After 3 years of confinement, the country was not prepared for its sudden “freedom”. Now, with an estimated 1 million dead, public anger is growing.
When Sunny* thinks of March last year, he sadly laughs at the ordeal. The 19-year-old Shanghai student spent that month locked in her dormitory, unable to buy essentials or do laundry, even being banned from showering for two weeks over Covid concerns. In April, the entire village closed.
It was the beginning of the chaos of 2022, when the Chinese local government desperately tried to stick to President Xi Jinping’s zero-covid decree while dealing with the maximum transmissible strain of the virus to date: Omicron. “Everyone is panicking, no one is ready,” he told the observer.
By the end of the year, zero-Covid disappeared. Sunny says she was immediately “relieved” that the lockdowns ended, but her emotions temporarily turned to anger when it became clear that the Chinese government had opened up the country, knowing it was. n’t ready. ” I wanted everything for nothing,” says Sunny.
Over the past two months, the virus has spread across the country. Up to 10,000 critical cases have been recorded in hospitals every day. Negotiations with foreign suppliers. Online and on the streets, other people spoke about almost each and every one they knew who had stuck to Covid and the elderly parents who had died.
Sunny’s grandfather among those who died in this wave. “It was morning, and my mom came into my room and said, ‘Your grandfather is in the emergency room,'” she recalls. “A few hours later, he passed away. My grandmother crying, saying I had left her behind.
Xi’s ordinary backflip left analysts alarmed and confused. China wasn’t the only country to decide on a zero-covid strategy and, in fact, it wasn’t the only one to “give up” once it abandoned it. He says he could have followed many classes, mainly making sure vaccines and fitness resources were the best before the tsunami of cases hit.
“Every government has had to open at some point or threaten the consequences of lockdowns that far outweigh the Covid problems,” says Professor Emma McBryde, an epidemiologist at James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia.
“Most models suggest that it would be better for the fitness formula to open slowly. While there is little update on the number of other people infected, it may mean that lives are stored if the fitness formula can also help.
But Xi opened the doors. Until the day of the repeal, local governments were still implementing Covid-free measures and infrastructure. The city of Chongqing built a 21,000-bed quarantine center.
Chinese fitness and political fitness experts told the Observer that the local government is paralyzed. Any preparation to end zero covid would be considered a vote of no confidence in politics and in Xi, an act of political suicide.
Thus, when cases spread, there were not enough doctors, nurses, ample care beds, fever or antiviral drugs, and vaccination rates and characteristics were inadequate. According to Chinese government data, the first 55,000 deaths recorded in this wave occurred at an average age. In China, vulnerable older people are also the most likely not to be vaccinated.
“I think there is no strategy in this critical area,” Professor William Hurst, deputy director of the Centre for Geopolitics at the University of Cambridge, says of Chinese vaccines. Even more so because of the obvious lack of attention to the fundamental measures with vaccines. “
Chinese editor Murong Xuecun, who interviewed Wuhan citizens during the first lockdown in 2020, said China’s abrupt U-turn “was a one-man reckless resolution” made without consultation. Within 24 hours, we saw a general change: we had no idea what happened the 24 hours, what replaced Xi Jinping’s mind, why there was a 180-degree change from one extreme to the other. “
There is much debate about the effect of the November protests against zero covid on his decision. Some experts say there have probably already been so many cases, the hidden numbers, that Xi just learned the policy had to end. Other theories involve monetary considerations, as the Chinese economy has been hit by zero-Covid.
Chen Daoyin, a former associate professor of political science at Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, said Xi most likely acted when he felt the economic scenario was no longer viable. “When the leader acts on a whim, there is no predictability or certainty. “
One of the shared suspicions is that Xi sought to boost economic recovery by rapidly increasing herd immunity with a big wave. This theory was reinforced by the Chinese government which claimed last week that 80% of the population was infected and therefore the choice. of a wave at the moment it was “very low”. Some fitness experts have warned that they oppose this assumption.
“Herd immunity occurs with the original strain and with Delta, but it turns out to be much less applicable to the Omicron strain,” says McBryde.
Other countries besides the UK have in the past pinned their hopes on herd immunity, and Professor Chi Chun-huei, director of the Center for Global Health at Oregon State University, says there is nothing inherent in aiming for herd immunity if you do the right thing. “Ideally, if you need to make that 180-degree turn, you should be prepared. . . And the purpose deserves to be to minimize deaths and severe symptoms.
“This is a common challenge of countries that practiced zero covid: they were too confident. . . and they were not prepared,” he arrived.
Estimates of covid deaths in China from the official count of around 75,000 to over a million. The picture is clouded by a lack of transparency, inflexible definitions to attribute a covid-related death, and failures in knowledge gathering.
Often, when there are mass deaths, families find it difficult to enjoy them in a statistic. In China, few have earned this courtesy.
Among the dozens of Chinese who contacted The Guardian and Observer about their experience, Ms. Chen, a young Shanghai resident, recounts the one who died of covid, an instructor in his thirties whom she describes as a “human treasure”.
Melody, a Chinese woman living abroad, wrote of her uncle as “selfless and generous. “After recovering from a stroke last year, she died at home from what she believes is Covid. “I am surprised that the 3 years of Covid has not been used for a human exit strategy. It shows me: the protection of life has never been the engine of zero-Covid. The strength was. Now the other Chinese see it too.
Across China, thousands of families are grieving. Many now wonder what their religion is in government. The episode is said not to have affected Xi’s power, but it did tarnish his reputation. A 32-year-old man in Guangzhou says he was once a patriot but is now disillusioned. “Maybe I deserve to thank Covid for making me see clearly the total political and economic formula. “
Sunny was already skeptical, but says even her grandmother, who believed the government worked for the people, now complains about it. “It’s something like this in our culture that we go through the difficulties that happen to us,” he says.
“But we realize how much they can replace our lives at the whim of politicians, and we are angry. This fight was about politics and power, but it was the other Chinese who paid. “
* Some names of other people in China have been replaced on request for anonymity
This article was amended on 30 January 2023 to imply that Omicron was the most “transmissible” strain of covid to date, rather than “virulent” as had been claimed in the past.