BEIJING The coronal in China has now reached full speed. I also now, for the first time during the pandemic, know of many infected people in Beijing alone.
In recent years, here in China, everyday life has been lived under severe restrictions. The goal was to eliminate every single corona infection from all of China. Lines of people snaking through the test stalls have been seen on every block. In Beijing, tests have had to be done almost every day.
My house was also quarantined when one resident was found to be infected with the corona virus. Infected people and close contacts have been subjected to centralized quarantine, for which barrack villages have even been built. The infection numbers themselves remained confusingly small.
The zero tolerance justified by the protection of human lives fell however, to its own impossibility. The recent loud protests in China’s major cities showed that the citizens’ tolerance was beginning to be exhausted.
Thousands of people took to the streets after ten people died in a fire in Urumqi, western Xinjiang province. People believed that the escape routes were blocked in the house placed under corona quarantine. Due to the corona quarantine, fences had been built around the house.
It was not the first time that people had died specifically because of corona restrictions, not so much from the infection itself. Hospitals have turned people who need help away from their doors if they have not been able to show the result of a corona test done within a couple of days.
The people’s concerns on the internet were censored. Sympathy for the victims was great, as many felt they could find themselves in a similar predicament due to the inflexible restrictions. So the protesters took to the streets and some demanded an end to censorship and the resignation of the country’s leader.
At the same time, omikron spread persistently, even though the corona guards dressed in white protective suits tried to prevent the spread by restricting people’s daily lives. So only more desperate protests can be expected. The restrictions are acutely felt all over the country, when the finances of both the state and individuals are strained. Many have lost their jobs.
But in Beijing, there is no celebration when the test requirement is lifted and the infection can be cured at home. Now many are troubled by uncertainty and fear.
The message from the authorities is now that the infection is likely to be mild. Citizens are advised to mix ginger, brown sugar and lemon in hot water.
For years, however, people have heard from the authorities that the disease can kill. Pharmacies are overcrowded when people rush there to get fever medicine. Previously, you had to register in pharmacies if you wanted cough or fever medicine. The buyer was considered a corona risk.
The easing of restrictions comes at a bad time. Winter is coming in China. In Beijing, the temperature is close to zero. The air is cold and dry. Infections spread easily.
And Corona is now spreading like wildfire. The exact number is no longer known because testing has been reduced.
China’s corona strategy is still unclear. The country’s leadership does not grant zero tolerance for mistakes. It also does not tell the long-term plan from now on.
What is clear, however, is that for the past three years, China has spent vast amounts of money testing hundreds of millions of people many times a week. The economy has deteriorated when, among other things, factories have been closed for quarantine.
But China has not invested in disease prevention. Only vaccines made in China have been used, which are known to be less effective than Western mRNA vaccines.
The last vaccination round was a year ago. Only 40 percent of people over 80 have received a full vaccination. Since there have been few infections, there is also no herd protection against the virus in China. A large number of citizens have not been sick with corona before.
China has also not improved its hospitals to withstand a huge pandemic. There are few intensive care places. Only 3.6 places per hundred thousand people. There are also few intensive care places in Finland, five places per hundred thousand patients.
The British company Airfinity, which collects health data, estimates that over the next six months in China, more than one million people would die of corona infection when restrictions are lifted. Most of them would be unvaccinated elderly people.
A cold corona winter is ahead. But zero tolerance will go down in the history books as a utopia that even China had to give up.
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