ICYMI:
FDA Panel: High marks for Pfizer's kid-dose #Covid vaccine. The advisory panel recommended emergency use authorization— EUA— of a 2-dose regimen (10 μg each) of Pfizer-BioNTech's mRNA vaccine, administered 3 weeks apart https://t.co/HlgD3RqCoL
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 26, 2021
“The number of new daily Covid-19 cases has plunged 57 percent since peaking on Sept. 1. Almost as encouraging as the magnitude of the decline is its breadth: Cases have been declining in every region.” https://t.co/oGsCwFuyGU
— Josh Kraushaar (@HotlineJosh) October 26, 2021
… Despite all the encouraging news, one shadow still hangs over the U.S.: The pandemic does not need to be nearly as bad it is.
About 1,500 Americans have died of Covid every day over the past week. For older age groups, the virus remains a leading cause of death. And the main reason is that millions of Americans have chosen to remain unvaccinated. Many of them are older and have underlying medical conditions, leaving them vulnerable to severe versions of Covid.
For older people, the effects of vaccination are profound. In late August, near the height of the Delta wave, 24 out of every 10,000 unvaccinated Americans 65 and above were hospitalized with Covid symptoms, according to the C.D.C. Among fully vaccinated Americans 65 and above, the number was 1.5 per 10,000…
The low vaccination rate in the U.S. is another consequence of our polarized politics and our high levels of socioeconomic inequality. Only 67 percent of American adults without a four-year college degree have received a shot, compared with 82 percent of college graduates, according to the most recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll. And only 58 percent of self-identified Republicans are vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of Democrats.
It’s a triumph of misinformation. Offered a lifesaving drug to counteract a highly contagious virus, many Americans are instead choosing to take their chances.
“More than 130,000 American lives could have been saved with swifter action and better coordinated public health messages after the virus’s first wave, Birx told investigators.” https://t.co/8axHUAF7Ws
— Dean Haddix (@doctor_eon) October 26, 2021
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it detracts sharply from our credibility as opponents of the CCP – especially to one of the most important audiences, the Chinese public – if we don't also acknowledge when it's successful.
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) October 26, 2021
I've also recently been frustrated with people, none of them living here, who seriously argue that China is hiding massive numbers of deaths from Covid-19. If you live in China you just know this isn't true, regardless of your political stance. https://t.co/v2Civlc3Lf
— Gabriel Corsetti (@GabrielCorsetti) October 27, 2021
China's growing COVID-19 outbreak tests vulnerable border towns https://t.co/idhQZk2ggK pic.twitter.com/b1GVbTOz2z
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 27, 2021
Covid: Australia to end ban on citizens leaving country https://t.co/lsxWfUwlis
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) October 27, 2021
After two years of stop-start COVID-19 lockdowns Australia is ready to party, but venues from restaurants to sporting stadiums are facing a difficult summer after a huge exodus of holiday workers and foreign students https://t.co/9SFBFGeXks pic.twitter.com/oGkBQBoqQu
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 27, 2021
Australian:
I don’t want to tell Nazis how to Nazi, but you’re not meant to be *saving* Jewish lives. Anyway, yes, Jews go get the covid vaccine. Thanks Nazis! pic.twitter.com/yYWeYbdQ0c
— John Safran (@JohnSafran) October 27, 2021
The announcement comes a week after Putin insisted he would never support mandatory vaccination. https://t.co/9AgSxCvKY4
— Nataliya Vasilyeva (@Nat_Vasilyeva) October 26, 2021
Wednesday's increase brings the official death toll to 233,898 — Europe’s highest — though authorities are accused of drastically downplaying that figure https://t.co/tz9JyiM7e5
— The Moscow Times (@MoscowTimes) October 27, 2021
Low vaccination rates have allowed the coronavirus to roar back in Eastern Europe. Bulgaria, Russia and Ukraine all reported record numbers of daily COVID-19 deaths. https://t.co/ip3GXwwN2Y
— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) October 26, 2021
Moderna says it will make up to 110 million doses of its COVID-19 vaccine available to African countries, which local officials call a breakthrough on the world’s least vaccinated continent. https://t.co/9r3AN2hI38
— AP Africa (@AP_Africa) October 26, 2021
A Brazilian Senate committee is recommending that President Jair Bolsonaro be indicted for allegedly bungling the nation's response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether to file charges would be up to Brazil's prosecutor-general, a Bolsonaro appointee. https://t.co/MNOdv7dM7N
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 26, 2021
Province of British Columbia to offer COVID-19 booster shots to all residents https://t.co/QhhkwrDTWy pic.twitter.com/VhXWMbxKo4
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 27, 2021
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The vaccine clinical trials for kids had 5 adverse events, none of them related to the vaccine. One kid swallowed a penny, which is exactly (and hilariously) what you'd expect during a trial that includes 5-year-olds. https://t.co/W22vIlN0l4 pic.twitter.com/laihy499kP
— Yair Rosenberg (@Yair_Rosenberg) October 26, 2021
Read the whole (substack) thing:
… This was a much anticipated meeting for two reasons:
– Originally, the FDA hinted they would not consider an EUA for kids <12 years. But, Delta and pandemic resurgence caused the FDA to change perspectives. - The VRBPAC step was not conducted for the adolescent Pfizer vaccine; VRBPAC doesn’t have to be called for an EUA amendment. But they were called for the vaccine for 5-11 year olds. So, today 18 members of VRBPAC met to discuss hundreds of pages of data. These members are a mix of pediatricians, immunologists, virologists, epidemiologists, and other scientists across the nation. There were also presentations from the sponsor (Pfizer), FDA, and the CDC. Here was the agenda. Here are all the powerpoints…
'The benefit of a third [booster] dose in reducing transmission is sizeable and increases with vaccine coverage and contact rates among individuals."https://t.co/oFqrOMzbOZ by @billy_gardner_ and @DiseaseEcology pic.twitter.com/zAZcJgF1nJ
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 27, 2021
Accuracy of Covid screening can vary w/ the body's circadian rhythms. People are more likely to have an accurate positive test if taken at midday. Circadian cycles are known to impact the activity of infectious bacteria & other viruses, studies also show https://t.co/OCO22VUeGS pic.twitter.com/Khkn47Z1BK
— delthia ricks ? (@DelthiaRicks) October 27, 2021
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.@Facebook researchers showed they could reduce COVID disinfo by 38% & Zuckeberg nixed it cuz it would hurt engagement:
“We wouldn’t launch if there was a material trade-off with MSI.”https://t.co/QHG8jAq6qj pic.twitter.com/1FmgJ0ud1v
— Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) October 25, 2021
mandates work, part infinity; https://t.co/HeeMmnU1S2
— Eric Boehlert (@EricBoehlert) October 26, 2021
30,000 people died this summer in Florida. For weeks it was the deadliest place on the planet. Florida now has a low infection rate because SO MANY people were being infected every day. The policies of @GovRonDeSantis led to the needless deaths of thousands of Floridians. https://t.co/NOCUhYufEk
— Jonathan Reiner (@JReinerMD) October 26, 2021
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey directed state agencies not to cooperate with the federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate https://t.co/0GtQMmxuN3
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) October 26, 2021
Masks will be required in Mass. schools through at least Jan. 15 https://t.co/lfxW2xbvpi
— Adam Gaffin (@universalhub) October 26, 2021
State Rep. Katherine Rogers, D-Concord, who is undergoing chemotherapy to treat uterine cancer, gave all House Finance Committee members a mask and asked they wear one during Tuesday’s executive session. All GOP members of panel were not wearing masks. #nhpolitics
— Kevin Landrigan (@KlandriganUL) October 26, 2021
that's 8 out of about 14,000, following a vaccine mandate initially objected to by 114 workers, or fewer than 1%. This is now fewer than 0.06% of Los Alamos workers https://t.co/0n1gKca0N4
— Kelsey Deatherton (@AthertonKD) October 27, 2021
On The Road – ?BillinGlendaleCA – Lake Sabrina
YY_Sima Qian
On 10/26 China reported 50 new domestic confirmed (6 previously asymptomatic) & 4 new domestic asymptomatic cases.
Inner Mongolia “Autonomous” Region reported 32 new domestic confirmed cases. There currently are 110 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic suspect cases in the region.
Xi’an in Shaanxi Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 14 active domestic confirmed cases in the city.
Ningxia “Autonomous” Region reported 2 new domestic confirmed cases. There currently are 22 active domestic confirmed cases in the region.
Gansu Province reported 4 new domestic confirmed cases (3 mild & 1 moderate). There currently are 55 active domestic confirmed cases in the province.
Hebei Province reported 1 new domestic asymptomatic case. There currently are 3 active confirmed & 3 active asymptomatic cases in the province.
Hunan Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently are 4 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the province.
Zunyi in Guizhou Province reported 5 new domestic confirmed cases (all previously asymptomatic). There currently are 11 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 2 residential compounds are currently at Medium Risk.
Beijing Municipality reported 3 new domestic confirmed cases (1 previously asymptomatic, 1 mild & 2 moderate), both new positive cases are traced close contacts. There currently are 20 active domestic confirmed (2 mild, 14 moderate & 1 serious) & 1 asymptomatic cases in the city. 1 community remains at High Risk. 1 community is currently at Medium Risk.
Rizhao in Shandong Province reported 4 new domestic confirmed (2 mild & 2 moderate)) & 1 new domestic asymptomatic cases, all traced close contacts of the domestic confirmed case reported on 10/25 (who had returned from travel in Yinchuan in Ningxia). One of the new cases has spent the past 3 days care for spouse in a hospital, hopefully this case has not seeded a nosocomial cluster. There currently are 5 active domestic confirmed & 1 active domestic asymptomatic cases in the city. 1 residential compound has been elevated rot Medium Risk.
Haidong in Qinghai Province did not report any new domestic positive cases. There currently is 1 active domestic confirmed case in the city.
Tianmen in Hubei Province did not report any new domestic positive cases, both tourists who had visited Gansu & Ejina Banner in Inner Mongolia in the 1st half of Oct., & were driving through Hubei on their way home in Guangdong.
Dehong Prefecture in Yunnan Province reported 3 new domestic asymptomatic cases (all at Ruili, found from screening of persons already under centralized quarantine). There currently are 2 active domestic confirmed & 25 active domestic asymptomatic cases at the prefecture.
At Fujian Province 3 domestic confirmed cases recovered. There currently are 8 active domestic confirmed cases remaining in the province, all at Xiamen.
At Heilongjiang Province the domestic confirmed case at Harbin recovered.
At Henan Province there currently are 5 active domestic confirmed cases remaining, all at Shangqiu.
Imported Cases
On 10/26, China reported 9 new imported confirmed cases (3 previously asymptomatic), 22 imported asymptomatic cases:
Overall in China, 19 confirmed cases recovered, 9 asymptomatic cases were released from isolation (all imported) & 9 were reclassified as confirmed cases (3 imported), & 429 individuals were released from quarantine. Currently, there are 643 active confirmed cases in the country (379 imported), 27 in serious condition (1 imported), 392 active asymptomatic cases (359 imported), 4 suspect cases (3 imported). 36,743 traced contacts are currently under centralized quarantine.
As of 10/26, 2,251.339M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 2.651M doses in the past 24 hrs.
On 10/27 Hong Kong reported 3 new positive cases, all imported (from Pakistan & Singapore).
lowtechcyclist
The misinformation didn’t just drift out of the ozonosphere, NYT.
Name the liars. Have the guts to call them out by name, or delete your account.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reports 6,148 new Covid-19 cases today in its media statement, tfor a cumulative reported total of 2,448,372 cases. It also reports 84 deaths as of midnight, for an adjusted cumulative total of 28,576 deaths – 1.17% of the cumulative reported total, 1.20% of resolved cases.
Based on cases reported yesterday, Malaysia’s nationwide Rt is at 0.91.
495 confirmed cases are in ICU, 211 of them on ventilators. Meanwhile, 7,595 more patients have recovered, for a cumulative total of 2,347,985 patients recovered – 95.8% of the cumulative reported total.
Nine new clusters were reported today, for a cumulative total of 5,744 clusters. 494 clusters are currently active; 5,250 clusters are now inactive.
6,127 new cases today are local infections. 21 new cases today are imported.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 181,160 doses of vaccine on 26th October: 22,178 first doses, 136,290 second doses, and 22,692 booster doses. As of midnight yesterday, the cumulative total is 49,434,613 doses administered: 25,412,086 first doses, 24,042,758 second doses, and 146,469 booster doses. 77.8% of the population have received their first dose, while 73.6% are now fully vaccinated.
Baud
@lowtechcyclist:
?
debbie
@lowtechcyclist:
Perhaps some self-reflection might be in order, NYT? //
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
Monroe County website: 127 new cases yesterday
NYSDOH says 85 new cases yesterday
I’m going to reserve my hope until this downward trend continues for a full 2 weeks.
Matt McIrvin
It looks like the New Hampshire outbreak may have finally crested, which is good news for us here on the border. Vermont is still struggling, particularly in its least-vaccinated northeast corner, though the generally high level of vaccination across most of the state is keeping impacts down.
Essex County continues to be dead average for Massachusetts, with case levels frustratingly flat around 20 per 100,000 per day. It’s somewhat higher here in Haverhill, where I can say from direct observation that most people are basically over wearing masks and definitely over wearing them correctly.
lowtechcyclist
That clearly went double for the period between the election and the inauguration, when the entire attention of the Trump inner circle was focused on how to overturn the election and keep Trump in power despite the people having voted him out.
There’s been almost no discussion of this in our media, as far as I can tell, but the extent of last winter’s awful Covid wave was one of the results of an Administration focused on overturning the election rather than doing its job of governing.
OzarkHillbilly
Went to my granddaughters Fall concert last night. Each student was limited to 5 guests but I expected a crowd and there was, 4-500 parents and grandparents in the auditorium in addition to the students. I had already decided that if I did not feel comfortable with the crowd I would abstain from the performance but as it was, it was not as bad as I thought it might be.
I saw only one unmasked person.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: I would go further: it wasn’t just distraction; the Trump administration was actively working to withhold COVID protection from blue states. I consider it an act of mass murder through biological warfare and Trump and Kushner and some others need to be tried for crimes against humanity. Not that it will happen.
debbie
@lowtechcyclist:
That’s not right. TFG was not distracted; he chose to use the pandemic to improve his chances of reelection in his mistaken belief that only people in blue states were being infected and dying.
NotMax
Down someone we all know’s way.
New Deal democrat
The good news is that cases have continued to decline, now down almost 60% from peak. Deaths have also made a post-Delta low under 1500, the lowest since early December. This is, of course, still horribly high.
The bad news is that there is now an uptrend in cases throughout the mountain West and South Dakota. Whether this is just noise or the beginning of a winter wave remains to be seen.
My suspicion is that vaccinations + recent infections will keep any winter wave to only about 1/2-2/3’s the recent Delta wave.
Sloane Ranger
Tuesday in the UK we had 40,954 new cases. The rolling 7-day average is down by 0.4%. Some cases from Wales, which has been experiencing technical issues, have been added but the issues are persisting so the figures from them are incomplete. New cases by nation,
England – 32,280 (down 1029)
Northern Ireland – 1124 (up 105)
Scotland – 2262 (up 23)
Wales – 5288 (covers 3 day period, but may be incomplete).
Deaths – There were 263 deaths within 28 days of a positive test reported yesterday, however deaths from Wales cover a three day period due to above mentioned technical issues. This is an increase of 7.8% in the rolling 7-day average. 208 deaths were in England, 4 in Northern Ireland, 20 in Scotland and 31 in Wales (covers 3 day period).
Testing – 820,481 tests took place on Monday. This is a reduction in the rolling 7-day average of 3.3%. The PCR testing capacity reported by labs on that day was 859,473. The reduction in testing may be due to half-term in English schools.
Hospitalisations – There were 8693 people in hospital and 913 people on ventilators on Monday. The rolling 7-day average for hospital admissions was up by 16% as of 22 October.
Vaccinations – As of Monday, 49,753 people had had 1 shot of a vaccine, 45,582,891 had had 2 and 6,442,000 had had a booster shot. This means that 86.5% of all people in the UK aged 12+ had had 1 shot as of that day, 79.3% had had 2 and 11.2% of all people aged 50+ had had a booster.
Nicole
I woke up to news on FB that a friend of mine in upstate NY has come off the ventilator and is breathing on her own. There’s a risk she could go back on, but I was sure it was over when she was put on it, so I’m very glad this morning. She’s been on the vent since September.
I have no doubt she was unvaccinated (although she never posted about it, so not a candidate for the Herman Cain Award reddit page) and all I can hope is that her experience has persuaded some others in our mutual circle to get vaccinated, if they haven’t already.
YY_Sima Qian
A trickle of domestic confirmed & asymptomatic cases have been reported by Ruili in Dehong Prefecture, Yunnan Province (which is a major border crossing w/ Myanmar, as well as having numerous historically close rural communities straddling the border) over the past couple of months, after a Delta outbreak there in early Jul. was suppressed. However, given the continuing trickle of domestic cases, mostly associated with people under centralized quarantine or areas under lockdown, or communities adjacent to the border crossing, large parts of Ruili has been under lock down for months, & residents are forbidden from leaving the area except under emergencies, & furthermore they are required to quarantine by destination jurisdictions, anyway. The small city is under tremendous stress from massive inflow of Chinese nationals returning from Myanmar (at least tens of thousands), most of whom were there illegally, & were engaged in illegal or quasi-legal activities (running casinos, smuggling, narcotics trafficking, tele fraud, etc.). Chinese regional authorities ordered these nationals to return to China & turn themselves in, or have their residential permits (hukous) revoked. Without a residential permit, one cannot obtain a national ID card, and life in China would be impossible.
Ruili has been out of the news in China for months, & the local & provincial authorities are no longer publishing summaries of imported & domestic cases. Apparently, discontent among Ruili residents have been growing & bubbling up in Chinese social media, finally making the news again. The dissatisfaction has pressured the local government into clarifying response policies:
The above policies do not change how other jurisdictions in China treat arrivals from Ruili, further centralized/home quarantine is probably still required in many places. I feel sorry for the people of Ruili.
NorthLeft12
@NotMax: regarding religious exemptions…..as far as I know in Canada they are not allowed. Even medical exemptions are only given in a very limited number of cases. A number of doctors have been disciplined and not allowed to issue exemptions because they were handing them out without the proper justification.
They have stopped short of taking their licenses away.
Bad news for the USA, these cranks will likely be emigrating to the US in the near future. Probably Florida if I had to guess.
debbie
@Nicole:
Boy, your friend is lucky! I’d be curious whether her thoughts on COVID have changed after this experience.
lowtechcyclist
@debbie:
I’m talking specifically about the post-election period, when it was too late to improve the vote tallies by killing potential Democratic voters.
@Matt McIrvin:
No question that this was true earlier in 2020, but AFAICT they weren’t actively doing anything about Covid after November 3rd. They were totally focused on overturning the election, and I doubt they even noticed how the body counts were piling up during that terrible winter. They had other fish to fry.
Robert Sneddon
Just received my invite for COVID-19 booster and influenza vaccinations from the NHS here in Scotland. My original appointment was over two weeks away but I can and will reschedule it for sooner than that. There isn’t a convenient walk-in location near where I live since this booster/flu vaccination program is mostly being carried out at smaller neighbourhood clinics, all of which are some distance from home.
New Deal democrat
Caught this yesterday on the issue of seroprevalence, where the US has been woefully neglectful. During the FDA proceedings, this was said:
https://www.cnn.com/us/live-news/coronavirus-pandemic-vaccine-kids-updates-10-26-21/index.html
“The seroprevalence of Covid-19 antibodies among children ages 5 to 11 appeared to increase from about 13% in November to December last year to 42% in May to June of this year, according to data that Havers presented to the VRBPAC members Tuesday.
“’Investigators also use seroprevalence to estimate the cumulative number of infections and compare that with the number of reported cases by age. Overall, for the general population, the jurisdiction-level infections-to-case ratio had a median of 2.4, with a range of 2.0 to 3.9,’ Havers said.
“’For children, the infections-to-case ratio was substantially higher, with a median of 6.2 cases per every one infection, with a range of 4.7 to 8.9,’ Havers said. ‘These seroprevalence data suggest that infections in children are less likely to be reported compared with adults. But children are at least as likely as adults to be infected with SARS-CoV-2.’”
Note this information predates the Delta wave. Nationwide, about 14% of the population has had confirmed infections. Multiplying that by 2.4 gives a result of about 34% of the population having already been infected. Close to 60% of the population is fully vaccinated, and another 10% partially so. If the 1/3rd of the population having been infected is randomly distributed, than almost 80% of the US population now has at least some resistance.
That is is an important reason why I think any winter wave will not be as bad as either Delta or last winter.
Nicole
@debbie:
Me too. She’s Wiccan, and there are plenty of Wiccans who can be as weird about vaccines/traditional medical care as Evangelicals, but I really want to know if a near-death experience shifted her perspective. She’s got a long road ahead, so I’m not going to hassle about it, but I hope she shares once she’s up to communicating again.
WaterGirl
Why is Brix even allowed to talk about Covid? Her performance in her position as shameful.
lowtechcyclist
Just to clarify, this must be the overall death count in Florida for this summer, rather than deaths specifically attributed to Covid. According to Worldometer, they had 35,938 Covid deaths as of April 30, and their current total for Florida is 58,933, a difference of ‘only’ 23,000.
There were approximately 19,300 deaths attributed to Covid in Florida in July, August, and September, easily more than in any other three-month period, including last summer’s and last winter’s waves, despite the fact that vaccines are universally available now, while they were of limited availability during the winter, and not at all last summer. We also have a much clearer understanding of the benefits of masking now than we did last summer. And yet this summer’s wave was easily the worst that Florida has experienced since the pandemic began.
Where does DeSantis go for his tar-and-feathering? (I bet we could find some volunteers.)
YY_Sima Qian
James Palmer is exactly right! the COVID-19 pandemic has absolutely solidified popular support for the CCP regime, as well as popular suspicion of western governments & media. People do compare & contrast the responses & the death tolls inside & outside of China, people do talk with their children, family, coworkers & friends living overseas. I think it is probably close to unanimous opinion among people in China (certainly an overwhelming majority, likely even a large majority of foreign expatriates) that it has been better to be in China than out during this pandemic. That applies even to Wuhan! What was supposed to the CCP regime’s Chernobyl has successfully been spun into the West’s Chernobyl in the minds of many in this country. (Yes, Taiwan & New Zealand have mostly done well, but the countries most vocal & active in promotion of democracy & neoliberalism have not. Even countries like France & Germany are seen as appalling disasters. & this is not just a Chinese opinion, it was shared by most of E/SE Asia; that is, until the Delta Variant overwhelmed most of their capabilities & capacities to cope.)
People have also read overseas coverage of Chinese pandemic response (lock downs are inhuman & totalitarian!) as well as Chinese vaccines (shoddy, don’t work!), & hyping evidence free accusations of lab leak or bio-warfare. The inevitable reaction is to treat all foreign criticism as lacking good faith. State media actually eagerly translates such coverage, knowing that will be the popular reaction. The other kinds of coverage that gets translated & promoted in China are ones that praise Chinese efforts. The legitimate, nuanced criticisms of Chinese policies/actions do not get coverage.
End result? People & government in China no longer have the patience to suffer the sanctimony & hypocrisy coming from the West, the US & Anglo countries in particular. Which is a shame, because there are many ills & injustices (from minor to gross) in China, many of which the CCP regime is directly responsible for, that are well deserving of scrutiny & censure. While foreign criticism do not have much impact on the CCP regime as a rule, they can influence things on the margin under certain circumstances, certainly in raising awareness. For years (decades?) people in China, most Chinese expatriates & many foreigners in China have found news coverage of China in western MSM to be highly myopic, biased & problematic. It has gotten much worse in the new era of Great Power Competition, & cynicism toward anything coming from the West has increased significantly from even 5 years ago. It is pretty common to meet people who were skeptical of the CCP regime, but becoming more patriotic & even pro-CCP after venturing overseas, or venturing onto the “free” internet via VPN.
It is a tragic, concerning & depressing state of affairs.
Betty
@WaterGirl: Totally agree. She embarrassed herself throughout this debacle. I am surprised she wants any attention.
Ken
@Betty: Does she have a book in press? That might explain why she wants attention.
If it fits the pattern, it will be a long tell-all revealing that TFG was insane and incompetent, Brix knew this, but decided not to resign or even say anything because… reasons.
MattF
Useful fact: If you got your COVID vaccination(s) at CVS, you can generate a pdf file with a QR code that verifies your vaccination status. You have to go to CVS Health, create an account, then search for vaccination info. I have not tried to import this information into my iPhone wallet, but that’s the next thing I’ll try.
Chetan Murthy
@YY_Sima Qian: I’m tempted to respond with a wry “but muh freedumbs”. But it won’t do. You’re absolutely right about this: at least in a few places, there has been discussion about the failure of many/most of the Western countries to …. get our shit together when it counts. It’s embarrassing and shameful. And yeah, repeatedly I’ve had conversations with friends who had family in Beijing, and were saying things like “we’re glad they’re staying there, where it’s safe.”
Sigh.
And I’m a rabid American patriot, who wants my country to be great, to have a real case for our way of life that can be presented internationally, etc. These last two years (hell, last five) have been extremely disappointing, as I watch too many of my fellow citizens disappear down some rathole of selfish narcissism, instead of pulling together.
mrmoshpotato
Thanks for including this. I needed a good laugh this morning.
Soprano2
@New Deal democrat: I wonder how many people there are like me, my husband, and my boss. All of us had confirmed Covid in December, and all of us are vaccinated, so I’m not sure how we’re counted in those statistics (math is not my strong suit). It’s like my gripe with the studies of long Covid – they keep making assumptions about everyone who’s had Covid while studying mostly people who were so sick that they had to go to the ER or be admitted to the hospital. I can’t tell you the number of people I know who either had Covid but never went to the hospital, or had symptoms of Covid but never got a test. This was either because tests weren’t widely available to just anyone or they didn’t want to be tested. I think most of what we know about long Covid at this point is about the people who were the sickest, and I’m not sure you can extrapolate from them to the population as a whole. I wish the articles would make this clear, because it seems to me that right now they are unnecessarily fearmongering about long Covid.
Soprano2
@WaterGirl: She was talking to Congressional investigators. So she was obligated to talk about her experience. It was right there in the header under the headline of the article.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: There have been several studies of long covid in the general population. Specifically I remember one that started off as a general study of brain function in the population (using online cognitive testing) …. around Jan 2020. They quickly realized they could repurpose to study covid sequelae. So they administered tests to many thousands of subjects, and then did so again a good bit later, and also logged for each subject whether they’d gotten covid, and if so, how severe the case was.
Turned out, even asymptomatic cases had significant brain function impacts.
Then there was another a read about, regarding kidney function impacts, again for people with asymptomatic infections.
I think if you look around, you’ll find studies here-and-there. And many researchers (e.g. Eric Topol) are talking about how important it is to study this, b/c if we’re going to get reinfected every 2yr, and each time we effectively roll the dice for organ damage, that …. isn’t a winning solution.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: I’ve wondered from the beginning why more authoritarians haven’t seized on measures to control COVID as a means of consolidating their power, since it seems tailor-made for that.
After an initial period of denial, the PRC state clearly did this and reaped the benefits. Orban in Hungary seemed to make a stab at it. I initially thought Modi was going this way but when the Delta wave showed up in his country, he dropped the ball and flipped to denial.
Otherwise, not many–they mostly went in the other direction and doubled down on denial, to their own detriment. I remember many observers being surprised that Trump went this way instead of taking the opportunity to crack down on opposition through draconian pandemic control measures. But that would have been work.
mrmoshpotato
If that Brazilian Senate committee is in an indicting mood, we got some fuckers here in the States…
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: I’ve been wondering if some of the unrest we’re seeing in society at large is the result of undiagnosed organic brain damage from low-level COVID infection in some large fraction of the population, kind of like the environmental lead poisoning in the mid-20th century that might have contributed to the crime explosion of ~1970-1995.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: [I beat on this drum too often, perhaps, but] Tim Snyder’s “sadopopulism” is an answer to your question [you can google it to find his YT vid]. His thesis is that oligarchies are almost-invariably incompetent. And so, they *must* divert their populace with bogeymen, when things go bad, b/c …. they *will* go bad. It’s a pretty compelling thesis, and seems to be borne out almost everywhere. China seems to be the shining counter-example.
Chetan Murthy
@Matt McIrvin: As I’m sure you know, you’re not alone in wondering about this. Covid-induced psychosis is a thing, so why not less-extreme syndromes …..
Nicole
@Soprano2: It’s frustrating, to be sure. A lot of it is that science just hasn’t had enough time with the virus, but the media wants articles, so we get a lot of information that may be disproved later with time. I have an acquaintance who is still quoting the Cleveland Clinic study as her reason for not getting vaccinated, even though the Cleveland Clinic itself has said their data was based on pre-Delta observations and that everyone should get vaccinated.
On the positive side, lingering illness after a viral infection isn’t limited to Covid, but Covid is definitely bringing it to the foreground due to sheer numbers. Maybe therapies will come about as a result that will help people suffering the after effects from viral illnesses besides Covid, too.
Nicole
@Matt McIrvin:
There’s been some hypothesizing that undiagnosed/untreated mental illness may be much more prevalent in society than we thought and the stress and trauma of the past (almost) two years have brought it out in a lot of people who are functional while things are okay, but when things go bad on a society-wide level, lose their ability to function.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: Of course, a strike against that hypothesis is that a lot of these phenomena predate COVID by a few years–we can’t blame it for Trumpism and we definitely can’t blame it for people getting angry when cops murder somebody. A lot of things since March 2020 can be easily explained by more people being shut in at home by the pandemic.
But the disproportionate rise in car accidents, the rise in homicides, the sheer craziness of the anti-mask/anti-vax protesters–I do wonder if that’s all sociocultural effects of the pandemic shutdowns or if there’s something else going on.
Matt McIrvin
@Chetan Murthy: In the US, it seems as if our right wing’s long-term strategy for weathering crises of their own making is to take the L, give the other side the difficult job of cleaning up, and rely on being able to bounce back once people get exhausted with the ongoing crisis and start blaming the cleanup crew. After all, the Republicans were in control during the happy times before it all went to shit! And it seems to be easy for people to forget the precise ordering of events.
Robert Sneddon
Scotland — 2,566 new COVID-19 cases reported today in Scotland. The test positivity rate is 8.9%. There were 27 new deaths reported but note that Register Offices are generally closed at weekends. ICU bed occupancy numbers are 57, down two from yesterday while hospitalisations are 925, up eight.
There were about 3,400 vaccinations carried out in Scotland yesterday (Tuesday) with about 40% of these being first vaccinations. 92.0% of 16+ adults are now vaccinated with their first dose and 85.7% are fully vaccinated. 75.0% of 16 and 17-year-olds have now received their first vaccination and 53.1% of 12-15 year olds have now received their first vaccination, up 0.2% from yesterday. These 12-17 year-olds probably make up nearly all of the vaccinations reported.
There were about 28,500 booster vaccinations carried out yesterday in Scotland with a total of about 568,000 boosters to date.
Generally, from what I can tell from the ongoing vaccination efforts the Young Immortals in the 18-40 age group who haven’t already been vaccinated are never going to get vaccinated willingly. They may decide to get vaccinated when they have problems getting access to football grounds, clubs, pubs and music venues and some may be stubborn enough to try and fake their way past the restrictions since the on-the-door verification is spotty and generally not that well-planned. Employer mandates and other efforts might force some more to get vaccinated but I think we’re getting to the point where virtually all adults in Scotland intending to get vaccinated against COVID-19 have already received their full course of injections. The bad news is that the number of cases daily isn’t going down substantially, same for hospitalisations and deaths even with a mostly-vaccinated population.
New Deal democrat
@Soprano2:
Eric Topol has discussed studies to the effect that prior infection + one dose of vaccine is equivalent to being fully vaccinated. But that particular grouping is probably only about 3% of the population (roughly 1/3rd of the 10% only singly dosed). Obviously there is a larger group (maybe 10% of the population) that is fully vaccinated + had a prior infection as well.
The US needs much more thorough exploration of the number of unconfirmed cases. A seroprevalence of 2.4x confirmed cases means about 20% of the entire population has had exposure, but no “confirmed” case. And obviously there have been very few studies about their subsequent experience.
Peale
@Matt McIrvin: Its kind of funny. In a truly authoritarian beneficial response to COVID, Trump would have placed Biden under house arrest and cancelled the Democratic convention due to COVID. Biden kept his campaign events to a minimum and the Democrats downsized their in-person convention anyway.
WaterGirl
@Soprano2: You said “It was right there in the header under the headline of the article.”
All I see is this in the tweet above.
I’m certainly not going to click anything about Brix because, as I said above, her performance during the pandemic was shameful.
bluegirlfromwyo
@WaterGirl: For the same reason Dick Cheney is still allowed to talk about Iraq. They were in positions of authority at the time. That Cheney and Brix were horrible at their jobs matters not one iota to our media betters.
lowtechcyclist
Have there actually been more car accidents, or ‘just’ more fatal car accidents?
A year ago anyway, there seemed to be evidence that fewer cars on the road resulted in some people taking advantage of this to drive a lot faster than one normally could. So when something went wrong for them, it went wrong at higher velocity, with more fatalities as a result.
Matt McIrvin
@New Deal democrat: I also wonder about selection biases in those studies of the immune effects of prior infection– are their “mildly” infected people typical or are they biased toward more severe cases? These studies get (mis)used a lot by antivaxxers who want to avoid vaccination because they think they already had COVID (I also wonder how often this is accurate) and insist that “natural immunity is better”.
Matt McIrvin
@lowtechcyclist: If I recall correctly, fatalities per passenger mile are way up, though passenger miles were down during the shutdown period.
Matt McIrvin
@Soprano2: Speaking anecdotally, the one person I know who’s had serious long COVID issues got sick enough initially that she had to go to the hospital and get on supplemental oxygen.
dr. bloor
@WaterGirl: It was congressional testimony, not an open mic night at Chuck Todd’s place. Having her put this on the record is precisely what the committee is looking for.
MagdaInBlack
@lowtechcyclist: Judging by the fact that the majority our body shops in our Chicago market are over capacity by 25-40 cars and we are scheduling out into December, yes, accidents are way up.
( This company has over 700 shops nationwide, I haven’t looked at what’s going on in other states)
smith
@Matt McIrvin: I think there are some underlying personality factors as well. Authoritarians, both leaders and followers, seem to resort to denial as their preferred coping strategy when faced with something genuinely threatening and out of their control. TFG couldn’t have managed the pandemic effectively because to try to do so would have meant acknowledging how dangerous it was, and the anxiety from that recognition would have overwhelmed him. I think their extreme underlying anxiety about covid also explains the out-of-proportion rage of anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@MagdaInBlack: Might part of that be parts shortages? Freight transportation is still a mess the last I heard.
Wapiti
@lowtechcyclist: Just a glance at the googles: in WA, auto accidents and fatalities in the first 4 months of 2021 were both at only ~60% of the rates for 2017-2020. (I took the values for 4 month and multiplied by 3 to get a 12-month number to compare apples and apples.)
lowtechcyclist
@WaterGirl: It sounds like Soprano2 was referring to the article that you aren’t going to click through to, which starts off like this:
Anyway, this wasn’t some attempt on Birx’ part to get her name in the papers, or an attempt by sympathetic
reportersstenographers to give her some ink. She was asked to testify to a Congressional committee, she testified, and the article reports on that testimony.Matt McIrvin
@Peale: I recall Matthew Yglesias giving the savvy-pundit-world take on it–he said that in the early days, all of the speculation was inspired by the George W. Bush administration’s early 9/11 response, the Patriot Act, etc.: they assumed Trump was going to go hog wild with pandemic totalitarianism, like Bush did with domestic security measures after 9/11, and just argued about how severe it was going to be. They were genuinely shocked when Trump’s response was to just pretend it was not happening and tell everyone to take it easy.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
Greece: new cases are back over the 4,000 per day level that we hadn’t seen since the peak of the third wave in August. It’s annoying because it looked like it was almost under control back in June. Much of the problem is apparently in northern Greece. I’m starting to wonder if there might be another lockdown coming, or if the availability of vaccines will argue against locking down.
Friday I’m going to Citizen Services to see if my US vaccination records (both my CDC card and my vax record from New York City; thank you all for the suggestion, jackaltariat) can be put into my Greek health records. (There’s a procedure for people who get their first mRNA shot overseas to get it recorded so they can get their second shot in good time; I’m simply going to try to apply that to both shots with a view to seeing when I can/should get a booster.)
artem1s
@debbie:
And he chose that strategy knowing that sane voters wouldn’t want to go to the polls on election day with a bunch of unmasked deplorables. He was betting on GQPers not caring if they got infected at the polls. The crazy 11th hour decision to hamstring the USPS and spread disinformation about the credibility of mail in ballots proved they were counting on wide spread suppression of in-person voting handing him another EC win.
Matt McIrvin
@smith: It may have been that China was able to take a proactive stance just because, since the pandemic originated there, it started out as somewhat constrained in scope. They could start by just locking down the city of Wuhan and environs, and that was a huge job, but it wasn’t everything. It wasn’t coming in from everywhere. Then the Wuhan response provided the model.
MagdaInBlack
@Bruce K in ATH-GR: Parts shortages don’t account for the number of cars coming in the door with damage. Parts aren’t holding us up as much as sheer number of cars. As I said I’m scheduling drivable cars out in to December.
Actually just got off the phone with an insurance adjuster where we had a conversation about wtf is going on, have people forgotten how to drive
Eta: also throw in the mix we are not able to find body technicians. Not a lot of new blood coming in to this business
smith
At least FTFNYT got the headline right this time, letting us know how few the holdouts are. In scanning headlines this morning, I saw the Boston Globe trumpeting the fact that 800 Boston city employees are on leave because they’re unvaxxed. Way down in the article we discover that Boston has 18,000 city employees, so more than 95% are vaxxed. Terminally innumerate Goobers (that’s all of them) see that 800 and feel justified in refusing the vaccine because it’s clearly the majority position, right?
Matt McIrvin
@smith:
There’s got to be more to it, though. I am by nature an extremely anxious person, and my anxiety over the COVID pandemic has been bad enough to cause significant strain in my personal and family life (particularly in the months before we all got vaccinated). But I’ve tried to actually respond as rationally as I can manage. Masks and especially vaccination meant this was something I did have some control over. Why would loss of control drive you to avoid the only things that gave you any control?
Maybe I do understand it, a little. I can be driven to extreme procrastination sometimes by anxiety over the procrastination I’ve already done, the fear that it’s already too late to get out of the hole I’m in. These people also seem to think in extremely all-or-nothing, innumerate terms: they’ll point to evidence that it’s possible to get and transmit COVID if you’re vaccinated, and conclude that vaccination is useless and there’s no reason for anyone to demand it. Anything that doesn’t give them total control is as bad as no control at all.
WaterGirl
@lowtechcyclist: Thanks for the additional info. That does make me feel a bit better. I wonder if her testimony was even truthful. I stopped trusting her a long time ago.
smith
@Matt McIrvin: I think it’s more a matter of coping styles than it is propensity towards anxiety (I’m a rather anxious person, too, and responded to covid the way you did). In my opinion, Goobers typically respond to threats with denial, rage, and magical thinking, liberals respond with statistics, seeking expert advice, and casting about for something they can do. You see these responses again and again for issues far beyond the pandemic.
I do agree that all-or-nothing thinking also plays a role. This is the fundamentalist mindset: there are a basic underlying truths that are unchanging and absolute. Something either is or is not — there are no gradations in between. Thus Biblical literalism and an inability to follow scientific findings as they change and are refined over time.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin:
Not all authoritarian regimes are the same. The CCP regime benefits from an extensive & strong grass root organization, strong financial/equipment/manufacturing/human resources at its disposal, strong central authority that can effectively mobilize & channel such resources, & relatively competent government at most levels & most locations.
All of the lock downs, movement restrictions, distancing measures are enforced by neighborhood committees, community workers, Party volunteers (mobilized from state owned enterprises and among retirees), & rent-a-cop security guards at residential compounds & businesses. So is “last mile” logistics of supplying food & necessities to residents under lock down. They even make up the majority of contact tracing forces. Police & the military do not figure prominently, with the exception of military medical personnel mobilized to go to Hubei Province during the 1st wave.
Vietnam has had to rely much more heavily on the army in its response. Modi might have wanted to pull a CCP type of response, but he & the BJP regime does not have the capability or capacity to execute.
Furthermore, while CCP government/party apparatchiks are often motivated by venal self-interest, that is not the only motivation at the leadership level. I think leadership of the regime take their responsibilities of being stewards of the nation quite seriously, even if their methods are often amoral, cynical & inhumane. They are driven by a strong sense of mission – to return China to wealth & power. This “China Dream” is not just a CCP fabrication, either, it has been a common goal of Chinese reformers & revolutionaries from the late Qing empire on, from Sun Yet-sen to Chiang Kai-Shek, to Mao Zedong & Deng Xiaoping, & certainly Xi Jinping. Xi has to some extent reinvigorated that sense of mission, & to me his largely successful consolidation of power is the result & not the cause. The Great Power Competition is helping, as well.
Most other authoritarian strongmen are not driven by any sense of mission or responsibility, they & their coteries are only interested in personal gain. It does make Putin a curious case. I thought he is a Russian nationalist and strongly motivated to return Russia to greatness, but his pandemic response has been a string of disasters. Perhaps being in power for so long & surrounded by sycophants has atrophied his ruling abilities. The same could happen to Xi if his rule extends beyond a 3rd term.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Singapore is another somewhat illiberal state that’s been mostly a COVID success story, on a far smaller scale than China. They have some geographic advantages (some disadvantages too, though–high density and an economy extremely dependent on external trade and guest workers). It seems, though, as if their ruling party also has a sincere commitment to being competent stewards of the country, if not to sharing power.
smith
@YY_Sima Qian: The bully-boy authoritarian style without the sense of stewardship is exemplified better by DeSantis than was TFG. The former has jumped aggressively into imposing his own solutions, with predictable results. The latter just didn’t want to be bothered by something he couldn’t acknowledge was a big deal, also with predictable results.
YY_Sima Qian
@Chetan Murthy: Reading the coverage of the Facebook Papers has been frightening, especially the company’s utter negligent & cynical operation outside of “core” markets in the US & Europe. To read that the Facebook in the US is the “best” version of the platform… I shudder at the damage the platform has done to the rest of the world.
While I am disgusted by the increasingly constrained scope for public discussion, opinions & expression in China, & strongly believe it is a strong negative for the country, I have to wonder if the CCP regime’s decision to push Facebook out of the country in 2009 has not been a net positive. Doubly ironic is that the proximate cause for driving the platform out was an ethnic riot at Ürumqi in Xinjiang, essentially a pogrom by some Uighurs against Han Chinese residents, though Hui Muslims & even Uighurs who tried to protect Han Chinese were targeted. (Official death toll was nearly 200, almost all Han Chinese, though likely higher & w/ more Uighurs, too.) The Chinese government request Facebook to share the identities of accounts seen to be inciting & organizing violence, & Facebook refused.
Concerns w/ the arbitrariness & harshness of CCP “justice” are more than justified, particularly when the targets are members of ethnic minority group suspected of the “Three Evils” of separatism, religious extremism & terrorism. If Facebook had shared user ID w/ Chinese police, the political & PR blowback in the US would have been overwhelming. On the other hand, the threats from separatism, terrorism & religious extremism (specifically Salafism imported from Afghanistan, Pakistan & Saudi Arabia) were real, too.
Matt McIrvin
@smith: Yeah, DeSantis (like Abbott) will actually ban private businesses from having mask/vaccine mandates, which seems contrary to most conservatives’ stated attitude toward business. Trump surely wouldn’t have given a shit.
DeSantis’s aggressive pushing of monoclonal antibody treatment is interesting too–it’s actually a proactive anti-pandemic measure, using an effective drug, but one that doesn’t run afoul of right-wing political obsessions.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@YY_Sima Qian:
Was hoping I could get your opinion on this article from Foreign Policy mag:
China Is a Declining Power—and That’s the Problem: The United States needs to prepare for a major war, not because its rival is rising but because of the opposite
Basically, China’s best days are behind it, and is in a decline similar to that of Imperial Japan just before WW2 and the German Empire prior to WW1
Fair Economist
@YY_Sima Qian:
Have you seen Navalny’s documentary on one of Putin’s estates? The man stole literally billions for a place he visits only occasionally. Putin’s just a kleptocrat on an unprecedented scale for the modern world. The “glory of Russia” bit is just a ruse for the rubes.
Xi’s administration seems to be flailing lately with these bizarro social control measures like barring private tutoring, basically barring kids playing internet games, and the abrupt switcheroo on population growth. That does *not* look like Putin’s unlimited kleptocracy, more like your idea of bad advice from sycophants which is, after all, a common problem for extreme authoritarians throughout history.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Fair Economist:
That last one might not be so crazy. China’s population is getting older and is facing a demographic crisis in the future. I read an article that by 2050 China will be facing a similar population (in terms of median/average age) to what Japan has today, while the US will have similar age demographics that Japan had in the late 90s
Fair Economist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It *is* crazy. Increasing population growth does not help take care of the olds. For about 40 years the working population caries a heavy *additional* burden of raising kids in addition to taking care of the olds, while too few of the extra kids are old enough to help. Then for 20 years or so there is a very slight improvement in the dependency ratio. Then it goes back to the steady state, which is little influenced by population growth in normal ranges.
Net result is a big loss for the working population. This is on top of the very serious ecological issues China is already dealing with, and the additional pressure global warming will cause. Those pushing population growth are those owning limited resources (often land or housing) who will gain from the misery inflicted on the general population. Since the Chinese government has been relying on their housing bubble for growth and to some extent for funding, perhaps that’s their motive.
Incidentally, big drops in the population growth rate have the opposite effect of producing a big boost for the economy for 40 years or so. They are quite commonly seen before big economic booms, such as the original Industrial Revolution, the post-war boom, and, from the strongest such effect ever recorded – modern China.
YY_Sima Qian
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I think the two writer are whistling past the grave yard.
Yes, major policy mistakes causing social instability & threatening systemic collapse is always a danger with authoritarian regimes, polities being less resilient in face of such policy mistakes than liberal democracies (but that is a double edged sword, too, since mistaken policies are often allowed to persist precisely because it is much more difficult to effect change & a lot of voters think kicking out the last batch of bums is an end to itself.) However, if you look at the CCP regime’s body of work over the past 4+ decades, the challenges overcome & the adjustments the regime had to make (which at any given time few outside observers thought the regime was capable of making), I think it is foolish casually bet against the regime.
As for demography is destiny, I think the regime is betting that the advent of 4th Industrial Revolution will diminish the weight of demography on the economy, & it is devoting enormous resources to ensure China leads such revolution (via investments & industrial policy into 5G, AI, automation, biotechnology, etc.), much as Britain led the 1st, the UK/US/Germany led the 2nd & the US led the 3rd. Whether there will indeed be such a thing as the 4th Industrialization Revolution, & whether China can successfully ride the wave, we shall have to see. I hope it succeeds, population growth as a key driver to economic growth is a dead end for the planet.
By the way, in Hal Brand’s other writings in other publications, his policy advice certainly does not suggest a belief that China is a declining power. Anyway, being contrarian can be profitable for a prognosticator, & they are generally not held accountable for being wrong. How many collapses of the Chinese economy has Gordon Chang predicted over the past 2+ decades? Yet he is still ensconced in conservative think tank world & feature prominently in conservative media as a China “expert”.
YY_Sima Qian
@Fair Economist:
Most observers in & out of China (at least the ones I find credible) believe the policies are actually heading toward the right direction, addressing deep imbalanced in the economy & society, and many long over due. The concern is w/ the detailed policy formulation & execution, & whether the seeming arbitrariness & unpredictability will suppress investment & cause capital flight. No sign of that, yet.
I do not believe the policies promoting births is actually aimed at population growth, but slowing population decline, the kind that is troubling Japan, South Korea & Taiwan. China will be lucky to get back to replacement level birth rate, particularly in the urban areas. Birth rate will not have any possibility of increasing from current low levels unless the social pressure suppressing births decrease (cost of child rearing & education prominent among them, along side inadequate social services such as lack of low cost day care & cost of housing ownership).
The ban on private tutoring, specifically the for profit cramming schools that force feed curriculum material into school children, sometimes force feeding 5th/6th grade material to 3rd/4th graders, junior high material into 5th/6th. Chinese elementary school material is already much more advanced than in the States. Teachers in public schools are known to take 2nd jobs at the cram schools, then refrain from teaching curriculum material in school, holding it for the cram schools & force pupils to sign up for these expensive “services”. I think a sudden ban is far too blunt an instrument, more targeted regulation should have sufficed, given teachers are public sector employees beholden to the state. Nonetheless the new policy has been largely welcomed by the stressed middle class parents. Anything to slow down the education arms race that structurally favor the more well to do. The capital that had invested into the formerly red hot cram school sector was not amused. For profit extracurricular educational service has not been banned.
Nevertheless, cram schools is merely a symptom, the cause of the arms race being uneven distribution of high quality education. Every parent want their child to get into the key elementary schools so they can get into the key lower middle schools, which increase their chance of scoring well on the entrance exams & enter key high middle schools, which in turn improve their chance of scoring well on the national entrance exam to get into the top universities, which greatly improve their career prospects. A 2nd order effect has been sky rocketing real estate prices in the catchment areas w/ the key schools, helping to inflate the real estate bubble. The government has implemented policies to address the structural imbalances, trialing in Beijing large school catchment areas that including both key & ordinary schools (which has suppressed real estate prices in the smaller former key school catchment areas), & in Shanghai rotating teachers & principles from key schools to ordinary schools. It is widely believed that these policies will be rolled out nationally in the next few years. I believe China is aiming for the Finnish model as the end goal, but the transition will be lengthy & full of experimentation.
On real estate, the Chinese government has for years proactively implemented policies to suppress the bubble & minimize leverage at the family level. There is little risk of deflating bubble directly causing a financial crisis, since the Chinese economy is not nearly as financialized as the US’, most the financial sector is state owned (as is significant parts of the real estate & construction sector). The risk is that real estate investment & construction directly & indirectly support up to a quarter of the real economy. Not surprising given the world historical urbanization drive China has been in for the past 3 decades, but that will run its course in the coming decade (at most). The recent turmoil in the sector was actually engineered by the central government to reduce leverage taken on by the real estate companies & risk exposure to the banks, Evergrande being the most prominent (& far from the only) victim. Perhaps the authorities underestimated the impact to the real economy. On the other hand, the deflation of the bubble has had the salutary effect of reducing bureaucratic resistance to implementation of a real estate tax, which is long over due. (As someone who recently purchased an apartment in Wuhan had taken out a loan to do so, I have somewhat mixed feelings.) Local governments has been using sale of land usage rights as a key source of funding (something they learned from Hong Kong) & had been loath to endanger the revenue stream.
Why Is Xi largely supported by average people in China (including Party rank & file), & at least acquiesced to by the majority of the Party elite? He is proactively addressing long standing & metastasized imbalances, imbalances that are prevalent across the world in the wake of decades of globalization & neoliberal dominance. He has the political power & capital to do so, indeed the Party elites have ceded power to him for this very purpose. The recent changes in policy direct appear to be abrupt reversals because many have been long discussed & are long overdue, & Xi is impatient to implement policies to build momentum for a 3rd term in 2022. Whether the policies are well thought through (the devil is always in the details) & competently executed, we hall have to see. They are neither guaranteed to succeed nor fail. I am cautiously optimistic. At least the CCP regime is largely cognizant of the structural issues & is (finally) moving to address them. In the US, there isn’t even agreement on the problem statement, & the reactionary forces filibuster any & all solution. The Rs eagerly reverse any progress realized by the Ds, at both state & federal levels.