The highly-contagious Omicron subvariant XBB has surged to more than 50% of COVID-19 cases in the northeastern United States and risks spreading fast as millions of Americans begin holiday travel on Friday. https://t.co/3HTergAvMo
— Reuters Health (@Reuters_Health) December 24, 2022
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There’s no room for #Covid complacency in 2023
Stark scenes from China show the pandemic is far from over. One solution is a laser-like focus on strengthening public-health systems https://t.co/E07lrCddAb— delthia ricks 🔬 (@DelthiaRicks) December 27, 2022
China to end quarantine for inbound arrivals, restart outbound tourism in "orderly manner". Major move towards formal end of zero covid & ending China's 3 yrs of isolation.
Part of broader policy that downgrades covid management to a less infectious disease @wolfblitzer pic.twitter.com/EcR2QDtkY3— Selina Wang (@selinawangtv) December 26, 2022
Frontline healthcare workers in China say hospitals are struggling with a surge in COVID cases. There are fears that patients may will be turned away due to lack of beds and resources https://t.co/570f7z839D pic.twitter.com/IhVbL5Hg9U
— Reuters (@Reuters) December 26, 2022
Chinese authorities are going door to door and paying people who are older than 60 to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Health experts say raising the vaccination rate among older residents is crucial to avoiding a health care crisis. https://t.co/o2eu1qTmEW pic.twitter.com/Mkl5txfPqT
— The Associated Press (@AP) December 26, 2022
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Long, harrowing thread with lots of visuals:
1/China is facing a medical emergency. Two harrowing days in Hebei’s ICUs shows the area’s hospitals are buckling with the spread of COVID. We saw ambulances turned away from hospitals, relatives frantically searching for beds, patients sprawled on floorshttps://t.co/Rq1Ov2ejpG
— Dake Kang (@dakekang) December 24, 2022
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People keep trying to share their medicine and the postal service keeps opening and stealing the packages so they can sell the pills to scalpers for a huge markup. They stole a big package I had sent from the US😞 No way to complain or do anything though so need to hide them… pic.twitter.com/NFcKH3ATLE
— Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (@RealSexyCyborg) December 24, 2022
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Chinese looked at wealthy countries with Paxolovid, a variety of vaccines, and far more ICU beds per capita as indications of what they could expect if they decided to "live with COVID". We don't have those things and we didn't get them during the three years we could have.
— Naomi Wu 机械妖姬 (@RealSexyCyborg) December 25, 2022
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The daily tally exhibits a week-on-week increase for twenty straight days. The ministry also confirmed 19 deaths across the city. The number of seriously ill patients who are on ventilators or ECMO heart-lung machines has increased by 1 from Saturday to 44.
— Gurbaksh Singh Chahal (@gchahal) December 26, 2022
Hospital acquired Covid now accounts for 39% of Covid admissions. Hospital acquired covid counts have increased faster than other Covid admissions since the start of November.
Last week's changes in admissions:
– Total Covid ⬆️ 36%
– Hospital acquired ⬆️44%
– Other⬆️32% 2/2 pic.twitter.com/ob1MKHbTCr— Adele Groyer (@AdeleGroyer) December 22, 2022
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I wrote about the XBB.1.5 variant in the United Stateshttps://t.co/mnaA3kvpNp
— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) December 23, 2022
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PRRI found that 59% of Americans agree that getting a COVID vaccine is a way to live out the religious principle of loving your neighbors, while 40% disagree.
The share of Americans who agreed with this statement increased over 2021. https://t.co/lKR4gnGZEB
— PRRI (@PRRIpoll) December 25, 2022
The NYTimes:
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Reader Interactions
70Comments
Comments are closed.
NeenerNeener
Monroe County, NY:
183 new cases on 12/23/22.
118 new cases on 12/24/22.
95 new cases on 12/25/22.
49 new cases on 12/26/22.
Deaths at 2120, up 5 from last week.
As for hospital beds, only 3% are actually available, including 11 ICU beds among 4 hospitals. The largest hospital has no available beds, and the second largest hospital only has 24 beds available.
When the holiday COVID cases hit I don’t know where they’re going to put them.
JML
Wonder which variant I got?
That nonsense at the bottom with the person just calling it “the flu” really infuriates me. First, flu still kills tons of people every year. Second, you can’t know how you’ll respond to this. I’m double vaxx’d and max boosted, I’m reasonably healthy and this thing has absolutely obliterated me. If I wasn’t vaxx’d, I think I’d either be hospitalized or dead.
Amir Khalid
Malaysia’s Ministry of Health reported 480 new Covid-19 cases yesterday, for a cumulative reported total of 5,023,999 cases. 473 of these new cases were local infections; seven new cases were imported. It also reported four deaths, for an adjusted cumulative total of 36,835 deaths – 0.74% of the cumulative reported total, 0.74% of resolved cases.
15,850 Covid-19 tests were conducted on 25th December, with a positivity rate of 4.5%.
There were 13,818 active cases yesterday, 179 fewer than the day before. 885 were in hospital. 45 confirmed cases were in ICU; of these patients, 20 confirmed cases were on ventilators. Meanwhile, 655 more patients recovered, for a cumulative total of 4,973,346 patients recovered – 99.0% of the cumulative reported total.
The National Covid-19 Immunisation Programme (PICK) administered 1,107 doses of vaccine on 26th December: 50 first doses, 52 second doses, 200 first booster doses, and 805 second booster doses. The cumulative total is 72,551,491 doses administered: 28,119,591 first doses, 27,530,829 second doses, 16,277,062 first booster doses, and 624,009 second booster doses. 86.1% of the population have received their first dose, 84.3% their second dose, 49.8% their first booster dose, and 1.9% their second booster dose.
YY_Sima Qian
The China National Health Commission announced on 12/24 that the responsibility for publishing COVID-19 updates is handed to the China CDC. The data published by the China CDC for 12/25 is the same meaningless numbers collected through the official reporting system that the China NHC has been reporting.
The authorities clearly aware that the official reported numbers have no credibility, & is indeed subject to widespread ridicule. Some regional/local authorities have released estimated infections from surveillance testing & internal modeling: Qingdao in Shandong Province estimated that there were ~ 490 – 530K new infections on 12/23 & was expected to increase by ~ 10% per day until peaking at EOY; Dongguan in Guangdong Province estimated that there were ~ 250 – 300K new infections on 12/23; Zhejiang Province estimated that there were ~ 1M new infections on 12/25, & is likely to increase to ~ 2M new infections / day in the coming days; Kunming in Yunnan Province estimated on 12/25 that > 50% of the population have been infected.
Baidu (Chinese counterpart to Google) had been publicizing its own big data modeling of the exit tsunami for each jurisdiction, down to the district/county level. I am not sure what are the parameters that feed into the model, whether it includes the surveillance testing data available to the China NHC & CDC, but it probably is heavily weighed to searches for anti-fever medication, COVID-19 therapeutics, fever clinics, hospitals & ICUs. Baidu’s models show that many parts of China are already past peak, while the rest of the country will peak by end of Dec. Baidu’s modeling appears to be more aggressive than the glimpses of China NHC/CDC’s models we have seen, estimating peaks a few days ahead of the latter. I suspect it is due to the urban bias of the data input. Baidu’s model for Wuhan estimates that infection peaked on 12/17 & is currently ~ 75% off peak, Beijing peaked on 12/17 as well & is currently ~ 50% off peak. This feels about right for urban Wuhan/Beijing. Of course, neither China NHC/CDC’s or Baidu’s models are entirely accurate, but certainly more useful than the official data being published. While neither the central authorities nor state media organs are addressing the actual state of the exit tsunami, there is also no attempt to suggest that the official data from the China NHC/CDC data dumps are anything resembling to reality. People in China no longer pay any attention to the daily data dump, & instead are checking Baidu’s model. So why does the Chinese government continue to publish the data from the official reporting system? Probably bureaucratic inertia. Why doesn’t Chinese government share their own internal models? My suspicion is that the central leadership wants to avoid the hard & embarrassing questions that official numbers will inevitably bring. It is obscuring/obfuscating the true extent of exit tsunami, & ride out the extraordinarily intense but very short exit tsunami. There may be data revisions months down the line that are closer to reality, to try to regain some credibility, & then avoid the subject altogether going forward. That has been the CCP regime’s historical MO w/ failures & embarrassment. Xi Jinping has not addressed the exit tsunami at all, to minimize association.
While infection probably peaked last week (or the week before) for cities such as Beijing and Wuhan, the peak in hospitalization are just arriving & the peak in deaths coming soon, hence the horror stories of overwhelmed hospitals, overcrowded ICUs, & crematoriums running around the clock. Over the week end there were hundreds of backlogs for ambulance services in Beijing & Wuhan, w/ waiting time of several hours. When my wife’s grandparents had to get CT scans done late last week, there was a line of patients waiting. Yesterday, one of my wife’s friend had to get a CT at a different hospital (to check if there was lingering infection in the lungs from COVID-19, as she suffers from persistent coughing), & there was hardly anyone waiting. Perhaps parts of Wuhan has already seen peaks in new hospitalizations, & the stress on the medical system will start to drop as patients are discharged or die. Based on personal anecdotes, social media report, & local state media & obituaries of eminent persons, it appears that the very elderly (> 80 y.o., particularly > 90 y.o.) w/ underlying conditions account for the vast majority of deaths, like elsewhere. 6 members of Chinese Academies of Science & Engineering passed on 1 day, 5 were > 90 y.o. & 1 > 85 y.o. This is the least vaccinated cohort in China, & for these most vulnerable people even a bout of flu can be deadly. It does appear that the majority of critical cases/deaths may be complications of underlying conditions triggered by COVID-19, & not severe respiratory symptoms (at least compared to Wuhan in Spring 2020 or the Alpha/Delta waves in the ROW). Anecdotal evidence suggests that, while many of the critical cases need oxygen support, relatively few require ventilation.
Beijing is rolling out Paxlovid down to the community hospital level. It is too late for the exit tsunami, since it needs to be taken by the vulnerable patient early after infection. The drug is still impossible to obtain in Wuhan, so once again it appears the capital is prioritized (to be fair, Beijing does appears to be among the hardest hit by severe/critical cases & deaths). If it is rolled out in the rest of the country, down to community hospitals/clinics, then it will certainly help in future waves.
Consistent w/ being well past peak in terms of infection, cities such as Beijing & Wuhan are coming back to life again, because most of the urban populations have already recovered. As late as last Friday streets were still empty in the part of Wuhan where we live, even during rush hour. Sunday evening & yesterday evening there were traffic jams. Mobility index from Baidu’s big data also show clear recovery. Logistics, express deliveries, take out & grocery deliveries have also returned close to normal in Wuhan. Resort at holiday destination such as Hainan are sold out for New Year & Chinese New Year. Now we have this sharp contrast of waiting lines for both restaurants & ambulances, crowded shopping malls & ICUs. Those of you who have lived through Delta & Omicron waves in the ROW is probably familiar w/ the feeling. Over the past couple of weeks the manufacturing operations of many of our customers (based in the Pearl River Delta, & Hunan & Sichuan Provinces) have been impacted by worker absenteeism due to infection, just now returning to normal. As the exit tsunami tears through the rest of China, manufacturing operations in other parts of the country will be affected, then recover. The socioeconomic disruption, as well as the disruption of global supply chains, will be felt. However, the disruption will also likely be quite short lived, so that is something to be thankful for.
The China NHC announced yesterday that from 1/8 response to the COVID-19 pandemic will be downgraded to that for a Class B disease. COVID-19 has always been designated a Class B infectious disease (same as AIDS, tuberculosis, Hep B, etc.), but the response was that for a Class A infectious disease (same as pestilence & cholera), justifying the quarantines, mass screenings & lockdowns. Under the new response regime, data on confirmed infections/hospitalizations/deaths will only be updated on monthly basis. (Not something I am happy about.). No more quarantines & contact tracing, no more designation of High Risk areas. Most of the cross-border travel restrictions will be lifted: no more testing on arrival, no more centralized quarantine upon arrival (may still need to do 3 days of home quarantine or at home health monitoring). No more testing of inbound goods & parcels. One still needs a negative PCR test w/in 48 hrs of departure, but no need to obtain a health code, only need to show the negative result & sign a health declaration form at entry. Short term social distancing measures (such as cancelling mass events, distance learning, capacity limits & take outs only) can be implemented should there be a surge of cases. Lockdown of retirement homes is still an option when there is a surge.
Until more meaningful numbers are published by the Chinese government, I will not waste time posting them here. However, I will continue to post Mainland China’s vaccination numbers, as well as the data from Hong Kong, Macau & Taiwan. The data from the latter three country/regions give us an indicating of what post-exit tsunami “steady state” for Mainland China may look like. Frankly, recent data out of Hong Kong is concerning. 40 deaths in Hong Kong’s ~ 6M population translates to nearly 10K deaths for Mainland China’s 1.4B. Even Taiwan’s 30 deaths (avg. for the past 8 days) among 26M population translates to > 1.5K deaths for Mainland China. Both Hong Kong & Taiwan have considerably higher health care resources (especially ICUs) than the Mainland.
As of 12/26, 3,473.153M vaccine doses have been injected in Mainland China, an increase of 1.334M doses in the past 24 hrs. As of 12/13, 1,307.222M individuals have taken at least 1 shot (or 92.73% of the total population), 1,274.018M are fully vaccinated (90.37% of the total), & 815.718M boosted (57.86% of the total). Of the > 60 y.o. cohort, 240.217M individuals have taken at least 1 shot (or 91% of the cohort), 228.644M are fully vaccinated (86.6% of the cohort), 184.179M boosted (69.76% of the cohort). Of the > 80 y.o. cohort, 27.73M individuals have taken at least 1 shot (or 77.5% of the cohort), 23.757M are fully vaccinated (66.4% of the cohort), 15.153M boosted (42.35% of the cohort).
On 12/25, Hong Kong reported 19,398 new positive cases, 865 imported & 18,533 domestic, & 47 new deaths (11 unvaccinated, 1 w/ 1 shot, 7 w/ 2 shots, 26 w/ 3 shots, & 2 w/ 4 shots). There have been 11,509 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 12/25, Macao reported 34 new cases & 2 new deaths (both have underlying conditions, 1 has had 3 vaccine shots & 1 has had 4). There have been 23 total COVID-19 deaths to date.
On 12/26, Taiwan added 24,498 new positive cases, 71 imported & 24,427 domestic. There were 7 new deaths (all w/ underlying conditions, 3 fully vaccinated & boosted). There have been 15,120 total COVID-19 deaths to date. Taiwanese authorities believe the winter wave will peak in Feb.
NorthLeft
Thanks for continuing this series Anne.
You always seem to put the best tweet for last. The sheer selfishness of Pura vida and his dismissal of any common sense precautions as infringements of his freedom is infuriating to me.
I will continue to mask in public, and in general avoid group events. …..Family excepted, which I know makes no logical sense, but it is the risk that my wife and I are willing to take.
In Ontario, our hospitals are a complete mess. Going to Emergency means a ten to twelve hour wait unless you are bleeding out.
And to think I used to complain if I waited for an hour for emergency treatment.
YY_Sima Qian
On a more personal note, my wife’s grandparents remain in the hospital. Both are on oxygen support. My wife’s grandfather has been suffering persistent feverish symptoms for the past week, indicating persistent infection, & has been on a range of IVs. CT scans 3 days apart show progressive infection in the lungs. Blood oxygen for both are still > 90%, both have retained appetite, neither have severe respiratory symptoms so far, which are encouraging. We are keeping our fingers crossed. My uncles & aunts in Beijing & Nanjing are still working through their infections, but no one has needed to be hospitalized so far. However, my wife’s uncle in Beijing suffered persistent low grade fever, checked into a hospital on 12/25 & found to have pneumonia in the lungs, not serious though. His father-in-law (96 y.o.) OTOH is in an ICU, unfortunately the diagnosis is not good.
w/ the opening of the borders, I think my parents will finally be able to come to China some time in 2023. China is still only issuing 3 mo. short term visit visas, longer term visas are still difficult to obtain, & existing multi-year multiple entry visas are still suspended. I will hold my parents’ return until after the post-Chinese New Year wave subsides, however, to some time in the Spring at the earliest.
New Deal democrat
It does not appear that Biobot is updated. It continues to show a major outbreak in the Northeast, with more particles than at any point during the pandemic except for the earliest wave and Omicron. Nationally the levels are equivalent to BA.2.12.1, and higher than all other waves except for Omicron.
Confirmed cases have not risen nationally since earlier this month, remaining at 60,000+. Hospitalizations have continued to increase to 40,600, a 50% increase over their recent lows, but not equivalent to previous waves. Deaths also remain low, at 339.
There may be some holiday delays in reporting. We probably won’t see the Christmas-related cases for a few more days.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
🤞
catclub
@JML:
mild case for me after getting all the vaxxes and boosters.
I am betting on:
I blame the busy restaurant on a rainy friday evening.
Hildebrand
My congregation in Detroit still fully masks during services. The ushers give out masks to those that forgot to bring one. Its such a simple thing to do – I just can’t fathom why people have found this to be so difficult.
In Detroit it’s quite a stark difference – black people mask, white people don’t.
YY_Sima Qian
As China experiences the dreadful exit tsunami driven by the Omicron BA.5.2 & BF.7 variants, it is worth keeping in mind the deaths that other Zero COVID or suppression countries/regions experienced during their exit s (I am using 6 – 7 mo. post-opening):
Australia saw ~ 12K deaths in a population of 26M (due to Delta & Omicron BA.1/2), translating to ~ 650K deaths for China’s 1.4B
New Zealand saw ~ 2.9K deaths in a population of 5.6M (due to Omicron BA.1/2), translating to ~ 725K deaths for China
South Korea saw ~ 21K deaths in a population of 56M (due to Omicron BA.1/2), translating to 525K deaths for China
Taiwan saw ~ 12.8K deaths in a population of 26M (due to Omicron BA.2), translating to 690K deaths for China
Singapore saw ~ 1.2K deaths in a population of 5.6M (due to Delta & Omicron BA.1/2), translating to ~ 300K deaths for China
Hong Kong saw ~ 9.9K deaths in a population of 6M (due to Omicron BA.1/2), translating to ~ 2.3M deaths for China
By far the best of the group has been Singapore, which utilized a vaccine mandate to ensure > 95% update for its most vulnerable population before opening up in Sept. 2021. It should be noted that some of the elderly vulnerable people in the city state had opted for the Sinovac inactivated whole virion vaccine.
By far the worst of the group has been Hong Kong. When Omicron BA.1/2 broke containment in Feb. 2022, only 30% of the > 80 y.o. cohort in the city had been fully vaccinated, & ~ 11% boosted. When Taiwan gave up Zero COVID in May 2022, estimated update rate among the > 75 y.o. cohort was just over 70% (I could not find official figures from Taiwanese health authorities, nor data on boosting rate).
All of the above countries/regions gave higher health care resources per capita than Mainland China.
In late Mar. 2022, as an Omicron BA.2 outbreak in Shanghai threatened to break containment, 50% of China’s > 80 y.o. cohort was fully vaccinated, & ~ 20% boosted. Had China ended “Dynamic Zero COVID” then, the death rate / 100K would have been somewhere between Hong Kong & Taiwan. After the vaccination drive post Shanghai lockdown, vaccination rate of the > 80 y.o. cohort improved to 65% by end of Nov., & boosting rate to 40%, numbers much closer to Taiwan’s in May. I would expect China’s death rate / 100K to be closer to Taiwans, probably 1M or less.
Delta had R0 of ~ 4 – 6, Omicron BA.1/2 had R0 of ~ 8 – 10, & Omicron BA.5.2 & BF.7 have R0 of 10 – 18 (I have seen estimates as high as 21). That means China’s exit tsunami is much more intense, but also much shorter, that those experienced by other Zero COVID countries/regions.
Opening at end of Nov., instead of early Apr., bought time for more of the most vulnerable population to be vaccinated, at the expense of adding 8 months to the last booster shot for everyone already vaccinated. What China should & could have done was to roll out 2nd boosters in Aug. – Oct., even if that meant using inactivated whole virion vaccines. 2nd boosters are just being rolled out now for the > 60 y.o. cohort, + those w/ underlying conditions. China just approved a number of new viral vector & adjuvanted subunit protein vaccines at end of Nov., & is in fact recommending those who had taken inactivated whole virion vaccines for their 1st 2 or 3 shots to take the viral vector or adjuvanted subunit protein vaccines as their new boosters. This is far too late for the exit tsunami, however.
Soprano2
I’d say that the one big difference is that regardless of political affiliation, in the U.S. the vast majority of those over the age of 75 got vaccinated when they could, at least the first two shots, so once vaccines were available the death toll in that group, while still high, wasn’t nearly as bad as it was before vaccines were available. What’s happening in China right now reminds me of the time here before vaccines were available. It’s so tragic because much of the severe illness and death could have been avoided with a better exit strategy. It really sounds to me as if they made this decision somewhat suddenly, rather than planning for it.
kalakal
@YY_Sima Qian: Hoping for the best
dmsilev
What I don’t really understand about China’s strategy is that the government was perfectly happy to weld people into their apartments to enforce quarantines, but was apparently unwilling to put in a vaccine mandate.
Soprano2
@dmsilev: I don’t understand this at all, either. They’ve had almost 3 years to plan an exit, and all kinds of different approaches to study to do it, and they decided to go with the “Don’t make everyone get vaccinated and just let it rip” approach. It makes no sense to me.
kalakal
I really don’t get this attitude that if person A wears a mask it is somehow taking away maskless person B’s liberty.
Baud
@dmsilev:
I’m just spitballing here, but different cultures have different tolerances for what they’ll accept, and it may be that Chinese people draw the line at vaccines, but not house imprisonment.
YY_Sima Qian
@dmsilev: There was not much popular push back to the lockdowns until the Shanghai lockdown in Apr. – Jun. 2022. When several Chinese cities trialed vaccine mandates in Q3/4 2021, the popular push back was immediate & intense. People know lockdowns end (& until Q3 2022 they were fairly rare), but a vaccine injected into the body is irreversible, & so are the potential complications. Not rational, but that was the mentality among the vaccine hesitant elders.
MomSense
Of course COVID is in the brain – the losing smell and taste is an indicator that this is not just a respiratory virus.
MomSense
@dmsilev:
I think the Chinese government doesn’t want to admit their vaccines don’t work well. I am honk that’s why they have waited until the mutations have affected the efficacy of the western MRNA vaccines.
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: And all it took for China to end the three year lockdown was some relatively mild public pushback.
Lots about China I don’t know or get.
Baud
@kalakal: People, especially rightwingers, often see their liberty as including the freedom to control their environment. If a fancy restaurant doesn’t enforce a dress code, it infringes on your ability to eat out at a classy joint. If someone wears a mask, it infringes on your freedom to live in a society where you can see everyone’s face. It’s a very subjective concept of liberty, but it is deeply felt.
mvr
@YY_Sima Qian: Best wishes for your wife’s grandparents!
YY_Sima Qian
@Soprano2: Vaccine hesitancy among elders is a common phenomenon among the Sinic societies. Hong Kong’s elderly uptake was anemic when containment failed, Taiwan’s was merely lackluster when it exited Zero COVID. Mainland China improved from somewhere between anemic & lackluster in Q1/Q2 2022 to merely lackluster in Q4. Singapore’s elderly uptake was also lackluster until a mandate was imposed. China/Hong Kong/Taiwan were unwilling or unable to impose one. In all three, elderly uptake did not improve until threat of infection became real. In China at least, elderly vaccine hesitancy is higher in the developed cities than the country side. Uptake in Beijing, Shanghai & Guangzhou for the > 80 y.o. cohort are notably lower than national average. This hesitancy has not been an issue in South Korea, Japan or Vietnam.
Sociologists will be studying elderly vaccine hesitancy in Sinic societies for years to come. Just like they will study aversion to NPIs in western societies.
YY_Sima Qian
@Ohio Mom: “Dynamic Zero COVID” was on the path to termination before the protests, because socio-economic cost of containment was becoming unbearable (result of the 10 -18 R0 of BA.5.2 & BF.7). The protests helped to push the process along, & IMHO actually gave the CCP regime political cover.
rikyrah
Did we not sell any Paxo to China?
mvr
I’m relatively uninformed about China, but still surprised that being vacced and more fully boosted is not more widespread there at this point. I would have thought that was doable and also that under those conditions easing up would have made more sense. So when they did ease up I assumed (wrongly) that that was so.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
My wife and I are still masked here, often in places where we’re the only ones. Don’t care, I’ll be a “hold out”. Neither of us has had it yet, while practically everyone we know has, even the careful people.
I’m reflecting a lot these days on what seem to be permanent shifts in society, like the number of activities which moved to Zoom and are still there or at least hybrid, because dammit we like not having to drive to the thing and being in our sweats having a sandwich one minute before it starts.
mrmoshpotato
Siri, should me a sample size with 59% of it being idiots.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@kalakal: If you ever get that, and find yourself also understanding how the existence of a same sex marriage anywhere threatens all hetero marriages, it may be time to seek mental health assistance.
YY_Sima Qian
@rikyrah: China approved Paxlovid back in Q1 2022, & started importing doses before the Shanghai outbreak. It is now in mass production under license in China, & a state owned pharmaceutical company has just signed a new deal w/ Pfizer to import in bulk. I expect availability to improve significantly in the coming months, but these are the things that the Chinese government could have done in Oct.
mrmoshpotato
@kalakal:
Well, duh! That’s just science! Oh wait. I meant idiocy. That’s just idiocy!
YY_Sima Qian
@mvr:
@Ohio Mom:
@MomSense:
It is much easier to make sense of what has happened before & what is happening now in China once you stop looking at it in isolation, but place it in the context of experiences in Hong Kong, Taiwan & other Zero COVID countries/region, while accounting for the differences (such as elders vaccination rate, ICU availability, prevalent strains).
rikyrah
@MomSense:
I have always believed this..
mvr
Question about the US. I’ve had all the boosters I’m ellegible for with the 5th shot in early September a few days after it became available. What is the news about boosters beyond that? It will have been about 4 months in a week. I don’t expect that they will redesign new ones until the Fall, but is there any point to getting another one between now and then? I’ve heard nothing and my doctor does not know.
rikyrah
@YY_Sima Qian:
Thank you for this information
mvr
@YY_Sima Qian:
I guess I thought the passage of time would have given a bit more time to prepare and also that they would have been preparing during that time. But as I understand your point, you think elders in China are more resistant to vaccines than in those places. Am I getting that right?
Soprano2
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: You see this as a good thing, but I’m more dubious about so much time spent on the computer “interacting” with other people. I’m not sure it’s that good for our mental health or society in general. It was great to have it during the worst of Covid when it was necessary, but still doing it might not be as great as you think it is, at least for some people. I know it was not good for children’s social development to be doing everything over the computer. To me there’s something about interacting with people in person that a computer will never replace. One reason I hate Zoom stuff is when people won’t turn on their camera and mic, are they even really there? It seems to make it even easier for people who don’t want to contribute anything to the meeting to not contribute anything at all.
YY_Sima Qian
@mvr: Vaccine hesitancy in Mainland China was lower than Hong Kong, somewhat higher than Taiwan & Singapore (before mandate), but much worse than South Korea, Australia & New Zealand. Threat of infection was low in all of these Zero COVID countries/regions, but that only affected elderly uptake in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan & Singapore (again, before mandate). I don’t have a great explanation, but it is probably cultural. Distrust of western medicine among the elders in Sinic societies
There were also de facto mandates that impacted the working age & school students in China, but such mandates did not affect the elderly retirees.
Soprano2
@MomSense: I think this is part of it, but that still doesn’t explain how the exit seems so poorly planned. Like YY_Sima Qian says, there are things the Chinese government could have been doing over the past year to make this exit less lethal, yet they didn’t do them. Remember how we all watched in awe as they built a hospital ward in a week? And yet now their hospitals are completely overrun with Covid patients. Maybe this was what they were planning all along, but it sure doesn’t seem that way. Why keep the death count so low for so long, just to say “let it rip” and watch as hundreds of thousand of Chinese die?
Matt McIrvin
I usually still see a few other masked people in public places, unless it’s a situation where this just isn’t possible. Often they appear to be East Asian, but not always.
To this day, nobody has given me any crap about it. This is likely to some extent the privilege of living in Massachusetts, but on the other hand, nobody’s bugged me about it in libertoonian areas of New Hampshire either (which makes me think it’s more the privilege of being a visibly aging white guy). And the downside is that as a densely populated area of the Northeast we’ve had more COVID than the rest of the country and this is certainly true now.
mvr
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks! That helps put it in context for me. I’m afraid I’m an old American guy who does not know all that much about most of the world. Even when I went to Hong Kong for a conference, I still didn’t speak anything but English so I didn’t learn much even about that country.
YY_Sima Qian
@Soprano2: Keep in mind that even if China did as well as Singapore in preparing for the exit, which is probably the best performing country wrt COVID-19, there would still be hundreds of thousands of deaths in the exit wave. China is also exiting when the prevalent strain has 3 – 4X the transmissivity of the Delta variant Singapore initially faced. Rolling out 2nd boosters & stocking up on Paxlovid would have reduced the death toll by a few hundred thousand, but hundreds of thousands would still have died in the exit. The prospect for an orderly exit went out of the window w/ the Omicron variants, & fortunately so did the sustainability of “Dynamic Zero COVID”.
Jay
@kalakal: If person a wears a mask, it hurts person b’s fee fees, just like getting called out for using the N word does, other than it being visual signalling.
Hurting their fee fees in any way violates their “liberty”.
Matt McIrvin
In my area, with just pre-Christmas numbers, we seem to be running at about half the COVID level of last year based on most of the credible metrics (hospitalizations, deaths, wastewater counts). ICU hospitalizations are way lower which might be Paxlovid at work, but then again that isn’t reflected in the deaths–maybe if you’re even in the hospital you’re in a more medically compliant category of people.
But another difference is that at this time last year, everything was already clearly on an exponential upslope from the initial attack of Omicron, whereas now we seem to be at another sort of post-jump plateau. The CDC says this is mostly XBB, the variant that hit Singapore hard a while back, taking over from the BQ.1.x variants. We will surely see another surge from Christmas/New Year’s but good numbers from that are days away.
And case counts are way lower than last year but that’s just bullshit; I don’t believe long-term comparisons in case counts at all since the testing situation is so much worse.
Matt McIrvin
@kalakal: Or that the rare people who are still wearing masks are the “sheeple”, while the people following the maskless crowd are the brave independent individuals.
YY_Sima Qian
@Matt McIrvin: Thanks for this. I will definitely follow your (& New Deal Dem’s) updates on the BQ.1/XBB wave in the Northeastern US. These variants will probably cause the next wave in China, possibly just as the current exit tsunami or the post-Chinese New Year wave subsides.
gwangung
@mvr: Nothing official, but my thoughts are that if any boosters are available, I’m taking advantage. Not much of a downside (a day of semi out of it), and a pretty good upside.
Princess Leia
@Ceci n est pas mon nym:
Plus, It offers accessibility to disabled folks! My husband has hearing problems and the ability to use headphones at a Zoom meeting means he can actively participate. True for other kinds of limitations, but has sold me on using Zoom whenever possible. Just another way to be hospitable to those whose situation is too often overlooked. Plus, sweats and Sandwiches!!! ;)
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Soprano2:
I’m not sure I meant to say that it’s a good thing, or at least not universally a good thing. I agree with you that it was terribly hard on children, and that includes high schoolers. They lost something in their childhood.
I’ve just been reflecting that it is a thing, a thing which seems to have made permanent culture changes. We are both leading a much more international life than pre-pandemic, in the sense that we participate in non-local activities that often draw a lot of people from other countries.
For instance, we both like the Friday afternoon free write-ins at Gotham Writers. It’s a nice group, with regulars coming from all over the country as well as Canada, the UK and Australia. It’s my understanding that this used to be an in-person gathering and will be again in 2023. But fortunately they’ll go hybrid if they resume the in-person meetings, because it’s not like we’d hop up to New York just to do a 1.5-hour writing workshop.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian: Thanks. Also, just speaking anecdotally, it seems like a bunch more friends/family got COVID or something resembling COVID recently, so the fact of an Eastern US surge comports with my experience.
BellyCat
A more sane timeline, should we ever get there, will marvel at humanity’s collective idiocy which has placed the interests of capitalism over public health.
BellyCat
@YY_Sima Qian: Thank you for this superb and insightful post of conditions on the ground!
Bill Arnold
@Baud:
There’s a flip side to that. People, especially kids, in civilized areas of the world/country that saw heavy usage of filter masks, improved their skills re reading the eyes and upper face, including dynamics like micro-expressions, and general body language. For manipulative people, this makes deception more difficult; they argue for a return to the before times effectiveness of their deception skills. Some of them may not realize this…
And flipping again, many non-evil non-manipulative people struggled with learning such new skills and welcome a return to the before times where faces are fully exposed, because it makes human interactions easier for them.
Both groups are arguing that their right to see uncovered faces of others justifies the unfettered spread of a nasty novel (ACE2) infectious disease that is both deadly and for many of the survivors causes long term (perhaps life-long) damage.
Both subgroups presumably would object if workers in restaurants took no precautions to prevent infection of their customers with parasites of various sorts (worms, bacteria, viruses, etc). Because that’s different, to them.
BellyCat
@YY_Sima Qian: Keeping positive thoughts for your family currently hospitalized.
arrieve
@JML: I spent my first 24 hours of Covid vomiting non-stop, and I had a friend tell me it was probably “just the flu”–even though I had already tested positive. And that even if it was “just the flu” I was sick as a dog and ended up having to go to the ER because I was so dehydrated. There was no “just” about it.
And I had all of the boosters and took antivirals, and I’m still not back to normal after two weeks. I don’t understand this desire to minimize everything.
Barbara
@Soprano2: If I had to guess, they thought that there would be a “natural” exit strategy as Covid tore through the rest of the world and then subsided (alongside other measures, including vaccines — it’s not as if China has done nothing). However, Chinese authorities appear not to have contemplated the sheer perseverance and mutability of the virus. My guess is that if we had the tools available during prior pandemics (e.g., Flu epidemic of 1918) we would have noted the mutations of the various waves, and would have a greater knowledge of how certain kinds of viruses are more adaptive than others — but my understanding is that coronaviruses are known to be relatively mutable. So the duration of the virus via new adaptations was probably foreseeable at the outset, and certainly, over the past 18 months or so after vaccines were rolled out.
@YY_Sima Qian: Wishing all of your family members the best.
YY_Sima Qian
@Barbara: I for one did not expect SARS-CoV-2 to evolve having R0 of 10 – 18 (possibly 21) so quickly. The original Wuhan variant had R0 of 2 – 3. The Chinese government probably did not expect it either, since the earlier Omicron variants “only” had R0 of 8 – 10.
That is the consequence of the lack of NPI measures before & after mass vaccination in most parts of the world. w/ Alpha & Delta, strictly enforced masking mandates & some social distancing would have significantly slowed transmission. w/ BA.5.2/BF.7/BQ.1/XBB, I am not so sure even masking mandate w/ N95s will slow transmission all that much.
TriassicSands
Well, I sure am glad that the pandemic is over.
YY_Sima Qian
@Barbara: @BellyCat: @mvr: @kalakal:
Thank you for your kind thoughts!
StringOnAStick
@Bill Arnold: I have some hearing loss and masks make my background skill of lip reading a little to help my comprehension difficult, but I’m still wearing a mask to do the shopping so I’m just asking for people to repeat or clarify what they’ve said more often. It is what it is, and neither my husband and I have had it yet that we know of.
StringOnAStick
@YY_Sima Qian: I hope all your family members recover fully and as soon as possible.
Matt McIrvin
@YY_Sima Qian:
Allowing Ron DeSantis to say “They lied about the effectiveness of the vaccines” and have a lot of people believe him.
Barbara
@YY_Sima Qian: Some of the variants seem to be at measles level of infectious potential — although I don’t think any have yet been shown to be contagious for two weeks, including a significant number of days prior to the infected person actually exhibiting symptoms.
CaseyL
@YY_Sima Qian: Your reporting is excellent, and valuable, and I thank you for it. I hope your family comes out of this latest surge unscathed.
If you don’t mind my asking, how long have your parents been out-of-country; and where have they been? (I’m sure you mentioned this previously, but I can’t remember.)
cleek
i kept it off for two years.. but i just tested positive.
so far, it feels like a head cold. keep my antibodies crossed that that’s as far as it gets.
Anoniminous
Read COVID-19’s Lasting Impact on the Body
It’s beginning to look like one can make a case SARS-CoV-2 is a persistent infection like malaria, measles, and AIDS (& etc.) The symptoms may be manageable but the actual virus never clears. IF SO, and it’s not yet been proven, the follow-on social, cultural, political, and economic affects will be “interesting.”
Princess
@MomSense: I think this is most plausible. Also, frankly, by the time vaccinated Westerners got Omicron in huge numbers, it *was* a lot like the flu — and the flu sucks and kills people. If the Chinese are complaining this is worse than the flu — the real actual flu — it suggests to me their vaccines aren’t worth crap.
YY_Sima Qian
@CaseyL: My parents’ “permanent residence” is in the US. They currently live in Upstate NY. My dad was on the 1st American evac flight from Wuhan back at the end of Jan. 2020, my mom left China at the beginning of Feb. 2020. I have not seen them, & they have not seen their granddaughter, since.
YY_Sima Qian
@Princess: By the time westerners confronted Omicron, many of them have already survived the Wuhan Variant and/or Alpha and/or Delta, many are in their 2nd Omicron infection. More of the elderly population in the West had taken vaccines, & many more had taken more recent boosters.
As China rapidly opened, the government (including health experts) tried to assuage the anxious population by saying most people will experiencing Omicron like a common cold or a light case of flu, based on the BF.7 outbreak in Xinjiang & the BA.5.2 outbreak in Guangzhou. (It is a major failure in public communication, but also a depressingly common one as countries have tried to open & return to “normal” ASAP.) What our contacts in Guangzhou and Xinjiang had told us in mid-Nov. were consistent w/ common cold or light case of flu, & many were indeed asymptomatic. As the exit tsunami exploded, it was quickly noted by both average people & health care experts in China that the BA.5.2 prevalent in southern China is noticeably milder than the BF.7 prevalent in northern China, w/ the former’s symptoms consistent w/ common cold or light case of flu. This remains the case, supported by anecdotal evidence reported by my colleagues & acquaintances there, though the proportion of asymptomatic cases is much lower even in southern China than reported back in Nov.
The big surprise has been the BF.7, which is producing flu like respiratory symptom across northern China. My & my wife’s extended families are spread across Wuhan, Nanjing & Beijing, & I have many colleagues based in Shanghai, all places where the BF.7 is dominant. In our circle of acquaintance, which runs to hundreds of people, the vast majority of those > 30 y.o. report having fevers. Some have low fever lasting just a day, while others have high fevers that last a few days, followed by a few days of low-medium grade fever. Soreness, dizziness, coughing & bad nasal congestion are common, & can last a week or two after the fever breaks, though I also know many who have not suffered these symptoms (they tend to be people in their 30s & 40s). All of these respiratory symptom are consistent w/ flu, from light to heavy.
Why the disparity w/ early reports of BF.7 in Xinjiang? I suspect what the Chinese government & public health experts overlooked (or elided) was that the demographic in Xinjiang skew quite young compare to the rest of the country (this is especially true for the Uyghur & other Turkic populations). Outbreaks in factory settings (operating in “closed loops”) accounted for much of the early spread in Xinjiang in Oct. – Nov., where the avg. age also skews young. Some manufacturing operations there (as well as medical staff, key government functions) had quietly rolled out the CanSino adeno-viral vector inhalable vaccine in Oct. as 2nd booster. My wife has a former student who works in such a factory in Ürümqi, where all employees received the inhalable 2nd booster. 60% of the ~ 3K staff were infected anyway, though everyone including middle aged management were asymptomatic or mild. (At the time I thought 60% infection rate does speak much to the inhalable vaccine’s neutralizing effectiveness, but we are seeing > 90% infection rate among families in the rest of country.) My wife also has a colleague on temporary assign to Xinjiang, who did not receive a 2nd booster, & suffered medium grade fever for 2 days. The vast majority of the Chinese population had not received 2nd boosters, & the demographic profile is much older than Xinjiang’s.
We should also keep in mind that there is a selection bias to what we see on Chinese social media (same as everywhere), which then flows to western social media w/ a further selection bias. Those experiencing stronger symptoms, or stronger than expected symptoms, are far more likely to share their ordeals than those who had asymptomatic or mild cases, & they are far more likely to be highlighted on Twitter. Just like in the ROW, many people in China confuse the common cold w/ the flu. So some of the people saying it’s worse than the “flu”, they are actually saying it is worse than the common cold which they thought is the same as the flu. Furthermore, body temp > 37.3 C is considered low grade fever in China, while the threshold is 37.8 C in most of the ROW. Many of my relatives reporting persistent low grade fever actually have temp of 37.4 – 37.5 C.
The BF.7 strain is a direct descendant of the BA.5, & does not evade immunity of BA.5 antibodies all that well. Most of the western countries had already seen a wave of BA.5 infection, so the BF.7 never took off. Not the case w/ the Chinese population.
Of course, COVID-19 is not the flu. Flu bugs do not attack the entire body the way SARS-CoV-2 does, do not replicate at the same speed inside the body. Most of the elders passing away in China had mild/moderate respiratory symptoms. But, that is true everywhere.
The difference I find striking the higher percentage of asymptomatic & very mild cases in western countries compared to China, even among the middle aged cohort. The difference in vaccines used is certainly a factor, but so are differences in histories of prior infections, time gaps to the last booster, the prevalent strains, & definitions of symptoms.
Be wary of assigning a single cause when the system is incredibly complex, especially if the cause confirms your priors.