Once again, the Western media is stoking unnecessary fears with panic-stricken reports of “China’s new Covid nightmare”. Nevertheless, many seem to be trying to draw different and nonsensical lessons, showing that nothing has been learned from the past three years. Moreover, in spite of China’s severe attempts to prevent travel, the spread of a highly infectious respiratory virus cannot be shut down completely in the era of global supply chains, even with hermetically sealed borders, as proved to be the case in Australia and New Zealand. Clearly, lockdowns could only work in a very limited way, to reduce spread for a short period of time they were therefore impractical for any length of time without causing enormous harm, which is why Zero Covid was impossible. To us, a number of conclusions can be drawn, which we discuss in The Covid Consensus. Once mass protests began to spread in November, the decision was taken to move on before they became a threat to the regime.
The writing was on the wall when footage emerged in August of shoppers in a Shanghai Ikea stampeding for the exit after authorities sought to seal off the store and send everyone in it to quarantine following the discovery of one shopper who had been exposed to an asymptomatic six-year-old child. It’s pretty clear that China abandoned Zero Covid because it didn’t work, was causing huge socioeconomic and psychological harm, and threatened to undermine the political control of Xi Jinping.
#UNHERD CHINA FREE#
Like what you’re reading? Get the free UnHerd daily email It’s too easy to say that we should just move on, because the future health of human societies depends on what decisions now are taken. We don’t want to rehearse these arguments again, but they are vital: they cut to the heart of what lessons global societies will take from the Covid-19 pandemic and associated policy response, and how institutions will balance health and disease in the future. Many of us have been left wondering: have we woken up in 2023 - or 2020?Īs the past year came to an end, the same stubborn arguments which have been spinning around the world’s hamster wheel for the last three years were aired again - this time about China’s decision to abandon Zero Covid, and what this might mean for the rest of the world in terms of variants, Covid spread and the health of the general population. We’re not even a week into January, and already epidemiologists are warning of new Covid variants, while passengers travelling from China to the UK will once again be required to show a negative Covid test before boarding. The start of the new year has unshakeable feeling of Groundhog Day to it.
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