[mike_h]

Sadly that logic doesn’t work here, though it’s tempting. There’s a portion of the population that refused vaccines, due to a combination of factors including misinformation. Omicron going wild would put millions of elderly people into the hospitals, jamming up the healthcare system and leading to millions more excess deaths.

[asats]

So what is the endgame here? Covid is not going away. Does that mean that China will become an isolated island with waves of lockdowns for the next decades?

[cloutchaser]

If that’s what suits the party best, probably. Communist dictatorships aren’t known for very rational policies when they need to save face on something.

[mike_h]

That’s the question a lot of people seem to have, but think about it: they’ve already bought themselves 2 extra years of vaccine + therapeutics development, and beefing up of medical infrastructure. There’s no way they can do lockdowns forever, and they’re open about that in all the media. But there’s a point in those other trends at which opening up becomes millions of times less dangerous, and we’re just not there yet.

[somewhereoutth]

Could be - and that may be a better outcome than the waves of infections that the rest of us will suffer for the next decades.

[dirtyid]

Force elders to vax. Build up antiviral stockpile. Maybe wait for milder strain. Roll out phased living with covid experiments by region. Take a few extra years to spare millions of deaths.

[smcl]

It's wild to me that they're able to enforce heavy lockdowns like these but aren't able to persuade everyone (or a large enough % of "everyone") to take a vaccination.

[refurb]

China reports almost as high a vaccination rate as Singapore which has vaccinated 97% of its eligible population.

[mike_h]

I forgot which numbers I saw, but yeah their overall rate is high. The problem is that so many of the remaining unvaccinated are elderly, so if they start getting sick they’ll get it bad and overload the system.

[noduerme]

Another problem is that the efficacy rate of Sinovac is far lower than that of the mRNA vaccines in preventing illness, although it still drastically reduces severe disease.

[floreen]

Yes, but mostly with CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines which apparently are not very effective against Omicron.