Jessiedog do you think that the covid stuff is now mainly/mostly about control than the virus itself? Not saying 'freedom day' was a 100% good thing but on balance I'd rather have our lack of restrictions than 0 covid if this is what it actually involves?
Aaaah froggy. That's a really complex question (I love your brain/mind!).
The US/UK/EU/world fucked up big time in 2020. Blase, arrogant, bullshit. Millions died. The biggest derogation of political duty in post WWII history. Sickening. A moment in time of Trumpism, Brexitism and general madness - and is rightly condemned.
China and (especially,) Hong Kong got it right until Omicron came along in Hong Kong and overwhelmed contact tracing which, up until that point was textbook, painstaking, meticulous, hugely labour intensive, telephone and door to door, both backward and forward tracing and absolutely world class and gold standard.
To some extent, it was
too successful. Cases and contacts were traced and quarantined early and kept at a minimum and people went about their business almost as normal. This, along with vax-disinformation, led (particularly,) the elderly to avoid vaccines as "too risky" while the chances of contracting Covid were, essentially, extremely low.
But ... with the arrival in Hong Kong of the unstoppable transmission of Omicron in tightly-packed, high-rise housing estates and beyond in Jan 2022, during Feb/Mar 2022, we were absolutely battered due to the lack of vaccinations in the elderly and an overwhelmed healthcare system, as it ripped it's way through our elderly care homes with a case fatality rate of over 16% in un-vaccinated over 80 year olds.
Those two months have left Hong Kong with the highest per capita death rate for any country/region for the whole of 2022. A massive failure on the part of the HK Govt., when vaccines had been available for well over a year by then. A catastrophic failure.
In today's Hong Kong, like most advanced societies, Covid-19 is already endemic and circulating largely freely. The majority (probably 75%+) have contracted Covid and infections/reinfections have been recorded at 200,000 - 300,000 per month for many months (and there are probably an additional 300,000 - 400,00 cases a month that go unreported to the Govt). Deaths are steady at @ 10 - 15 a day. What happens here now is largely performative, ineffective, unnecessary and purely for the pleasure of Beijing, nothing more.
Xi has a big problem on his hands. He has staked his reputation here, to a point where it's hard for him to ease off on zero-covid. Ra! Ra! Ra! China is the best. We beat the virus. All hail the Chairman!
Omicron is ripping through the mainland and will soon be uncontrollable (if it's not already,) without hugely punitive Lockdowns on an unimaginable (and almost certainly impossible!) scale, across multiple provinces.
But the populous is already getting antsy with the disruption, damage and harsh conditions this entails.
If Omicron really gets going (and I don't currently see how to contain it), Xi also has a massive elderly population on his hands (tens of millions), with far lower vaccination rates than those in Hong Kong in Feb/Mar.
If the same thing happens in the mainland as happened in Hong Kong, there will soon be at least 1.5 million dead pensioners across China - hard for even China to cover up! And the - already very patchy healthcare system, especially outside of major cities - will suffer a complete collapse, with all the concomitant knock-on effects on public health in general.
It's a clusterfuck of monumental proportions in the making and the strength of Xi's position - and potentially the CCP's itself - would certainly take a mauling.
This is a monstrous fucking rock and a diamond-hard fucking hard place and Xi is caught in the middle.
Big problem.
(Edit: For clarity about current HK infections.)
Woof