Politic?: China's Gross COVID Miscalculation

"They've just painted themselves into a corner that's going to be hard to get out of."
"Whatever you do, at some point you will get a pretty scary surge of infections."
"What China has done is frittered away the benefits of the vaccination program."
Dr. Paul Hunter, professor of medicine, University of East Anglia, U.K.

"[China faces a] great challenge. If they open up, if they don't stick to the zero-COVID strategy anymore, there will be a huge wave of infection among their population, and it's a big-population country."
"Their health-care facilities or capacity will have to be transformed before encountering that kind of challenge [a need for more medical resources to handle the fallout of a failed policy]."
"I do think they have to have second thoughts about getting away from the zero-COVID strategy."
Yi-Chun Lo, deputy head, Centers for Disease Control, Taiwan

"He [Xi] owns the [zero-COVID] policy. It's very difficult for anyone to come to him now and say, 'Sir, we have to change our approach, because this is having a huge impact on the economy'."
Guy Saint-Jacques, former Canadian ambassador to Beijing, 2012 to 2016

"China might prove to be the major contributor to global COVID-19 deaths in 2022, perhaps exceeding one million."
"The virus is apolitical and will spread where immunity walls are low."
"In China, ideology now is driving everything."
Dr. Prabhat Jha, executive director, Centre for Global Health Research, St.Michael's Hospital, Toronto

A protester reacts as he is arrested by police during a protest against China's COVID-19 pandemic measures, on a street in Shanghai on Nov. 27. (The Associated Press)

Government authorities in Beijing -- above all China's President Xi Jinping -- have miscalculated. The country teeters on the precipice of pandemic disaster and that is because the manner in which its leaders directed their no-holds-barred campaign to eradicate the SARS-CoV-2 virus is about to backfire. The country's population now engaging in mass protests have shown their political masters in the Chinese Communist Party that people can be pushed only so far. That's the social dimension of the zero-COVID policy.

Then there is the inadequate number of vaccinations all carried out with made-in-China-inferior-efficacy vaccines, and the decision that ensuring all senior citizens be adequately vaccinated as a priority was never made. True, the country where the virus originated and where its leaders' reaction was faulted for good reason, has had a low infection rate and death count in comparison to most other countries of the world. Quite an achievement.

But its cost is gathering steam and preparing to explode. The lack of widespread infections has led to a lack of natural immunity. And the result of all those issues; low infection rate/no herd immunity; low vaccinations of the elderly, use of an insufficiently effective vaccine. represents a failure to calculate the scientific/medical fallout of that decision-making.

Chinese police officers block access to a site in Shanghai where protesters opposed to China's strict 'zero-COVID' policies had gathered on Nov. 27. (The Associated Press)

It is now assumed that should the country's zero-COVID policy be abruptly called off, a tsunami of coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and death would follow. There are now two options left to the government; continue the zero-COVID policy whose end is unforeseeable, and risk enraging the public even further and face a crumbling economy, or drop the policy and suffer the consequences of a pathogen run amok with few natural immunity constraints to block its advance.

President Xi is proud of the fact that China has suffered so few deaths to this point, particularly in comparison to the massive death count in the United States during the worst waves of the onrushing pandemic, now quelled to a steady-state. Researchers at the University of Toronto, UBC, Johns Hopkins, Oxford and others analyzed previous studies to reach the conclusion that vaccination is effective at serious illness prevention and death.

They also concluded that the after-effects to the general population of infections is even more helpful in disease prevention through acquired antibodies while a combination of both; hybrid immunization, represents the most lasting shield against severe COVID-inspired illness. Prior to the gross population wide vaccination, lockdown and mask controls were important.

At this point, loosening restrictions, bearing in mind the more transmissible Omicron variants now circulating while broad infections took place, the benefits of hybrid immunity also resulted. Contracting COVID -19 in consideration of widespread vaccinations became less risky to human health. So while China has vaccinated 89 percent of its population, zero-COVID policies remained where large areas saw isolation of people at home or in government facilities -- reflecting a few cases.

It was working-age adults that Beijing targeted for immunization, leaving older Chinese residents most likely to fill up hospital ICUs or die from COVID largely unvaccinated. Half of the over-80 population in China has been immunized. And then there is the matter of the vaccines, with those most powerful proving their cutting-edge efficacy with the use of mRNA shots as well as adenovirus vaccines. China decided it would not import any of the mRNA vaccines and use only home-produced counterparts with far less proven efficacy.

For all practical purposes a flood of seriously ill COVID patients has the potential to completely overwhelm hospitals in China where there are roughly four intensive-care beds per 100,000 people, compared to 13 in Canada and 34 in Germany. And while Beijing has finally signalled it is is prepared to loosen some restrictions, the potential for a grave fall-out from their past severe and ill-thought-out mandates creates an aura of uncertainty about the possible outcome.