[froogle]

China counts Covid deaths differently than most countries. Recent claims about them only having 3 deaths despite a surge in cases are, as far as I can tell, making the fundamental mistake that China has far more stringent requirements to call something a "Covid death". The true number of Chinese Covid deaths is likely higher - though I imagine still lower than in places like America.

Furthermore, the lockdowns have caused quite a few deaths on their own through things like delaying access to healthcare, and we don't have reliable stats here. One doctor is estimating 1000 diabetes patients will die from lack of healthcare access during the lockdowns (again, we do have to apply some skepticism to the numbers). Lockdowns aren't costless and merely keeping people locked in place for a short period.

Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/20/world/asia/covid-shanghai... (non-paywalled: https://archive.ph/GIDBw).

I won't disagree that there's a tradeoff you can consider for China's approach, but we all need to be very wary when trying to compare numbers between Western nations and China.