Also, I suspect vaccination is just and merely-only a part of the Covid-fight equation
Here be an article by usually China-China-China bashing WSJ
wsj.com
China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Policy Holds Lessons for Other Nations
Enormous resources, local cooperation enable China to suppress infections with less disruption to life than in countries where pandemic still rages
Greg Ip
Updated Feb. 16, 2022 2:45 pm ET
Highly organized and available testing, as at a site in January in Beijing, is a critical element in China’s aggressive approach to address every Covid-19 infection.Photo: Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
It is difficult for westerners to evaluate China’s Covid-19 response dispassionately. Mistrust still runs high over China’s muzzling of informationabout the virus in Wuhan in late 2019, its refusal to accept that the pandemic originated there and failure to cooperate more with international investigations over its origins. China’s intrusive measures for tracking, tracing and isolating infected people are seen as an extension of a surveillance state that would be intolerable in a democracy with individual rights. Indeed, the Chinese Communist Party touts its Covid-19 success as proof its governance is superior to American-style democracy.
And yet this geopolitical tension tends to muddy zero Covid’s achievements and its lessons for other countries, including democracies. It appears to have delivered what every country sought two years ago: low deaths with the least possible economic disruption. While there are questions over the reliability of China’s official Covid death toll, it appears to rank among the world’s lowest on a per capita basis, and its gross domestic product finished 2021 roughly where pre-pandemic trends predicted.
China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Policy Creates New Supply-Chain Worries
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 China’s ‘Zero-Covid’ Policy Creates New Supply-Chain Worries
To keep out Covid-19, China closed some border gates late last year, leaving produce to rot in trucks. Restrictions like these and rules at some Chinese ports, the gateways for goods headed to the world, could cascade into delays in the global supply chain. Photo composite: Emily Siu
It is true, as critics claim, that zero Covid can’t be sustained indefinitely. China will eventually have to coexist with a virus that is permanently entrenched in the human population. Hong Kong’s spreading outbreak illustrates how difficult test, trace and isolate becomes once infections are widespread enough.
Yet it is worth studying how mainland China has sustained zero Covid this long. China put enormous resources behind the effort, most importantly on testing capacity: A city of fewer than five million people is expected to screen every inhabitant using sensitive PCR tests in two days, and a city of more than five million in three days. The port city of Tianjin tested its entire population of 14 million in 4.5 hours last month, state media reported. By contrast, testing became backlogged or unavailable for many in numerous U.S. cities during the Omicron wave.
Beijing also has modified zero Covid to make it less disruptive. The lockdown of Xi’an, a city of 13 million, for a month through late January is the exception. Under a more targeted approach dubbed “dynamic clearing,” restrictions typically cover just a district, a neighborhood or a building. “Some localities endure tough restrictions and disruption for a short period of time so that most of the country can exist without restrictions most of the time—a balance that so far has enjoyed reasonable popular support,” Cui Ernan of Gavekal Dragonomics, a China-focused research service, wrote last month.
This hasn’t been costless. China’s consumer spending has been hit hard by lockdowns and travel restrictions, though strong exports have offset the impact on overall growth. Yanzhong Huang, a health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, said 4.4 million small businesses closed in the first 11 months of last year while just 1.3 million new ones registered. China, he estimates, spent nearly $100 billion on domestic vaccines that are far less effective than western mRNA shots that it refuses to approve. Those under lockdown have suffered inconvenience, disrupted travel and family separations, he said.
People registered at a Covid-19 testing facility in Hong Kong, which has struggled in recent weeks with an outbreak.Photo: Chan Long Hei/Bloomberg News
Yet life was much less affected by Covid-19 in China than in other countries last year, according to an index of restrictions and mobility developed by Goldman Sachs. Elsewhere, waves of the pandemic have hurt business, closed schools and triggered mask mandates while incurring steep, unquantifiable costs in illness and death. Disruptions and deaths will no doubt mount when China eventually lifts zero Covid, but it has bought time to build up vaccines, therapies and healthcare facilities to mitigate the impact.
Of course, citizens deprived of their freedom or livelihoods can’t vote the Communist Party out of office or protest in the streets. Still, ordinary Chinese appear to support and willingly cooperate with zero Covid because they see its benefits.
That suggests there is more to China’s success than an absence of democracy. A recent study in Lancet sought to explain why some countries had lower Covid-19 infection and death rates through last September. It controlled for factors such as population density, per capita income, age and pre-existing conditions. One finding: “There is no relationship between democracy and performance that we could find in this pandemic,” said Thomas Bollyky, one of the authors and director of the global health program at the Council on Foreign Relations. The death rate is low in autocratic China but high in autocratic Russia; low in democratic Taiwan but high in the democratic U.S.
Share of respondents who:Source: World Values SurveyNote: Surveys conducted from 2017 to 2020. Sample?sizes range from 1,057 to 4,018.
Have a great deal / quite a lot of?confidence in governmentSay most people can be trustedChinaRussiaTaiwanSouth KoreaNew ZealandCanadaJapanDenmarkU.S.GermanyU.K.Brazil0%255075100
What did make a difference, the study found, is trust. The more citizens trust the government, or each other, the more effectively a country dealt with Covid-19. Intuitively, citizens who trust the government are more likely to complywith social distancing, contact tracing and mask and vaccine mandates. Where trust is lacking, citizens are less likely to comply and governments less likely to ask. Interpersonal trust encourages citizens to do things that protect others, and to believe others will do the same.
According to the World Values Survey, trust in government is high in China and low in the U.S. Mr. Bollyky acknowledged survey respondents in autocratic countries may censor their views. But even leaving out China, he said the results held. Covid-19 outcomes generally are better where more people trust the government (New Zealand, South Korea) or each other (Denmark, Canada).
The lesson of China’s success, then, isn’t that autocracy is superior. It’s that U.S. democracy needs to work better.
Write to Greg Ip at greg.ip@wsj.com |
