All China’s somersaults on Covid
From "enemy of humanity" to "simple flu", this is how China's narrative on Covid has changed. El Pais article
China – writes El Pais – has abruptly reversed course on its strategy for Covid-19 and, consequently, on the narrative of the disease that in 2020 plunged the world into the greatest crisis since the Second World War. Eleven months after the outbreak of the omicron variant spreading within its borders, and in the midst of the worst wave of infections to date, the world's most populous nation has left behind its speech criticizing the West – and in particular the United States – for having “the wrong perception that this strain is little more than a flu” and, in a U-turn, assures that the virus “isn't that dangerous anymore” and that “it's the citizens [ and not the State] to have to take responsibility for their own health”. Three weeks after this reversal, President Xi Jinping, who has personally taken the lead in the "people's battle against the virus", has yet to issue a public statement on the rethink.
Beijing withdrew, saying its fight against the pandemic is "in a new phase," contradicting arguments that, since March, much of its 1.4 billion people have seen their lives dominated by confinements, tests PCR and absolute control of their daily routine. The severity with which the antiviral measures were applied allowed China to record a low number of infections and deaths in the first two years of the pandemic (officially only 5,241 people died), but the detection of the first omicron cases in January 2022 put this shield against the coronavirus at risk.
And while the government responded strongly to the progressive increase in infections in the spring, state media reinforced the discourse that the "zero covid" strategy was "the greatest proof of the superiority of the Chinese system", to the detriment of the Western one . The archive of the nationalist newspaper Global Times reports phrases such as "abandoning the fight against covid-19 and letting it spread freely would be a betrayal of all humanity" and that "the falsehood that the omicron is little more than a influenza is a hoax to weaken the acceptance of the covid-zero strategy among the Chinese”.
Now, analysts close to the government, including the controversial former Global Times editor Hu Xijin, have gone from staunchly defending the tough measures to downplaying the risks of the virus and even posting on social media about how they are coping with the disease. . Zhong Nanshan, a respected epidemiologist and a leading public voice during the early days of the pandemic, suggested last week that omicron should be called a "cold coronavirus". The turnaround is particularly surprising considering that in May, when the director general of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Gebreyesus, said that a zero covirus policy was not sustainable with such a contagious variant, his remarks were immediately censored.
Days earlier, Xi Jinping had warned that an easing of the measures would be devastating and would "inevitably" lead to "a large number of serious illnesses and deaths" and had called on "to fight resolutely against those who distort, challenge or question the prevention policies. The legitimacy that the Chinese leader has earned as "commander in chief" of the "battle against the virus" – in March the official press claimed that he himself devised the zero covid strategy – earned him a third term in October as general secretary of the Communist Party, a feat unprecedented among his predecessors and giving him unprecedented power since the days of Mao Zedong.
"By launching an all-out people's war to stop the spread of the virus, we have protected the people's health and safety to the fullest, and have made extremely encouraging results both in the epidemic response and in economic and social development," Xi told the Times. 20th Party Congress.
The last time the Chinese president was cited as commander of the fight against Covid was on November 10, when he pledged to implement the "zero Covid" strategy "relentlessly", minimizing its impact on the economy and about the company. Although Beijing issued 20 guidelines the next day to "tweak" protocols, local governments continued to take justice into their own hands when it came to imposing lockdowns, fearing that too much easing would lead to an even greater and faster increase in restrictions. contagion. These tight controls have sparked the biggest social protests of the Xi era, which analysts say hastened the closure of the zero Covid policy.
Although Chinese officials and health experts say the change is based on the virus being less deadly and that China is now ready for readjustments, foreign epidemiologists say the government has wasted resources and time instead of ending the problem. in the bud, as the millions of dollars spent on daily testing campaigns or building confinement centers should have been spent on vaccinating the elderly or improving the capacity of intensive care units. “Reality has fully demonstrated that our policy against the pandemic is correct, scientific and effective. He has won the support of the people and can pass the test of history,” read a lengthy account on the front page of the People's Daily , the party's main newspaper, on the 15th, which concluded that Xi's policy has been “completely correct” all the time.
The Chinese leader, for his part, continues to remain silent. On Dec. 7, the day the government announced the unexpected demise of its "zero covid" strategy, Xi traveled to Saudi Arabia for a state visit, suggesting he wanted to avoid being linked to the abrupt reopening and its aftermath : Airfinity, a British company that analyzes health data, estimates that in the coming weeks there will be more than a million infections a day in China and more than 5,000 deaths a day.
(Excerpt from the foreign press review by eprcomunicazione )
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/sanita/tutte-le-capriole-della-cina-sul-covid/ on Sun, 25 Dec 2022 06:29:58 +0000.