COVID misinformation in mainstream media's predictions that China's pivot from Zero COVID will fail ... #4

Last update: Saturday 12/17/22 

This note invokes one of this blog's recurring themes ==> COVID misinformation in mainstream media. Conservative media, e.g., Tucker Carlson's Fox News broadcasts, misinform the public by propounding blatant lies; whereas mainstream liberal/progressive media present the facts, but frame the facts in unfounded assertions that appear to be plausible extensions of the facts, but fail to pass muster under close examination. Our current example is the hypocritical "sympathy" that too many mainstream pundits and their go-to bioscience experts have recently expressed in their smug predictions that China's abrupt pivot from Zero COVID will fail, as in, will involve an unacceptable loss of life. 

Unacceptable? Compared to what? Certainly not to the catastrophic loss of over one million lives by the U.S. population, losses that show no sign of ending any time soon. China's population of 1.4 billion people is about 4 times as large as the U.S. 330 million. Until the the Chinese lose more than 4 million lives to COVID, their loses will be more "acceptable" than our own.

Here are a few examples of these predictions:

• "COVID spreading faster than ever in China. 800 million could be infected this winter", Michaeleen Doucleff and A Martínez, NPR, 12/15/22 
• ''Our model shows that China’s covid death toll could be massive", The Economist, 12/15/22 ... Note: This article predicts 1.5 million deaths might occur within 90 days of 12/15/22
• "New models predict at least 1 million deaths in China amid covid surge",  Sammy Westfall, Washington Post, 12/18/22 ... Note: This article predicts 1 million deaths by the end of 2023
• "Factbox: How many people might die, and why, under relaxed China COVID curbs", Reuters, 12/20/22 ... Note: Sources cited by this article predict 1.5 million to 2.1 million deaths.

"... Some models are useful"

The editor of this blog is reminded of the aphorism that Dr. Fauci was fond of quoting in the early days of the U.S. pandemic ==> "All models are wrong, but some are useful." The aphorism is well known; presumably the developers of the models referenced in the articles cited above  would concede that their goal was merely to suggest some rough estimates of future infections and deaths in China.

Unfortunately, this Niagara of dire estimates is embedded in a thick aura of schadenfreude. 

• America's pandemic managers screwed up so badly that our deaths per capita are the highest among the world's developed nations. By contrast, the Chinese zero COVID policies yielded an incredibly low level of deaths that made us look very, very bad. 
  
  
• Given that China's 1.4 billion population is roughly four times our 330 million, one might have expected the Chinese to have suffered at least four million COVID deaths by now, which is way, way, way higher than the 31,000 currently estimated by the World Health Organization. 

The mainstream media's prophets of catastrophe are now inviting their American readers to kick back and relax in anticipation of a forthcoming tsunami of COVID infections and deaths that will make China look very, very bad. USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!

Useful models are well timed

In theory, one can develop a model of any phenomenon at any time, but one is more likely to produce a useful model if one has sufficient data. Models based on insufficient data will be quickly tossed aside as more data is acquired; but waiting too late may yield models that are more accurate, but arrive too late to provide the input needed for critical decisions. 

The editor of this blog suggests that the death models referenced by the articles cited in the previous section of this discussion are premature and that far more useful models will be produced within one or two months. But first, let's place our consideration of the Chines pandemic within a cultural context, something that most of the models cited in the previous section have not done

"Never waste a crisis"

As suggested by a previous note on this blog, the coronavirus is the same biological entity in China as in America, but the cultures of its human carriers are so different that the pandemic management processes in these two countries have been and probably will continue to be strikingly different, and will therefore continue to produce strikingly different results.

Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's first chief of staff, coined the aphorism "Never waste a crisis", but China's President Xi Jinping has arguably been its most successful practitioner. 

Readers will recall that President Xi consolidated his power as China's ultimate autocrat by his successful invocation of Zero COVID policies to manage the crisis presented by the initial variants of the virus.  But the latest variants have made Zero COVID too costly to maintain and threaten the legitimacy of his regime. 

Does anyone doubt that the super ambitious President Xi will strive mightily to use the new crisis to maintain his power? Accordingly, the editor of this blog suggests that the developers of China death models should have waited one or two months to consider the sweeping new initiatives that President Xi will have to propose, initiatives based on a level of power enjoyed by no leader of any democratic country, e.g., the U.S, initiatives that are intended to provide President Xi with another triumph. Until then, sensible readers should dismiss the current predictions of the model builders as idle pundit chatter, i.e., as misinformation.

____________________________________

Links to related notes on this blog:  

• "The era of the "COVID-19 Pandemic" is over", Last update: 12/7/22
• "The simultaneous collapse of American and Chinese pandemic dogmas", Last update: 12/6/22
  
  
• "COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., Carlson (Fox News) vs. CDC (Washington Post) ... #3", Last update: 10/13/22
• "COVID misinformation in mainstream media, e.g., The NY Times ... #2", Last update: 9/19/22
• "COVID misinformation ... #1", Last update: 8/4/22