The simultaneous collapse of American and Chinese pandemic dogmas

Last update: Monday 12/6/22 

At a recent STAT conference, Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House Covid-19 coordinator proclaimed, "We are now at a point where I believe if you’re up to date on your vaccines, you have access to treatments … there really should be no restrictions on people’s activities,” Jha went on to say, “I’m pretty much living life the way I was living life in 2019.” In other words, Dr. Jha has returned to normal living ... and his blunt declaration implies that he believes that everyone who is up-to-date on vaccines (and boosters) should also be able to return to normal 2019 living.

• "White House’s Jha isn’t predicting a severe Covid surge this holiday season", Nicholas Flork, STAT, 11/15/22  

When President Biden declared that the pandemic was "over" a few months ago, his announcement was dismissed by many public health experts as a misstatement, as another Biden "gaffe" ... but coming from the White House COVID-19 coordinator, this notion must now be regarded as part of the official framework for the Biden administration's pandemic policies. Masks, social distancing, and other mitigations are now officially in the nation's pandemic policy trash bin. 

American dogma vs. Chinese dogma

• As per Dr. Jha's comments, America's pandemic managers are now placing maximum emphasis on vaccines, boosters, and treatments with minimum reliance on mitigations and no mandates. This has been our de facto strategy since last summer when the Biden administration began to push boosters for everyone, even though the available data for boosting everyone was not conclusive; Dr. Jha's comments merely make it official.
  
  
• China's "zero COVID" managers have long adhered to the opposite strategy, placing maximum emphasis on mitigations -- mandates, masks, quarantines, and repeated lockdowns of millions of people -- with minimum reliance on vaccines, boosters, and treatments. 

Omicron subvariants are causing both strategies to collapse for the same reason: each successful subvariant is far more transmissible than its predecessor.  Indeed, subvariants have become so transmissible that they can no longer be contained by monolithic strategies that emphasize vaccines and treatments, nor by monolithic strategies that emphasize mitigations. 

America's initial success

There was reason to hope that American dogma might succeed, even after the Delta variant's breakthrough infections made herd immunity unattainable in the summer of 2021. But the advent of the super transmissible Omicron family in late 2021 led the ever-prescient Dr. Fauci to correctly predict that sooner or later just about everyone would become infected. Unfortunately, reality was worse than his prediction because it soon became apparent that reinfection of up-to-date boosted Americans again and again would become the new normal ... except for the highly risk averse who continued to employ masks and other mitigations in their self-defense against the virus.

So why bother getting boosted? As per the COVID FAQs page on this blog, the CDC's data shows that our vaccinations and boosters still greatly reduce severe illness and death among the nation's oldest recipients ... but the data does not provide much support for boosting the members of younger age groups (except for younger persons handicapped by health issues). 

China's initial success

China's zero COVID policies date from the earliest days of the pandemic. China's extreme mitigations were feasible and effective under its autocratic political system. Its 1.4 billion population is about four times as large as our 330 million. The U.S. surpassed the infamous one million COVID deaths mark a few months ago. So one might have expected China to have suffered about four million COVID deaths by now. But according to the World Health Organization (WHO), China's deaths from COVID are still well below 50,000.

Unfortunately, China's success has been secured by ever increasing administrative, economic, social, and political costs, costs that rose sharply after the emergence of the super transmissible Omicron family.

•  "China’s economic growth slows to 0.4%, weakest in two years", Eva Dou, Washington Post, 7/16/22 
• "As China Imposes More Covid Lockdowns, ‘Everyone Is Scared’", Vivian Wang, NY Times, 9/5/22 
• "In China’s Xinjiang, 'COVID zero' lockdown hits 100 days", Bloomberg, Japan Times, 11/16/22 
• "China Covid: Record number of cases as virus surges nationwide", Frances Mao & Patrick Jackson, BBC, 11/24/22 

Resistance

Pandemic management policies are unavoidably disruptive and bothersome; the longer a pandemic endures, the more disruptive and bothersome the policies become. Resistance to the policies also grows. If resistance becomes strong enough and sufficiently widespread, the policies collapse. 

Widespread resistance in the American democracy began in 2021 as "COVID fatigue" and grew slowly; resistance in the Chinese autocracy is more recent, but has quickly exploded into "COVID fury". At this point, most Americans are quietly ignoring Dr. Jha and the CDC, e.g., not getting boosted and not vaccinating their youngest children; whereas many Chinese are very loudly "taking it to the streets".

The next sections provide links to articles in mainstream media that illustrate growing resistance in each country. The reader need only skim the articles because their headlines convey the gist of their stories.

Chinese active resistance

• "Residents ‘revolt’ over oppressive Covid lockdowns in China’s Guangzhou",  Simone McCarthy and Kathleen Magramo, CNN, 11/15/22
• "China Covid: Angry protests at giant iPhone factory in Zhengzhou", BBC, 11/15/22
• "Covid Lockdown Chaos Sets Off a Rare Protest in a Chinese City", Chang Che and John Liu, NY Times, 11/16/22  
• "After Deadly Blaze, Surge of Defiance Against China’s Covid Policies", Chris Buckley, Vivian Wang, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien, NY Times, 11/27/22 
• "China Eases ‘Zero Covid’ Restrictions in Victory for Protesters",  Keith Bradsher, Chang Che and Amy Chang Chien, NY Times, 12/6/22 

American passive resistance

•  "Few Parents Intend to Have Very Young Children Vaccinated Against Covid", Jan Hoffman, NY Times, 7/26/22  
• "New Boosters Test Covid-Weary Nation. Shots Are Here. Do Americans Care?",  Jack Healy, Sharon Otterman and Amy Qin, NY Times, 9/18/22 
• "Half of Adults Have Heard Little or Nothing About New Covid Boosters, Survey Finds", Jan Hoffman, NY Times, 9/30/22 
• "As White House Presses for Booster Shots, Americans Are Slow to Get Them", Noah Weiland, NY Times, 10/15/22 
• Among Seniors, a Declining Interest in Boosters", Paula Span, NY Times, 10/22/22 

This is the way our pandemic ends,

This is the way our pandemic ends,

This is the way our pandemic ends,

Not with a bang, but a shrug.

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Links to related notes on this blog:  

• "The era of the 'COVID-19 Pandemic' is over", Last update: 12/7/22