News Forum - China locks down 21 million people in Chengdu

[Rookiescot]

  On 10/16/2022 at 9:55 AM, Poolie said:

'It' is largely harmless now, so what would the consequences be? Added to which, this notion of  no immunity is baseless. I went for a test yesterday as I'm going in hospital tomorrow and, skinflint that I am, I didn't want to pay at hospital.  So I stood in a line with about 40 souls and came home to a negative test result from a roadside testing station.

The reason why China hasnt opened up  like the rest is obvious when you consider this:

https://www.shine.cn/news/metro/2210161545/

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And if you believe that Poolie I have a bridge you may wish to purchase.

You would see far more cases than that just from false positive tests. Unless you are trying to convince us Chinese tests are utterly foolproof unlike capitalist pig dog western tests. 

[EdwardV]

  On 10/16/2022 at 9:55 AM, Poolie said:

It' is largely harmless now, so what would the consequences be? Added to which, this notion of  no immunity is baseless. I went for a test yesterday as I'm going in hospital tomorrow and, skinflint that I am, I didn't want to pay at hospital.  So I stood in a line with about 40 souls and came home to a negative test result from a roadside testing station.

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So the fact you stood in a line with 40 others and didn’t get infected proves the Chinese population has immunity? Is that suppose to make sense? It might prove you and none of the other 40 people were infected, but in no way does it prove you all had immunity. 
 

If China threw open the doors and let the virus have at it:

China could see more than 1.5 million deaths from a wave of Omicron infections without Covid-19 controls and the use of antiviral therapies, a new study has forecast. A model by Chinese and US researchers suggested that, given China’s vaccine efficacy and coverage, an unchecked outbreak that began with 20 cases of Omicron in March could “generate a tsunami of Covid-19 cases” between May and July. 
 

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3177236/removing-chinas-covid-controls-could-result-15-million-deaths

The Chinese know this, after all it was their study, and have no intention of getting rid of zero covid policy for 3-5 years. They need to develop a MRNA vaccine that actually works and then vaccinate everyone. Only then will they open up again. The Chinese government newspapers have been running articles about the wisdom of zero covid this last week leading up to the party congress. They are not getting rid of the policy. Fact is it works, that it’s also killing the economy isn’t as important. 

[Poolie]

  On 10/16/2022 at 11:59 AM, EdwardV said:

So the fact you stood in a line with 40 others and didn’t get infected proves the Chinese population has immunity? Is that suppose to make sense? It might prove you and none of the other 40 people were infected, but in no way does it prove you all had immunity. 
 

If China threw open the doors and let the virus have at it:

China could see more than 1.5 million deaths from a wave of Omicron infections without Covid-19 controls and the use of antiviral therapies, a new study has forecast. A model by Chinese and US researchers suggested that, given China’s vaccine efficacy and coverage, an unchecked outbreak that began with 20 cases of Omicron in March could “generate a tsunami of Covid-19 cases” between May and July. 
 

https://amp.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3177236/removing-chinas-covid-controls-could-result-15-million-deaths

The Chinese know this, after all it was their study, and have no intention of getting rid of zero covid policy for 3-5 years. They need to develop a MRNA vaccine that actually works and then vaccinate everyone. Only then will they open up again. The Chinese government newspapers have been running articles about the wisdom of zero covid this last week leading up to the party congress. They are not getting rid of the policy. Fact is it works, that it’s also killing the economy isn’t as important. 

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Your opening sentence is so far off it that I didn't bother with the rest. Have a nice day.

[Soidog]

I don’t know how China and Xi is going to get out of the Zero Covid policy. He can’t keep it up for ever and when he does back down and Covid numbers rise, people will ask why the country was locked down for so long. Having said all that, I think the way it will be handled is simply to stop people asking such difficult questions. The media sure won’t and if individuals do, they will end up in correction facilities. 

[Metoo]

  On 9/2/2022 at 2:18 PM, Rookiescot said:

The west went with a program of vaccinations and for those unwilling natural immunity. 

China on the other hand has none of that because their vaccinations dont work and not enough of the population has been exposed because of previous lockdowns.

So China has a choice. Either stay locked down (massive damage to the economy) or expose the population to the virus (massive damage to the economy).

Either way its stuffed.

When the Chinese economy (which is built on a house of cards) collapses the country is going to implode.

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I SINCERELY HOPE SO

[Havana]

  On 9/2/2022 at 12:20 AM, Fanta said:

21 million equals 0.15% of China’s population of approx 1,400 million. In Thailand that equals 99,000 people from 66 million.  

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Numbers, figures , percentages become meaningless when you look back to how Covid was detected in the UK. 2 Chines students returning from China to York UNI. The rest is history.

Perhaps XI Jinping should simply declare lockdown for the whole Country.

[Donald]

China must be the most oppressive regime in the world, and that says a lot with the competition that's around. What a nightmare having been born there with zero chance of escaping a totalitarian brutal and ruthless dictatorship. This Covid business certainly gave them the opportunity to enforce total control over their people and has nothing to do with a medical emergency. By the way, a lot of Western governments would like to copy. See Australia, Canada, New Zealand and many more.

[Donald]

  On 9/2/2022 at 12:03 AM, HiuMak said:

Does China know something about their virus that the rest of the world don't?

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Interesting observation.

[Donald]

  On 10/16/2022 at 12:43 PM, Soidog said:

I don’t know how China and Xi is going to get out of the Zero Covid policy. He can’t keep it up for ever and when he does back down and Covid numbers rise, people will ask why the country was locked down for so long. Having said all that, I think the way it will be handled is simply to stop people asking such difficult questions. The media sure won’t and if individuals do, they will end up in correction facilities. 

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True, and the same goes for the so called democracies. Anyone who dares to question the wisdom of any of the covid measures, or God forbid, the "vaccines" can find themselves in hot water. Doctors will lose their license, people will lose their jobs, social media accounts blocked and friends, neighbors and family will ostracize those that don't toe the government line.

[Cazna]

  On 9/2/2022 at 8:49 AM, lspab said:

No, not the case at all.

China was the first to get out a vaccine, Sinovax. They followed a fairly conventional approach or using inactivated whole virus. However, they did this without a decent human cell expression system, opting for a chimp cell expression system. Essentially, SArs-Cov-2 was infected into a chimp cell line.  Virons are replicated. When Viruses replicate, they "pinch" a bit of RNA sequence from the host cell. The replicated virus was not 100% identical to the original, and the bits that were changed were not the same bits that are subject to normal selection pressure when the virus is in circulation in a human population.

Sinovac elicited a mixed response that wasn't as effective as other vaccines due to epitope mix.

The other vaccines have worked. That is plain to see through reduced ICU admissions, and reduced admissions due to COVID-19 (the latter is more difficult to quantify, because hospital admission stats also include those who have tested positive, but who were not actually admitted because of COVID).

These first S-Protein vaccines had a simple primary objective, which was enunciated time and time again in 2020 by the professionals; get hospital admissions under control. Move the virus from a high conseqence event to a medium consequence event, and allow battered health systems around the world to take a breather. These vaccines have achieved that, and can be considered successful. They cannot be considered sterilising vaccines though, but few vaccines are, when examined with the same microscopic diligence as the covid vaccines have been. For example, measles vaccination is often touted as an extremely successful campaign to reduce deaths in children, and no one of reasonable mind would disagree. Vaccinated children generally don't "get" measles; the proof they don't get measles is the lack of a rash and general malaise associated with a measles illness. But when you poke more deeply, using molecular diagnostic tools which are never routinely used to diagnose measles (why would you, when likely far in excess of 90% of specimens would return positive), the measles virus is still circulating, still infecting. But vaccination means children don't develop illness.

COVID-19 is the illness, Sars-Cov-2 is the cause, a bit like the relationship between AIDS and HIV.

What is different in the COVID-19 Pandemic is that from the outset, pretty much the most sensitive molecular tool was made available, before other diagnostic techniques, ie PCR. PCR is exquisitely sensitive. PCR is the cornerstone of most nation's defence against biological weapons. PCR enables cancers to be accurate diagnosed. PCR allows the right cancer drug therapy to be used. PCR identifies criminals. Its a terrific technique. But has its problems. The major issue, in the context of the Pandemic, is its difficult to use to distinguish between an active infection and inactive viral debris in some people.

PCR quickly became the go to means to define cases. Antigen detection or serological tests would have needed much more time to develop; you have to immunize scores of animals, test blood titers, and then harvest blood, perform cell cloning, screen again and again. By my reckoning, from the point you had sufficient antigen to work with, through to getting your monoclonal antibodies up and running, you were looking at 3 months, in addition to isolating and propagating the virus itself. Effective antigen tests did not appear until the second half of 2020.

Without PCR, the world would have been stuck in the same situation Wuhan found itself in the first few months of 2020; healthcare systems in total collapse, diagnostics limited to whatever CT scans could be run, and much much poorer standard of care, and worse outcome.

If Antigen testing though had become the primary means of presumptive diagnosis, the uninformed hoi polloi would have a different conclusion about vaccines.

PCR tests, thanks to synthetic biology, don't need actual virus in order to design the primers. You just need virus code. In clinical diagnostics, it is unheard of to row back from a diagnostic test to a worse diagnostic test (antigen testing typically has worse specificity and sensitivity, and, as we all know now, cannot be easily modified to account for emerging variants).

The vaccines used were amazing. Even the Chinese vaccine was amazing, for an inactivated virus botch job. Now we wait for the next generation of vaccine, which will tackle the sterilizing aspect (hopefully, but remember, for many vaccines, it can take decades to come up with something that actually sterilises, and we have a tall order, considering the benchmark, in the eyes of the hoi polloi and chattering classes, is a PCR negative.

China, and New Zealand to an extent, took a mistake with early zero-Covid policies. They are backed into a corner where they are entirely dependant on vaccine uptake to reduce hospital admissions. In a free society, it is impossible to get 100% uptake; ultimately people will decline if they don't want it, even if there are societal restrictions. Hence the riots in Leicester in the 1860-70s over the Vaccine Act (the Act in the UK that made it compulsory for children to be vaccinated against Smallpox). Even in an authoritarian society, like China, it will be impossible to get 100% uptake; there will be a significant portion of the population that you really can't vaccinate for medical reasons (same reasons the BCG jab isn't given to very young children and the immunocompromised).

Very early on in the Pandemic, government ministers in the UK and US tried to reassure the population that they were in the best possible position to deal with a Pandemic. There was understandable hubris in those statements, which were born out of a John Hopkins exercise to test and rate national resiliance. Those ratings fell away when the cases piled up in the US and UK. US and UK pandemic planning, like most places in the West (including Norway) was based on a reasonable assumption  that a flu-like virus was be the causative agent. The Influenza virus transmits rather differently to Sars-Cov-2, and may will recall the endless debate and semantics over aerosol versus airborne transmission. That difference meant hospital infection control plans went into the bin. At the time, the UK was (rightfully) criticized for lacking a diagnostics industry, and look how wonderful Germany was doing. Well, Germany was doing well, thanks largely to the Federalised nature of its Public Health system. However, the response of the US and the UK was exactly what the John Hopkins study predicted, that high performance institutions swung into action, and set the standard. The UK went gangbusters on diagnostics, setting up innovative fully automated Lighthouse megalabs to facilitate population level testing. Germany ramped up, but was soon overtaken by the UK, due to the limitations of the German public health service.

From my position I can actually quantify where innovations against COVID came from and where they didn't. China hasn't done anything of note, except, reluctantly, report the first cases; nearly didn't happen at all. Russia's biggest contributions were running out of materials for their booster shots, and incinerating a ward of COVID patients after jury rigging one ventilator to many patients. Substantially, nearly all the innovations, whether vaccine, therapeutic, patient management, diagnostic, have come from those top ranked countries in the John Hopkins, for obvious reasons, both related to institutional reputation and cultural advantage (an example of cultural advantage; when doctors at University College London realised COVID patients didn't have inelastic lungs like typical ARDS patients, and so needed oxygen more than mechanical ventilation, leading to an F1-loving doctor rooting around in the basement for an old Philips CPAPS mask, and approaching the F1 Mercedes team down in Surrey, and getting them to come up with reverse engineerring it, with a filter on the exhaust unit. A low cost plastic moulding was designed, the design desseminated for free, and thousands of lives saved. Probably the major reason why warehouses are now full of unwanted ventilators and Nightingale dying rooms were never needed. A combination of Institutional Initiative, Capitalist innovation and Anglo Saxon fortitude. This would never have happened in China, because a junior physicians would never have questioned the chief, would never have gone down in the basement, would never have thought of cross-industry seeding of ideas, and not followed the thinking of the great Maltese physician Edward de Bone, and his "lateral thinking" craziness.

Niall Ferguson goes on about this, about why the Industrial Revolution happened in Britain and not elsewhere. Often he uses the term Protestant, but really he means British Protestant, as a code for Anglo-Saxon.

China has not allowed the virus to circulate, so there is very little "natural" immunity in the population, and so they are entirely dependant on vaccines, and have gotten themselves into a hole. They won't get out of this on the basis of a 5 year plan, but only by someone deciding to ignore the plan.

New Zealand; their Public Health people would have been talking to oppos in London, and probably had the same instincts about closing the borders or not. It was obviously a tempting proposition to politicans, as closing the NZ borders is so easy. They've been trying a form of managed virus circulation, in order to try and boost natural immunity levels, to supplement vaccine uptake. Hindsight should have told them that there would always be more vaccine resistance among Maoris.

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This would have to be the most accurate and informative piece I have read on Covid. The way the vaccines are manufactured and tested and the possible ramifications. Thank you for your time to disseminate this most informative article and your ability to break down what is a most complex subject for people to get their heads around into an understandable format.  Brilliant.

[Soidog]

  On 9/2/2022 at 8:49 AM, lspab said:

China has not allowed the virus to circulate, so there is very little "natural" immunity in the population, and so they are entirely dependant on vaccines, and have gotten themselves into a hole. They won't get out of this on the basis of a 5 year plan, but only by someone deciding to ignore the plan.

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A terrific article by an obviously well informed person.
 

I’ve picked out a key part in what I believe will inevitably be the case. They will have to ignore the Zero Covid plan. It won’t be reported. It will be spun as if it was all part of the XI master plan. I just feel sorry for your average Chinese citizen having to live like this.