Cover-ups have costs. Distrust of Chinese stats helps explain why the world’s not debating China’s giant covid bet. Alone of big countries its aim is 0 new infections even if that hurts China, global travel and trade. A thread on China's unique exit plan 1 economist.com/china/2020/04/…
It's easy to miss just how radically different China’s strategy is. The govt just pushed a city of 10m people, Harbin, back into lockdown cos of 63 cases. In West, 63 cases is a blip. It’s how many Fairbanks, Alaska has this week (pop 32k) Why? In part CCP obsession with order 2
But we’re also seeing how close China came to disaster in Feb/March. One of 1st studies of serological antibody tests in Wuhan, carried out in April, shows 10% positive. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/jm… 10% Ie, in city of 11m, as many as 1m were infected at one point, most unwittingly 3
China also poured everything it had into the medical response, including 11,000 intensive care ICU docs & nurses. Still Wuhan hospitals were so overwhelmed that ICUs were freed up only when occupants died. Many others died who never secured an ICU bed atsjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.151… 4
China cannot afford another Wuhan. US/Chinese researchers at Harvard studied the Chinese epidemic, warn that a Wuhan-like outbreak needs 24.5 inpatient beds and 2.6 ICU beds per 10k adults dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/hand… China has just 0.3 ICU beds per 10k people 5
Everyone talks abt China surveillance & tech. A study of big, rich Shenzhen says contact tracing/isolation had “positive” effect. But doubts about missed asymptomatic cases “must temper any hopes of stopping the COVID-19 pandemic by these measures” alone thelancet-press.com/embargo/contac… 6
China’s borders are now closed to almost all foreigners. It will be hard to open them soon. As long as covid’s out of control elsewhere & cases reach China, HKU study says “Containment measures based on isolation and contact tracing will eventually fail” thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/… 7
Are China’s numbers reliable? No. But if a new Wuhan were underway, it would leak. There’d be smartphone videos of overwhelmed hospitals: we saw them in Feb/March. So it’s credible to say China has no big/uncontrolled outbreaks at moment. China will do a lot to keep it that way 8
China’s strategy is a bet on a vaccine being found soon. If that happens, China will call its strict controls far more humane than Western “take it on the chin” ploys. If a vaccine's slow, China faces long, painful disruptions. Born out of caution, its strategy is a big gambleEND
