China is finally abandoning "zero covid" and has begun to lift many Coronavirus restrictions. AP. The change in policy follows widespread protests against the policies that rocked many cities recently. People are now allowed to enter businesses without having to scan "health codes" on their phones and are no longer requiring constant testing for the virus. In what may be the most significant changes, people with symptoms or a positive test may now stay home instead of going to a quarantine camp. Those camps were commonly criticized of being unhygienic, crowded and having poor food. China's moves are now more in line with the rest of the worlds governments, many of which have moved on completely from the virus. However, many restrictions remain in effect for China and some experts say that they will likely see a major wave of infections.
My Comment:
What a backpedal from the Chinese government. For the longest time they would broker no dissent on their zero covid strategy. But now? In just a few weeks it appears to have been pulled back dramatically.
Why did they do this? I am guessing the Chinese Communists got scared. People were very upset about the restrictions and the fact that a large number of people died in a fire because of those restrictions. Though I think the scope of the protests were overblown I do think that they were effective in finally putting some pressure on the Chinese government.
With that being said, the zero covid strategy had to be absolutely ruinous to the Chinese economy. They must have been spending billions of dollars on testing, field hospitals and business closures and I doubt they could have afforded it for much longer. The amount they spent on testing alone had to have been obscene.
And it was getting pretty obvious that there really wasn't a point to it anymore. Almost every other government on earth has pulled back their restrictions to the point where it's almost back to the conditions of pre-Coronavirus 2019. I know for me I only think about the virus when a news story like this hits or someone I know gets it. And honestly when someone I know gets it my response is "huh, that sucks I guess" and not "oh my God they are going to die". The virus clearly isn't the deadly one that first spread in late 2019 and early 2020, it's essentially a cold virus now for the vast majority of people. It's not there 100%, some people can and will die from the Coronavirus, but that's true for Influenza too and we don't shut down the world for that.
The so-called experts are worried that China will now see a huge wave of infections, but I am skeptical. Largely because I have never trusted China's numbers and I don't actually believe that they have a large "virgin" population that have never been exposed to the virus. And even if they did, the virus is weak enough now that it probably won't have that much of an effect on normal people. They may see some cases where the sickly and elderly die but I don't see too many healthy people dying off because of the supposed wave. And it's not like they are abandoning their Coronavirus restrictions entirely, they are just easing back on the ones that they have now.
With China finally pulling back on their restrictions I think we can see that the pandemic is basically over. Sure the virus is still around but it always was going to, eradication was never an actual option. We will still be dealing with the fallout from the virus for years but for the pandemic itself? It's finally done.
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