This sounds pretty grim. From Gordon Chang at 1945:
Perhaps as many as 90% of China’s 1.41 billion people will come down with COVID-19, said Feng Zijian, former deputy chief of China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention, to Bloomberg News. Feng predicts 60% of the population will be infected in the first wave.
China did not have to wait long. There is now a fast-moving wave ripping through Beijing.
The capital city was not prepared. “We have a child with a high fever but all the pharmacies are out of ibuprofen,†said a Beijing resident surnamed Lin to the Financial Times. “It came too fast, we didn’t have time to prepare.†Shortages are widespread. “Beijing is running out of medical supplies,†the London paper notes.
The situation is so bad, Peking University’s Michael Pettis reports on Twitter, that Beijingers are thinking of deliberately exposing themselves to the disease, so they won’t get it later when the public health care system has completely broken down.
There are also outbreaks across the country, including in Guangzhou, the capital of southern Guangdong province, the country’s factory floor. Some are calling the nationwide situation China’s “nuclear winter.†During the winter, the forecast is one million Covid deaths. Some estimate the toll could reach 2.1 million.
I honestly don’t know how much weight to put on this report. Gordon Chang has been predicting the imminent collapse of the Chinese Communist Party or China itself for the last 20 years. A really serious outbreak in China will inevitably cause global problems, both economic and human.
Gordon Chang is an infamous pathological liar who creates and publishes the most outrageous lies about China. He is a favorite on Fox News, along with the war criminal Gen. Keane (Ret.)
The one thing that you can be sure of is that none of his stories are true.
Wonder how they came up with 60%? My guess is that if it starts to get bad there will be voluntary, at least, lockdowns/distancing. Dont think they are nutty about masks like some Americans so that can also help.
Steve
China can easily absorb the impact of two million deaths.
The problem is 1.4billion fleeing death and government lockdown at the same time.
It’s economically disruptive, proving once again that whatever people are, they’re not ants or bees, the communist imperative.
There’s some relative accurate projections in there and some really crazytown ones.
Given Omicron’s estimated R0 of 3.6 to 8.0 with limited vaccines efficiency against infection; most calculations woud say about 1-1/R0 will get infected, so something like 60-90% of the population. That is an accurate projection; it’s a logical consequence of living with a very contagious virus with no medical tools at limiting spread.
The other parts I suspect is scaremongering. Shortage of ipuprofen is a sign of social panic, but not sign of impending doom — its like the panic over toilet paper. The far more relevant factor is hospital and ICU utilization, and on that front things are going okay so far. Also, they have had 3 years worth of drug research, treatment research to utilize.
And its almost certainly not going to depress the Chinese economy. 91% of population (and an even higher percentage of under 65) are vaccinated. They will do fine. The at risk population is 75+ and aren’t a driving force to the economy. In fact, the more likely surprise is lifting zero-COVID will materially boost Chinese demand this year. For example, travel around and into China will be insanely strong in 2023.