccines don't work as well as their Western counterparts. A Chinese official actually  said this out-loud about a month ago. I'm surprised I haven't heard that he's been disappeared by now. The latest hit to China's efforts is a realizat...

  Racist attacks against people of Asian descent are up, including those targeting old ladies with sneak attacks and stabbings. You may ask, why now?  It's undoubtedly because of the efforts or an orange racist (and ex-President) to label SARS-CoV-2 as the "China virus." He is so wrong about about so many things, it should come as no surprise that he's wrong about this, too.    According to a recent report , researchers are now finding evidence that the virus detected in Wuhan in December 2019 had a progenitor that had been spreading worldwide well in advance of the Wuhan event. They determined this using tracing of relations of mutations called  phylogeny . “We have found progenitor genetic fingerprint in January 2020 and later in multiple coronavirus infections in China and the USA. The progenitor was spreading worldwide months before and after the first reported cases of COVID-19 in China,” said one researcher. Another added that the timeline suggests the p...

Today's post is by Corona-zona Senior Southeast Asia Correspondent PBR Alright folks! Keeping it tidy ? Still here, stuck on a tiny island where nature is creaking at the joints  because folk are trapped. My wife maintains that the cupboard I am using as an office smells of teenage boy. I'd like to take a different angle from all the excellent posts from other Senior Foreign Correspondents that have been featured here. Let’s talk about branding.  Branding is something I know little about, bar the Pepsi Challenge back in the day. By the way, Coke is the way to go. Pepsi is foul. But—and I am not sponsored in any way—my plug for a soda is Irn-Bru. Look out for it since I suspect you have time on your hands. It outsells Coke in Scotland . And rightfully so because it is awesome. Ah, sorry, I digress. Back to branding. Countries have been trying to  brand themselves for a fair while. Thanks to such measures we get terms like  sportswashing —here’s looking at y...