euphronius posted:

endemic isn’t a magic word lol

Crow Buddy posted:

unless China knows something we don’t.

the milk machine posted:

looking at infection and death rates, i would guess they know a bunch of things we don't (e.g., how to have a functioning public health apparatus)

Crow Buddy posted:

A functioning government/society may seem like a miracle if you are American, but it isn’t really that impressive.

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

cat botherer posted:

It means that we can stop caring, just like we don't care about other endemic problems like cancer, lead poisoning, childhood poverty, etc. These things are all common, therefore it makes no sense to combat them.

Random rear end in a top hat posted:

and when they succeed we just say "well it's only temporary, because as we know the problem is unsolvable."

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

Trolling Thunder posted:

someone remind me what amazingly prepared country this virus emerged from

Trolling Thunder posted:

someone remind me what amazingly prepared country this virus emerged from

Trolling Thunder posted:

someone remind me what amazingly prepared country this virus emerged from

Trolling Thunder posted:

someone remind me what amazingly prepared country this virus emerged from

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

the milk machine posted:

the milk machine posted:

the milk machine posted:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/24/opinion/china-covid-vaccine.html posted:

Has China Done Too Well Against Covid-19?
The country doesn’t care enough about vaccination because of a false sense of security.

Jan. 24, 2021

By Yanzhong Huang

Mr. Huang is a global-health expert specializing in China.

Jan. 23 was the anniversary of the lockdown in Wuhan, the first coronavirus lockdown anywhere in the world, and ahead of the occasion, the Chinese government ramped up efforts to showcase its triumph over that initial deadly outbreak.

Within weeks of the new coronavirus’s emergence last year, China began to report a dramatic drop in the number of confirmed cases. Then it put in place a “zero-infections” policy: The detection of even one case could instantly trigger aggressive quarantines, punishing travel restrictions and mass testing and contact tracing until the number of cases went back to nil.

By its own telling, the Chinese government has done very well, with daily infection figures nationwide rarely exceeding 100 between March 7, 2020, and Jan. 8, 2021.

Some will doubt the reliability of China’s official statistics, especially given the authorities’ initial efforts to suppress essential facts about the virus’s appearance in Wuhan last year. But even if these figures are somewhat exaggerated or somehow skewed, and even considering the worrisome spate of new outbreaks in China recently, there is ample reason to believe that China really has done much better at containing the spread of the virus than other major economies. For example, papers published in Nature Medicine and JAMA Network Open, based on widespread antibody tests between March and May, confirmed low levels of infections in Wuhan and other Chinese cities at the time.

Only, China’s comparative success now risks hurting the country. Having been largely spared by the pandemic, most Chinese people remain susceptible to infection, and yet some seem disinclined to get vaccinated because of a false sense of safety. In addition, the Chinese government is over-exporting vaccines made in China.

In September, Caixin magazine published a survey of nearly 1,900 Chinese people in six provinces: Less than one quarter of the respondents said that they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement that they, their relatives or their friends were at risk of contracting Covid-19. Granted, this study was conducted before two Chinese vaccines were approved for general use and before the flurry of current outbreaks, but more recent findings are consistent.

A mural about the pandemic representing Zhong Nanshan, the doctor who first announced on Chinese state television that the virus was transmissible between people, in Wuhan on Friday, the eve of the anniversary of the world’s first lockdown.
A mural about the pandemic representing Zhong Nanshan, the doctor who first announced on Chinese state television that the virus was transmissible between people, in Wuhan on Friday, the eve of the anniversary of the world’s first lockdown.Ng Han Guan/Associated Press
A survey by Ipsos for the World Economic Forum in December examined confidence in Covid-19 vaccines in 10 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and five emerging economies. Some 80 percent of the Chinese respondents said they would take a vaccine if available. And of those who said they wouldn’t, some 70 percent mentioned concerns about side-effects, a result in keeping with the answers given by the other groups surveyed. Notably, however, some 32 percent of the Chinese vaccine-hesitant cited “not being enough at risk from Covid-19” as the main reason for their reluctance — the highest such figure in the study.

“I will not take it unless it is mandatory,” a friend of mine who lives in Shanghai told me recently about getting a vaccine. “The chances of infection here are very small.”

A columnist for The Paper, on online publication that takes on controversial subjects, recently argued that Chinese people’s intent to get vaccinated would only drop further as vaccination is rolled out, because they would feel even safer.

Also remarkable: Only 16 percent of the Chinese respondents in the Ipsos-World Economic Forum survey who were vaccine-skeptics said they were skeptical because of concerns over the vaccines’ effectiveness — that was the lowest such percentage among all the groups surveyed.

This fact is all the more noteworthy that China has been rocked by major food- and health-safety scandals over the years: involving rice contaminated with cadmium, baby formula laced with melamine — and at least half a dozen shoddy vaccines. Yet those precedents do not seem to be shaping current views.

If anything, too, popular social media platforms such as Weibo, WeChat and Bilibili are awash with posts and articles peddling conspiracy theories — some promoted by Chinese officials — about the vaccines developed in the West: Those contain mercury, and deliberately; they may modify human genes.

In a survey by the local government of Changzhou, a city in the coastal province of Jiangsu, in November and December, 79 percent of respondents said they would be more inclined to take vaccines made in China, compared with 7 percent who said they favored foreign ones. According to a series of online surveys of urban residents throughout China conducted by the China Data Lab at the University of California-San Diego, the Chinese public’s trust in both the central government and local authorities increased during the first half of 2020.

People’s sense of safety seems to be both shaped and shared by public health experts. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, claimed in late December that “the chances of infection are very small.” Zhang Wenhong, a leading infectious disease expert who has become something of a small celebrity thanks to his plain talk, said last month that there was no urgency to roll out mass vaccination because “China has done the best job of any country in Covid control.”

The government recently announced a nationwide drive to vaccinate 50 million people from high-priority groups — essential workers, doctors and border-inspection personnel — ahead of the Lunar New Year, a major travel rush, next month. After that, it envisions inoculating all “eligible people,” a category that excludes anyone who is pregnant, breastfeeding or immunocompromised, as well as people younger than 18 or older than 59.

The decision to leave out for now the older members of the population may seem curious, considering that Covid-19 kills more of them, but the decision appears to be informed by a dearth of clinical data about any possible side effects of vaccination in that age tranche. Partly as a result, though, the inoculation campaign, even in its second stage, will exclude at least 35 percent of the population.

Based on a study about the virus’s transmissibility that was published in The Lancet in November, among other things, I calculate that, in order to achieve herd immunity, China would need to vaccinate at least 66 percent of its population with vaccines with an efficacy rate of at least 91 percent. Since Covid-19 vaccination usually require two shots, China would have to deploy 1.85 billion doses.

But 91 percent is the highest efficacy rate ever reported (in a trial in Turkey) for the vaccine made by Sinovac, for example; researchers in Brazil recently placed the figure at just above 50 percent. And China has only enough manufacturing capacity for a maximum of 1.8 billion doses this year.

What’s more, perhaps because the Chinese government itself also perceives the risk of mass infections to be low, it seems to be over-exporting vaccines made in China in a bid to expand its influence internationally. By early January, the two major Chinese vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, had sold overseas or received international orders for more than 800 million doses. (China has plans to purchase 100 million shots from abroad, but that won’t be enough to bridge the gap between supply and need.)

Against this backdrop, relaxing the zero-infections policy appears to be out of the question. Lu Hongzhou, a co-director of the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center at Fudan University, told Chinese media recently that the policy should be maintained “at all costs.” Back in September President Xi Jinping had instructed, “by no means should we give up halfway through the hard-won achievements of epidemic control.”

Waiting for the Sinopharm vaccine in Beijing on Jan. 15. Perhaps because the Chinese government perceives the risk of mass infections to be low, it seems to be over-exporting vaccines made in China.Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock
The benefits have been real: in terms of lives saved, of course, and also in terms of politics, economics and prestige. To some, China has come to seem as something of a “new safe haven”; it was also the only major economy to register growth last year.

But these achievements put a tremendous amount of pressure on both the state and the public to maintain hugely onerous coronavirus control efforts, even as those may become harder and harder to sustain.

An acquaintance of mine, the director of the health commission of an eastern city of some 300,000 residents, said on WeChat recently that she “tread as if on thin ice and sat as if on pins and needles” when it comes to enforcing the government’s no-tolerance policy.

Because the virus is highly transmissible and spread largely by asymptomatic carriers, just one undetected case can promptly kindle a new outbreak. The recent flare-ups in several cities in northern China are the largest outbreaks in the country since the original one in Wuhan a year ago. A lockdown has been imposed since early this month on about 60 million people in Heilongjiang and Hebei Provinces — nearly the equivalent of the entire population of Italy.

Things will probably only get more complicated for Chinese health officials like my acquaintance if countries in the West, having pushed much harder than China on mass-vaccination efforts (if rather shoddily at times), reach herd immunity before it does. That so-called immunity gap could undermine China’s approach, especially if the government decides to keep the country’s borders closed on public health grounds after life returns to semi-normal elsewhere in the world.

China’s comparative success at containing the coronavirus has put it in a bind: The population feels much safer than it should even as it remains very vulnerable to infection and is likely to for quite a while longer.

Yanzhong Huang is a senior fellow for global health at the Council on Foreign Relations and a professor at Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations.

quote:

Dr. Yanzhong Huang joined the School of Diplomacy and International Relations in the fall of 2003. He directs the School's Center for Global Health Studies, which examines global health issues from a foreign policy and security perspective. He is also a Senior Fellow for Global Health at the Council on Foreign Relations and the founding editor of Global Health Governance: The Scholarly Journal for the New Health Security Paradigm.

He has written extensively on global health governance, health diplomacy, health security, public health in China and East Asia. He has published numerous reports, journal articles, and book chapters, including articles in Survival, Foreign Affairs, Bioterrorism and Biosecurity, and Journal of Contemporary China, as well as op-ed pieces appearing in New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Diplomat, and CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, among others. In 2006, he coauthored the first scholarly article that systematically examines China’s soft power. His book, Governing Health in Contemporary China, looks at the health care reform, government ability to address disease outbreaks, and food and drug safety in China. Most recently, he was listed by Inside Jersey magazine as one of New Jersey’s “20 exceptional intellects who are changing the world.” He is frequently consulted by major media outlets, the private sector, and governmental and non-governmental organizations on global health issues and China. He was a research associate of the National Asia Research Program, a public intellectuals fellow of the National Committee on US-China Relations, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore and a visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, DC.

Dr. Huang received his Ph.D. degree in political science from the University of Chicago. In summer 2006, he obtained a certificate from MIT's Professional Program on Combating Bioterrorism and Pandemics. During 1992-1993, he was a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University's Center for Chinese and American Studies, Nanjing, China

If a Government Can't Deliver Safe Vaccines for Children, Is It Fit to Rule?" The New York Times, January 30, 2019

"China's vaccine scandals must trigger deeper health care reforms." Nikkei Asian Review, August 15, 2018

"Emerging Powers and Global Health Governance: The Case of BRICS Countries", C. McInnes, K. Lee, & J. Youde (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Global Health Politics. Oxford University Press, June 2018

"Reforming the World Health Organization." co-authored with Gabriella Meltzer, Routledge Handbook on Politics of Global Health. New York: Routledge, December 2018

"At the Mercy of the State: Health Philanthropy in China." VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations, January 31, 2018

Governing Health in Contemporary China. London: Routledge, 2015

"Older and unhealthier," China Economic Quarterly, March 2017, pp. 7-13.

"China's Response to the 2014 Ebola Outbreak." Global Challenges 1, no. 2 (January 30, 2017), pp. 1-7.

"China and Global Health Governance," in Scott Kennedy ed., Global Governance and China: The Dragon's Learning Curve (New York: Routledge, 2017).

"History of China's Health Care System," in Lawton Robert Burns and Gordon Liu, eds., China's Healthcare System and Reform (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2016). With Lawton Robert Burns.

"Pandemics and Global Health Security," in Simon Rushton & Jeremy Youde eds., Routledge Handbook of Health Security (Routledge, 2015), 83-91.

"International Institutions and China's Health Policy."
Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law 40, no. 1: 41-71, February 2015

"Domestic Politics and China's Health Aid to Africa."
China: An International Journal 12, no. 3: 176-198, December 2014

"The Global Fund's China Legacy."
Council on Foreign Relations Working Paper, March 2014

"China's Position in Negotiating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control and the Revised International Health Regulations."
Public Health 128, no. 2: 161-6, February 2014

"Health in the Post-2015 Development Agenda for Asia and the Pacific."
RSDD Sustainable Development Working Paper Series, no. 28, Asian Development Bank, September 2013

"Enter the Dragon and the Elephant: China's and India's Participation in Global Health Governance."
Council on Foreign Relations IIGG Working Paper, April 2013

"China's Corrupt Food Chain."
International Herald Tribune, page 6, August 2012

"Health Agency Overshadowed but Vital."
New York Times International Weekly, August 2012

"Sick Man of Asia: China's Health Crisis."
Foreign Affairs 90, no. 6, 119-136, December 2011

"Managing Biosecurity Threats in China."
Biosecurity and Bioterrorism 9, no. 1, 31-40, March 2011

"Pursuing Health as Foreign Policy: The Case of China."
Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, 17(1), December 2010

In-Flew-Enza: Pandemic Flu and Its Security Implications (Book Chapter)
In Andrew F. Cooper and John J. Kirton (Eds.), "Innovation in Global Health Governance: Critical Cases," London: Ashgate, 127- 150, March 2009

China's New Health Diplomacy (Book Chapter)
In Charles W. Freeman III and Xiaoqing Lu (Eds.), "China's Capacity to Manage Infectious Diseases: Global Implications," Washington, DC: CSIS, 86- 92, March 2009

Accomplishments

Senior Fellow for Global Health, Council on Foreign Relations, 2010 –
Research Associate, National Asia Research Program (NARP), National Bureau of Asian Research and Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010-2012
Visiting Senior Research Fellowship, East Asian Institute (EAI), National University of Singapore, summer 2008, 2009.
Public Intellectuals Fellow, National Committee on United States-China Relations, 2008-2010.
Adjunct Associate Professor, School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), Columbia University, 2008-2010
Visiting Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Washington, DC, summer 2005.

Speaking Engagements

Harvard, Yale, Columbia, UPenn, Berkeley, Brown, Cornell, NYU, Johns Hopkins SAIS, University of Chicago, Georgetown, Brookings Institution, Council on Foreign Relations, Chatham House, Institute of Medicine (IOM), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), World Bank, HHS, Asia Society

Trolling Thunder posted:

someone remind me what amazingly prepared country this virus emerged from

quote:

The US has added to research from Italy and France that indicates the coronavirus might have been circulating among people in a number of countries before it was identified in China and erupted into a pandemic.

Scientists from the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said on Monday that tests of blood samples taken in the United States from December 13[, 2019] last year revealed evidence of antibodies for the Covid-19 virus, known as Sars-Cov-2.

quote:

Researchers may have found a new link in this puzzle after discovering evidence suggesting the pathogen had infected people across Italy as early as September last year, or months before it was first identified in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The unexpected finding “may reshape the history of [the] pandemic”, said the team led by Dr Gabriella Sozzi, a life scientist with the National Cancer Institute of Milan, in a peer-reviewed paper published last week in the Tumori Journal.

The researchers tested blood samples from lung cancer screening tests in Italy and said they found antibodies specific to Sars-CoV-2, the virus causing Covid-19, in samples from patients all over the country in every month of a six-month trial that started in September 2019.

quote:

A patient treated in a hospital near Paris on 27 December [2019] for suspected pneumonia actually had the coronavirus, his doctor has said.

This means the virus may have arrived in Europe almost a month earlier than previously thought.

Dr Yves Cohen said a swab taken at the time was recently tested, and came back positive for Covid-19.

The patient, who has since recovered, said he had no idea where he caught the virus as he had not travelled abroad.

mawarannahr posted:

here’s this lovely article

here’s the guy

what a hard worker!

quote:

Things will probably only get more complicated for Chinese health officials like my acquaintance if countries in the West, having pushed much harder than China on mass-vaccination efforts (if rather shoddily at times), reach herd immunity before it does.

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

Trolling Thunder posted:

Whatever. I just have a different perspective and don’t buy into the belief that China’s approach is to be emulated. And let’s wait a bit before we declare their approach a success.

30.5 Days posted:

China has the 8th highest vaxx rate in the world! It's like 20% higher than ours!