China still going with its batshit COVID policy
I have discussed the risks of Chinas policy and their need to transition at some point before, so I wont repeat that all again right now.
I will briefly explore the theme of what counts as 'batshit' though, via an example of how this can still all be turned on its head if different framing and priorities are employed.
According to BBC articles such as the following one, 'The country has recorded fewer than 15,000 deaths since the pandemic began, according to Johns Hopkins University.'
Over 80,000 tourists in the resort known as "China's Hawaii" face new restrictions and cancelled flights.
www.bbc.co.uk
Meanwhile, last weeks ONS data for England & Wales records 15,379 deaths caused by Covid in 2022 (and 23,222 deaths in 2022 if we use the broader definition 'deaths involving Covid-19'). Those figures are for deaths registered up to 29th July at the time of publication.
So just using those simplistic numbers we can see how an alternative view of what counts as batshit could easily be constructed by those still seeking to justify Chinas response to this virus.
Obviously the reality is more complicated and other forms of human misery and balance need to be taken into account. Clearly there is a lot of politics involved in all countries approaches, and the politics in China is not subtle and is easy to legitimately condemn. And clearly Chinas approach had some big downsides in terms of vaccine uptake in the most vulnerable age groups, which has caused them to stick out like a sore thumb long after the other handful of countries which were initially in a position to go for a 'zero covid' approach have felt able to transition to a different approach.
Plus even if we assume that China will eventually reach a point where politically and via vaccine-uptake levels they feel able to start to transition their policy, they will still have to navigate the the inevitable consequences of such a shift. Because if we look at what happened in regards deaths in Australia and New Zealand once they changed approach, we can see that even in a well vaccinated population there will be deaths, and if deaths had previously been effectively suppressed via very strong measures, the deaths since the switch will contrast sharply with the previous picture. Not that I view such surges and ongoing deaths as any sort of indication that the previous policies only delayed the inevitable or somehow werent worth it, far from it, its still permanently changed the magnitude of pandemic deaths in those countries, The following graphs are from the worldometer covid site.
If/when the times comes that China changes their approach, they could of course resort to suppression of data in order to downplay the results of such changes on the death picture, and it will be hard for us to judge whether they indulge in that sort of thing. So I cannot say whether we will eventually see those sorts of patterns in the graphs from China too.
www.techfinancials.co.za
