Remember when rational voices asked why, instead of locking down its economy every time there was even a small breakout of the Wu-flu, China (or the US for that matter) didn't simply do the right thing and allow covid to sweep through the land, creating a buffer of natural immunity and burn out on its own? Well, after bizarrely resisting the inevitable (one day we hope to have an answer why Xi Jinping pushed so hard for the now defunct Covid-zero policy) for so long, that's precisely what China has now down and on Saturday, a prominent government scientist said that the possibility of a big COVID-19 rebound in China over the next two or three months is remote as 80% of people have now been infected, reaching the herd immunity threshold.
While the mass movement of people during the ongoing Lunar New Year holiday period may spread the pandemic, boosting infections in some areas, a second COVID wave is unlikely in the near term, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on the Weibo social media platform, according to Reuters.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese are traveling across the country for holiday reunions that had been suspended under recently eased COVID curbs, raising fears of fresh outbreaks in rural areas less equipped to manage large outbreaks.
To ease widespread if groundless fears which had been mercilessly stoked by Beijing for the past three years, a National Health Commission official also addressed the nation on Thursday saying that China has passed the peak of COVID patients in fever clinics, emergency rooms and with critical conditions.
According to "government data", which in China means propaganda, nearly 60,000 people with COVID had died in hospital as of Jan. 12, roughly a month after China abruptly dismantled its zero-COVID policy. But some experts said that figure probably vastly undercounts the full impact, as it excludes those who die at home, and because many doctors have said they are discouraged from citing COVID as a cause of death.
While over a billion Chinese having survived covid is good news, it's terrible news for those pharma companies that held the world hostage for the past three years: after all, just how will Pfizer and Moderna be able to afford more yachts if they can't sell their constantly changing, taxpayer-funded mRNA cocktail to the world's (now 2nd) largest population. As for the world's most populous country, India, it knew what was up more than a year ago when in Sept 2021 its government said it would not buy any shots from Pfizer and Moderna, thus depriving its population of countless complications from myocarditis and pericarditis.
