This just reads like they want Chinese people to drop like flies and the Chinese society to be okay with it. They sound mad that disease ridden plague rats from the “international community” are not allowed to walk around leashless to infect the Chinese people with a disease that they, in this piece itself, claim that the medical system would not be able to handle in case it spirals out of control.
So many classics from this:
And the Chinese health care system simply is not equipped to care for millions of people sickened by the virus.
All of this seems like an enormous success when compared with the messy and often chaotic response to the virus in the United States, where more than 860,000 people have died and some 2,000 more die each day. Many hospitals are under siege. The economy has been disrupted. But this may very well be the future China is facing. Its pursuit of zero Covid will prove to be a huge mistake. The policy has left it wholly unprepared for what will become endemic Covid.
China doing the opposite strategy of the US, so it’s going to have the same results?
But a zero-Covid policy means the Chinese will always be chasing an ever moving target. And they will never win.
I love how we have to be “tolerant” towards deadly viruses, and zero-covid policy is somehow seen as a negative. You could replace every instance of covid with heart disease or cancer in this article and it would sound just as deranged.
But a zero-Covid policy is a losing long-term strategy.
Their zero-covid policy means that the country has opened up internally and been done with covid since mid-2020. Their strategy has proven correct.
Denmark, Germany and some other European countries, as well as Australia, have achieved strong immunity without suffering the U.S. death rate. They used effective vaccines, made smarter decisions about when and where to impose lockdowns and protected the most vulnerable — older people and those with compromised immune systems. Community spread resulted, but it would have been inevitable, even with longer or more severe lockdowns, and it allowed those countries to build up immunity.
Denmark, germany, australia all have tons of new infections, they are all struggling. Those countries aren’t doing anywhere near as well as China, in terms of deaths or cases / population
The whole premise that China can’t keep up zero covid hinges on the idea that sooner or later they have to open up the borders and let the plague rats in. However, it’s pretty obvious that China can keep their borders closed indefinitely at this point. Their economy is doing fine and their international trade is growing.
The only downside of having closed borders is losing tourism and the benefits of not having the plague run wild far outweigh any losses from not having international tourists. Literally the only people who are unhappy about this are the rich and affluent who are now inconvenienced when they travel outside the country.
Side point but I feed so bad for the countries / cities who rely on tourism, especially the carribbean countries.
Yeah definitely, but until the rest of the world gets their act together this is really the only sane policy to take.
you point out a good thing, but this article also does something subtle.
Instead of saying “the Chinese Authorities” or “The Communist Party”, they say “The Chinese”. Giving the impression that it’s the will of the whole of the Chinese population, rather than the guidance and policies of the government. This subtle use of phrasing is likely being used to make the Anti-China crowds use racist anti-Chinese arguments.
If you can convince people that the citizens on the other side are all content with the things your government sees as “bad”, you can convince them that as a race and a culture the citizens themselves are part of that “bad”, thus making racism justified while it’s directed at the intended targets. This same publication wrote “stop asian hate” articles in 2020, but post things that inspire asian hate anyways.
If anyone was wondering why I hate western media, this is a big reason.
Archived link that bypasses the paywall: https://archive.fo/nb5Db
bomb the nyt
Note this is a guest essay, so not actually by the NYT. Personally I think he makes good points.
Like what? Why shouldn’t we have a no-tolerance policy for a deadly virus?
Like that eventually the virus is going to break through, and they should be prepared, instead of relying on zero-tolerance continuing to work.
The problem is what does preparation for this “eventual” spread have to do with the zero-covid policy? They say in the article that China is ill equipped to handle the pandemic in case it spreads. In that case is delaying this “eventual” spread not the right thing to do? Why cannot they prepare for it while keeping zero-covid policy in place?
The article is vague sophistry and just another iteration of “the coming collapse of China” copium.
For clarification I put “eventual” in quotes because I am not sure if it is destined that China will see a breakout, seeing how the “civilised” world has ensured with their vaccine patent enforcements and their domestic vaccinstion policies that thr virus will never die out.
Has that not worked for over a year? This isn’t the first pandemic China has had to deal with: they learned from swine flu, that catching these early and quarantining regions was the best way to prevent deaths. Zero tolerance has worked and will continue to work.
