[DiogenesKynikos]

China already has several highly effective vaccines. The problem is that a significant fraction of elderly people don't want to get vaccinated.

Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore had the exact same problem with vaccine hesitancy among the elderly. It's a cultural thing.

[gnfargbl]

China's indigenous vaccines (Sinovac and Sinopharm) are based on inactivated virus technology. Describing them as "highly effective" is a bit of a stretch: the WHO [1] put the effectiveness at about 50% against symptomatic infection, and a study in Hong Kong [2] concluded that three doses were required to gain a similar level of efficacy to the mRNA vaccines.

The Chinese government has resisted importing Western mRNA vaccines [3], and their own mRNA efforts are not yet up to speed [4].

[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sin...

[2] https://archive.ph/TY9if

[3] https://www.voanews.com/a/china-s-bet-on-homegrown-mrna-vacc...

[4] https://archive.ph/ifvbC

[puppymaster]

Not Taiwan. 78% of >75 years old has second shot. 70% has 3rd shot.

Source: https://covid-19.nchc.org.tw/dt_002-csse_covid_19_daily_repo...

[DiogenesKynikos]

Taiwan has had the same struggle as mainland China, when it comes to vaccinating old people.

First of all, mainland China's numbers are similar to those of Taiwan. As of March 2022, 82% of people aged 70-79 in China had two shots, while 51% of people aged 80 and up had two shots.[0] These numbers have probably come up a bit since then.

Second of all, Taiwan has a similar curve of vaccination rate vs. age. In Europe and the US, vaccination rate generally rises with age. In mainland China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, it's the opposite, and quite dramatically so.

0. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306112/china-elderly-po...

[gus_massa]

That's strange. My father was a voluntary in the polio vaccination in Argentina in ¿1956?. My mother also remember that epidemic. I guess old people here is one of the more conscious groups about how important are the vaccines.

[saint_fiasco]

A regular person in Argentina around 1956 doesn't have many reasons to distrust the authorities. But if you are an old person in China, would you really believe that this one time the government really does have your best interests in mind?

They lived through the cultural revolution, the famines, the civil war and so on. Maybe they figure they'd rather take their chances with covid.

[DiogenesKynikos]

Old people in China tend to be more trusting of the government than young people, in my experience.

People who have lived from before the revolution to today have seen a complete transformation of society. They don't connect the current government with the Cultural Revolution, because the people who took over after the Cultural Revolution (like Deng Xiaoping) had themselves been persecuted during it. They tend to see the history of China during their lifetimes as one with many struggles and hardships, but ultimately of success.

Vaccine hesitancy has much more to do with traditional medical beliefs, which is why Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have faced the exact same problems with convincing elderly people to get vaccinated (there's also the fact that all these places did a vastly better job than the US or Europe of protecting their populations throughout most of the pandemic, meaning that old people didn't feel the same urgent fear that they might get CoVID any day).

[StreamBright]

The polio vaccine is different though. First it is not a mrna vaccine, second it is ~100% efficient in case of 3 doses.

https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/vpd/polio/hcp/effectiveness-dur...

"Two doses of inactivated polio vaccine (IPV) are 90% effective or more against paralytic polio; three doses are 99% to 100% effective."

[gus_massa]

> The polio vaccine is different though.

We used the oral polio vaccine that has attenuated (aka ""live"") virus. A few years ago we switched to use only the injectable polio vaccine that has inactivated (aka "dead") virus.

For Covid-19, we use a mix of vaccines. Inactivated virus, vector virus and mrna. It was somewhat random, and each member of my family got a different mix. (I got AstraZeneca , AstraZeneca, Moderna.)

Reading only the description, a mrna vaccine looks safer than an attenuated virus vaccine. Anyway, all of them have been testen in clinical trials to ensure they are safe and effective. And anyway, the WHO is trying to use the polio attenuated virus vaccine as few as possible because there are some problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polio_vaccine#Schedule

[lelanthran]

I don't think parent was comparing vaccines, he was comparing attitudes towards vaccinations.

Old people (i.e. those who saw the benefit of polio vaccinations and the horrors of non-vaccination) should be more inclined to vaccinate.

Younger people, many of whom have never seen the value of vaccination in their lifetimes, might be more inclined to distrust vaccinations.

[bitxbitxbitcoin]

It’s a cultural thing for sure.

The older generation in China went through the Cultural Revolution and distrusts the government.

[DiogenesKynikos]

On the contrary, I find that the older generation has much greater trust in the government than the younger generation, but also believes much more strongly in Chinese traditional medicine.

In my experience, people in China nowadays do not associate the post-Mao government with the Cultural Revolution, particularly since the people who took over in its aftermath had themselves been persecuted. Deng Xiaoping was purged during the Cultural Revolution. Xi Jinping's father was purged and imprisoned. Even Xi Jinping himself was affected, in that he was "sent down to the countryside." There's a broad rejection of the Cultural Revolution in China, but that isn't the same as a rejection of the Party or government.

[j16sdiz]

Those "highly effective vaccines" are around 75-80% effective, compare to 90-95% for the best vaccines https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines

[DiogenesKynikos]

The best numbers for this come from Hong Kong, which uses both Sinovac and Biontech/Pfizer.[0]

Three doses of Sinovac are actually marginally more protective for >80-year-olds (97.9% vs 97.5% effectiveness at preventing death), though the difference is probably not statically significant.

0. Study in The Lancet Infectious Diseases: https://doi.org/10.1016/S1473-3099(22)00345-0

[yreg]

Then the option would be to make the vaccination mandatory. CCP doesn't like to do unpopular things, but the lockdowns are not popular either.

[rhaway84773]

China also requires everyone to have an app which gives you a color coded status based on the results of COVID tests taken by you and by those in your family and neighborhood, which defines what activities you’re allowed to engage in and what areas you’re allowed to access.

Basing that off vaccination status would be far more palatable and would be far less disruptive.

[chrisbaker98]

And to the surprise of no-one, this system has also been used to control the movements of political dissenters for reasons that have nothing to do with COVID:

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-bank-protest-stopp...

Anyone who doesn't think that western vaxpass systems could be coopted for similar ends is horrifyingly naive.

[rippercushions]

Except that the Western vaxpass systems have all been wound down.

[yreg]

Vaccination offers good protection against death / serious illness, but isn't that great against catching the virus and being able to infect someone else.

Their motivation is to prevent an outbreak. (Which is perhaps impossible long term).

[mozman]

I don’t think vaccines are nearly as effective as advertised.

I don’t know how this data can be torn apart but it seems plausible.

https://drpanda.substack.com/p/whats-causing-all-these-exces...