By David Stanway
SHANGHAI (Reuters) – Samuel Ren is fed up with zero-COVID.
“Omicron is not a threat, it’s like a general cold,” said the twenty-year-old computer scientist in Shanghai, describing China’s ongoing lockdown measures as “ridiculous. “
His frustration over civil rights and economic damage will influence Cai Shiyu, a 70-year-old megacity resident who suffers from central disease and high blood pressure.
“It’s not like a lack of blood that goes away after a while,” said Cai, who believes one case of COVID-19 is too much to tolerate. “Otherwise, the epidemic will recover. “
Views on President Xi Jinping’s “zero-COVID” policy vary widely in China, a country seen from abroad as a surveillance state that imposes iron discipline.
The fierce debate, which has sparked several protests against the lockdown, illustrates the difficulties Xi and his government face in relaxing the world’s maximum inflexible rules on COVID and avoiding national discontent.
After almost 3 years, senior government officials and public fitness experts reported a significant relaxation of 0 COVID measures. policies
This baffles others like Cai, who say a low death toll is a testament to the merits of the radical approach.
Officially, there have been around 5200 COVID deaths in China, more than a million in the US. 690,000 in Brazil and 212,000 in Britain. Reportedly, a death rate across the U. S. The U. S. has recorded more than four million deaths in the country of 1. 4 billion people.
The potential dangers of moving away from strict restrictions, even as daily infections reach record levels, are increasing due to low vaccination rates among older adults and considerations about the resilience of the fitness system.
Syler Sun, an advertising industry employee in Shanghai, reflected the conflict many other people feel about COVID 0 rules over the Omicron variant, which tends to cause less severe illness.
“We want adjustments. But as for what those adjustments will be, I don’t know and I’m not wise enough,” Sun said. “You can have 0 COVID, but you can’t have a healthy economy, and you can have a healthy economy, but you can’t have 0 COVID. “
China’s National Health Commission did not respond to a request for comment on its COVID containment plans.
Beijing says its policies have “put other people first” and were designed to protect maximum lives at the lowest cost. He also said recent policy changes are a refinement, not a move away from zero-COVID.
‘A WEAPON TO KILL MOSQUITOES’
The measures are tough.
A case of COVID from a single person can lead to the closure of a building or residential complex, and entire villages have been cordoned off with just a few hours’ notice.
Youth unemployment has reached record highs and economic expansion has fallen this year, with factories battered and chains disrupted by closures and other restrictions.
“If we continue to manage this virus with the same policies that were used at the beginning of the outbreak, it looks a bit like an anti-aircraft weapon to kill mosquitoes,” Wang Weizheng, a doctor from Wuhan, said on Chinese social media. Weibo site.
Recent decisions about quarantine times and testing needs have been widely interpreted on social media and through analysts as the first transitory zero-COVID dropout. Many welcomed the changes, but others remain cautious.
Laura Yasaitis, a public health expert at the Eurasia Group think tank that tracks China’s 0 COVID policies, said concern about the virus likely varies widely across the country, as well as within cities or provinces.
“Even those recent hesitant moves to ease restrictions have provoked reactions that unsettle the general public,” he said.
He pointed to an incident last month in Shijiazhuang, Hebei province, where the government was forced to oppose a resolution to close COVID booths after locals complained about potential risks of outbreaks.
Many Foxconns who escaped from a “closed-circuit” factory in Zhengzhou last month said they did so because they were afraid of being infected.
A study by researchers at Brown University published in August, based on social media data and interviews with Shanghai residents, found that zero-COVID policies had gained traction in China, with compliance driven through “horrific scenes” of countries where COVID measures were more flexible.
In fact, the rising death toll in many other countries has strengthened government public policies among certain segments of the population.
“I used to live and I feel that China’s control is much greater than abroad,” said Wang Jian, a 32-year-old Shanghai bureau leader. “There are other tactics to deal with the virus, China’s is inventing minds through China’s internal conditions and, looking at the numbers, I think it’s fine. “
“FEARS DON’T GO AWAY”
Public discord over zero-COVID is evident among medical professionals.
Zhang Wenhong, head of Shanghai’s team of COVID-19 experts, said last month that the virus had become less virulent with Omicron and that, combined with higher overall levels of vaccination, it could, regardless, give China a “way out” of the pandemic’s disruption. .
Coronavirus expert Zhong Nanshan, who helped engineer China’s initial reaction to COVID-19, said Omicron’s death rate was low “so citizens don’t have to worry too much. “
Still, Zhou Jiatong, head of the Center for Disease Control in Guangxi’s southwestern region, struck a less positive tone about the variant in a paper published last month in the Shanghai Journal of Preventive Medicine.
He estimated that if mainland China had eased COVID restrictions in the same way Hong Kong did this year, it would have faced more than 233 million infections and more than 2 million deaths.
Experts responded to requests for further comment.
Katherine Mason, one of the study’s researchers from Brown University, said the Chinese government has jobs to do before they can move away from COVID restrictions.
“Until they create the situations, through much more widespread vaccination, capacity building in hospitals and a plan to slowly spread to other people slowly, where the loss of life is not too severe, other people’s fears will not go away. “” said Mason.
Officials have continuously said that China’s fitness formula will not be to cope with a backlog in cases where medical resources are unevenly distributed across the country.
According to an article published last year by the Fudan School of Public Health in Shanghai, China had just 4. 37 intensive care beds versus another 100,000 people in 2021, up from 34. 2 in the United States in 2015.
Meanwhile, vaccination rates among others over 60 have barely recovered since the summer, according to official figures. Those who had gained two doses rose from 85. 6 percent in August to 86. 4 percent in November, while the booster rate went from 67. 8 percent to 68. 2 percent, according to the Chinese CDC.
The United States has vaccinated 92 percent of those over 60, of whom 70 percent get boosters, with Germany’s numbers 91 percent and 85. 9 percent and Japan’s 92 percent and 90 percent, the CDC said.
China announced this week that it would launch a new vaccination campaign for other people over the age of 60.
FIERCE OR PAPER TIGER?
The demographic profile of the weekend’s protesters suggests urban youth are willing to question the country’s desire to devote so many resources to containing a virus they say is no longer a primary threat.
“I used to worry about dying of COVID, but now that so many of my friends have recovered, I only have the flu,” a Beijing resident in his twenties surnamed Wang told Reuters on Saturday. Wang had joined neighbors in recent days to pressure the local government to release them from lockdown.
A Chinese news and social media contributor, Jinri Toutiao, said the only other people who still believed in the closures were retirees and those who didn’t want to make a living.
“Before, the virus was as fierce as a tiger, but now it’s a paper tiger,” the contributor wrote last week.
However, everyone believes that protesting is the solution.
“There’s no need for a hotel with those strategies without your brain. These moves will disturb public order,” said Adam Yan, 26, who works in the food industry.
“The COVID scenario is quite confusing and other people are facing new problems. I think he’s older in government and everyone is doing the best they can.
(Reporting by David Stanway, Xihao Jiang, Casey Hall and Josh Horwitz in Shanghai; additional reporting by Martin Quin Pollard and Yew Lun Tian in Beijing and David Kirton in Shenzhen; editing by Pravin Char)
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