Why isn't China opening up again?

[alantin]

On 12/27/2022 at 8:25 PM, Flickserve said:

I still can’t understand why China decided to dismantle covid restrictions so quickly. Singapore and Australia showed a great way handling the transition to opening of society to covid without mass panic. A bit of forward planning on dates of opening ensured a lot more of the population would go and get vaccinated. 

I’m guessing they they ended up as victims of their own zero-success and the nearrative of it as an example of the superiority of their authoritarian system. They had defeated the virus with minimal casualties and continued to protect peoples lives while everywhere else callously laid flat and let their people suffer. And why push vaccinations when you had already vaccinated 90 percent of the population and the virus wasn’t spreading anyway. Until it was, they actually realized in how much trouble the economy actually is in and the people began taking to the streets calling for the CCP and Xi to step down. I think that really freaked them out and they absolutely could not let that get any more out of hand.

 

It is really interesting how Xi was vowing continuing zero-covid just a week before they began opening up and then went completely silent about it for over a month leaving someone else to figure out how to handle the pivot. Somehow reminds me of how he went to Hainan and steered as far as possible from the Shanghai debacle in April, and how the whole pandemic began with them trying to cover it up until they couldn’t anymore.

 

The strategy seems to be to just keep your course and bask in success for as long as possible until something happens that forces you to change course, then lay low for a while while finding a way to spin the story in a way that portrays it as a success for you and return to bask in it. Other than that there seems to be precious little planning… Or if there is, I would really like to know why they abruptly changed course at exactly the worst possible time in so many ways. I’m really interested to see how they’ll explain this one.

[TheBigZaboon]

I don't know if anything can be made of this, but what we in the West consider retail over-the-counter medicines like aspirin, and such, require a prescription in Taiwan. That's what I was told in a little retail pharmaceutical shop when I tried to buy aspirin in Taipei about four years ago. Japan has also undergone a change of heart, especially on aspirin for older adults. A few years ago, an older Japanese physician recommended what we call baby aspirin in the US to be taken one tablet a day as a general preventative for heart problems. Recently, though, it's considered an unwanted source of possible uncontrollable bleeding. One hospital, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, refused to put a camera down into my stomach until I swore that I didn't use aspirin regularly, and hadn't even read the label on a bottle for at least two weeks.

 

Anyway, it seems I've inadvertently hijacked another thread, so no more pharmaceutical prescriptions from me...

 

TBZ

[Flickserve]

On 12/28/2022 at 9:46 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

but what we in the West consider retail over-the-counter medicines like aspirin, and such, require a prescription in Taiwan.

It’s more country specific. Mexico is very flexible. Malaysian pharmacies are fairly careful with antibiotics prescription from the chain pharmacies.

 

On 12/28/2022 at 9:46 AM, TheBigZaboon said:

One hospital, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, refused to put a camera down into my stomach until I swore that I didn't use aspirin regularly,

Seems rather over the top. Aspirin still has its place. The doctor should consider individual context. 

[realmayo]

Somewhere I read that China had been limiting the availability of paracetamol/aspirin etc in pharmacies, so that if someone did get Covid they would not self-treat secretly at home, but would tell the authorities and be taken to hospital instead. No idea if true but sounds believable.

[Woodford]

On 12/27/2022 at 7:46 PM, TheBigZaboon said:

Recently, though, it's considered an unwanted source of possible uncontrollable bleeding. One hospital, a Johns Hopkins affiliate, refused to put a camera down into my stomach until I swore that I didn't use aspirin regularly, and hadn't even read the label on a bottle for at least two weeks.

My grandfather almost died from an ibuprofen regimen. He thought he had lung cancer (he was formerly a big smoker) and when he was at death's door, he allowed family members to drag him to the hospital, and he was prepared to hear the bad news. They told him, "Your lungs are fine, but you're bleeding to death. Stop taking ibuprofen and go home." He lived another 7 or so years after that. So yes, that's a lesson I've personally taken to heart! I take it occasionally for pain/fever, and my bottle has a label that warns people who are older than 60 years old, regarding internal bleeding.

 

Some have mentioned that it's unwise to rely on fragmented anecdotes to get a feel for the situation in China, but from Chinese friends and other sources, I've gotten the impression that the contagion is very intense right now. In fact, I listened to the latest episodes from three completely unrelated podcasts this week: "Steve说“ (the host said, "I hope everyone is staying healthy. I just recovered from a case of COVID"), "声动早咖啡" (the host said, "As you can probably tell, I'm not the usual host. She is out with a fever"), and ”原来是这样“ (the host had a very raspy voice, said he was sick with COVID, and shared a day-by-day audio journal of what the experience has been like). I didn't select those out of a broader group of Podcasts I listened to--those were the three I listened to, and all three of them were like that, one after the other! I know statistics can be deceiving, and it could just be a big coincidence. But that felt crazy to me.

[alantin]

Today half of the passangers in two different planes to Milan, one from Beijing and one from Shanghai, tested positive for covid. Last week a meeting with our Chinese office was canceled when half of the participants had covid, our chinese customers are having problems with their people home sick, today my tutor canceled a chat because she had covid and I saw another one post on WeChat that she had covid. A friend in China has just recovered after looking to get infected as soon as possible by visiting all his friends who had it so that he wouldn’t be sick during the holidays, and now one of his elderly relatives is in a bad condition with covid but they couldn’t get her to a hospital because they’re full of covid patients.

 

Four weeks ago I didn’t know a single Chinese person who had had covid.

[abcdefg]

Poor China! To be at the mercy of capricious politics for so long and now to be ravaged by the virus. 

 

Can't help but being reminded of daytime TV soap-opera fiction. Petulant mom says to her complaining teenagers, "You always want me to leave you alone and stop being so overprotective, well, see how you like this..."

[大块头]

On 12/28/2022 at 12:34 PM, Woodford said:

In fact, I listened to the latest episodes from three completely unrelated podcasts this week: "Steve说“ (the host said, "I hope everyone is staying healthy. I just recovered from a case of COVID"), "声动早咖啡" (the host said, "As you can probably tell, I'm not the usual host. She is out with a fever"), and ”原来是这样“ (the host had a very raspy voice, said he was sick with COVID, and shared a day-by-day audio journal of what the experience has been like). I didn't select those out of a broader group of Podcasts I listened to--those were the three I listened to, and all three of them were like that, one after the other! I know statistics can be deceiving, and it could just be a big coincidence. But that felt crazy to me.

 

Ha, same situation for 故事FM and 声东击西.

[anonymoose]

The evidence will all be anecdotal until the authorities release some data, but the chance of getting any truthful data is negligible. From my own anecdotal experience (from contacts in China), the situation is pretty severe.

 

They are so short of doctors there that even those who are Covid positive have to go to work if they don't have a fever higher than 38 °C (~100 °F). Someone posted this picture on Wechat which I thought was rather amusing.

 

 

Whilst I feel sorry for the individuals who are impacted, I can't help having an element of schadenfreude for the whole situation given that, for the last three years, China has essentially been gloating at the rest of the world's ineptitude at handling the situation. Obviously the government is responsible for pushing this narrative, but it has been swallowed hook, line and sinker by a substantial proportion of the population. I had a number of Wechat contacts in China telling me how bad the situation in the UK was and how China's management of the pandemic has been much better. The sad thing is, the government will spin it somehow, and I'm sure they will go on believing this even after the whole thing has blown over.

[alantin]

On 12/31/2022 at 11:42 AM, anonymoose said:

The sad thing is, the government will spin it somehow, and I'm sure they will go on believing this even after the whole thing has blown over.

I wonder about that. I recently had a talk with a tutor about how general feeling has changed in China over the last two years. People being more pessimistic and cynical and people not believing what the government says anymore. I had two people commenting on how they had to read their local news on foreign websites to know what was going on. And it is a sport for some to point out absurdities in the officials messaging.

 

Anecdotal, but she said she was wondering this big change especially over the last year. Maybe they aren’t as “brainwashed” we may believe. Though if they pick up the pieces and start getting the economic growth back in the right direction in 2023, then I’m sure a lot of the people will be happy to play along again to get on with their lives.

 

2022 has been quite remarkable in China in any case, watching the Shanghai debacle, the bridge man, the protests, and all the discontent on weibo. If pretty much every family loses grandmas or grandpas now in this debacle, I really wonder if the people will forget who made them go through zero-covid and told them that it was specifically in order to avoid precisely that.

 

I know exactly the mixed feeling you’re describing about the schadenfreude, and it is interesting to watch the big guy seemingly emerging from all this as his own greatest enemy. And not just domestically.