China has swung from strict lockdowns for years to mass reopening — it\u0027s unhinged and ill\u002Dprepared
Leadership cults and totalitarian media control can at times enable breathtakingly destructive policies, and it is hard to think of a policy more unhinged than suddenly exposing a “naive” population with inadequate vaccination to mass infection in mid-winter, and just before the great internal migration of Chinese New Year.
President Xi Jinping brooks no questioning of his policy pirouettes from within the Communist elites. “We should resolutely toe the Party’s line. We must never deviate from the notes,” he told the Politburo at a “self-criticism” session this week, a Maoist practice back in vogue.Article content A new preprint from Queensland’s Berghofer Institute says omicron’s BA.5 sub-lineage attacks the brain and “shows increased neurovirulence compared to earlier omicron sub-variants” in mice. It is not yet reproduced in human studies.
The astounding feature of China’s big bang reopening is the near-total lack of preparation. The regime has gone overnight from welding people into their apartment blocks to stamp out a single urban case, to the opposite absurdity of compelling infected workers to return to the factory floor for the higher cause of GDP. Little was done in advance to plug the vaccination gaps. As of mid-December, almost a quarter of the over-80s had never had a single jab.
Fifteen years ago I attended a panel session in Davos with a leading Chinese demographer who predicted that his country’s ageing crisis would prove so overwhelming that the elderly would be sent onto the ice to die – figuratively speaking, he meant mass euthanasia. Let us hope that we are not seeing this Darwinian cull in action. Consultants Airfinity concluded last month that 1.3m to 2.1m could die, but that was based on maximum infections of 279m.
Philippines Latest News, Philippines Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
U.S. considers airline wastewater testing as COVID surges in ChinaThe U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is considering sampling wastewater from international aircraft to track new variants.
Read more »
U.S. considers airline wastewater testing as COVID surges in ChinaTravel restrictions, such as mandatory testing, have so far failed to significantly curb the spread of COVID, says infectious disease expert
Read more »
China COVID deaths accelerate to 9,000 a day - UK research firm AirfinityBEIJING — Around 9,000 people in China are probably dying each day from COVID\u002D19, UK\u002Dbased health data firm Airfinity said on Thursday, nearly doubling its…
Read more »
LILLEY: No need to follow U.S. lead on travel restrictions as COVID surges in ChinaIt seems like Déjà vu all over again as countries start imposing travel restrictions and screenings in response to COVID\u002D19 surges.
Read more »
Japan tests all China arrivals for COVID as cases surgeJapan on Friday started requiring COVID-19 tests for all passengers arriving from China as an emergency measure against surging infections there as the Asian island country faces its own rising case numbers and record-level deaths.
Read more »
LILLEY: No need to follow U.S. lead on travel restrictions as COVID surges in ChinaIt seems like Déjà vu all over again as countries start imposing travel restrictions and screenings in response to COVID\u002D19 surges.
Read more »