Antoine FLAHAULT Profile picture
Jan 7 9 tweets 3 min read
1/9 - “As an unparalleled #COVID19 outbreak swept through China in December, President Xi Jinping remained mostly silent on the health crisis in the world’s most populous country.”
ft.com/content/fb8795…
2/9 - “But during an annual pre-recorded New Year’s Eve address broadcast by state television on Saturday, China’s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong finally made a call for unity while defending his handling of the pandemic.”
3/9 - “The ruling Chinese Communist party’s attempts to downplay and distract from the worsening health crisis that has followed Xi’s decision to drop almost all Covid restrictions reflect the damage wrought on his credibility at home and abroad,just as he embarks on a 3rd term.”
4/9 - “We can see very clearly that Xi Jinping is badly wounded in the sense that his prestige and authority have suffered tremendously,” said Willy Lam, Chinese Univ of Hong Kong. “His claim that the Chinese system is the best in the world is now subject to serious questioning.”
5/9 - “China on Friday reported just one #COVID19 fatality for the day before, despite forecasts suggesting this winter’s wave would cause millions of deaths.”
6/9 - “Despite heavy controls on public dissent, Chinese censors have struggled to staunch the flood of complaints on social media. Most have focused on the lack of forewarning or preparation for China’s thinly resourced healthcare system ahead of the reopening.”
7/9 - “The party leadership faces a narrative problem of how they explain what the hell is going on. Some serious damage is being done to public trust. We may not see the immediate effects of that. But it’s going into the public calculus about how competent their government is.”
8/9 - “The core is not whether Xi lost credibility because he changed the #ZeroCovid policy. Instead, it is: if changing the policy was inevitable, [why] didn’t he do a better job preparing for the consequences?”
9/9 - “Countries imposed negative Covid test requirements for air passengers from China amid a dearth of reliable official data from Beijing and rising fears of new mutations of the virus. Chinese gov has been less than truthful about the number of positive Covid cases in China.”

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More from @FLAHAULT

Jan 8
1/6 - Pandémie un jour, pandémie toujours ?
Les scientifiques débattent beaucoup sur l’issue de cette pandémie. Les optimistes considèrent qu’elle est terminée, qu’on est désormais passé en phase endémique.
dw.com/en/top-german-…
2/6 - Les pessimistes voient la vie à venir en noir, notre système immunitaire se détruit petit à petit avec les réinfections de #COVID19 incessantes, les maladies chroniques et le #LongCovid qui vient plomber durablement nos existences.
thetyee.ca/Analysis/2022/…
3/6 - “Entre deux mers”, entre mer calme et tempête, on se rend bien compte que l’on s’installe dans une situation qui n’est pas totalement revenue comme avant. Tour à tour, l’Afrique, l’Europe, l’Amérique ou l’Asie partent en crise sanitaire.
atlantico.fr/article/decryp…
Read 6 tweets
Jan 6
1/9 - “Ever since China ended its #ZeroCovid policy late last month, its hospitals have been overwhelmed by cases. But as concerns grow about the threat of new variants Beijing has been criticised by global health bodies for a lack of transparency.”
ft.com/content/7623c6…
2/9 - “At least 15 countries have introduced mandatory #COVID19 testing for travellers arriving from China, mostly to ensure that no dangerous variants go undetected. The UKHSA has asked hospitals to sequence all viral samples from patients from China hospitalised with Covid.”
3/9 - “But are surging infection rates likely to lead to powerful variants from China or other countries, such as the US? The chances are seen as low by many epidemiologists though they remain concerned that a lack of transparency in some countries could hinder detection.”
Read 9 tweets
Jan 6
1/9 - “Wastewater is now a core component of infectious disease monitoring, providing a variant-specific, community-representative picture of public health trends that captures previously undetected spread and pathogen transmission links.”
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…
2/9 - “Although clinical surveillance will remain fundamental to infectious disease response, wastewater-based approaches enable fast and cost-effective surveillance, even in current blind spots.”
3/9 - “Pathogen concentrations accurately estimate prevalence (the number of current infections in the population), and given that wastewater trends often precede corresponding clinical detections, they may allow for early detection.”
Read 9 tweets
Jan 4
1/8 - “Leading scientists advising the World Health Organization said they wanted a “more realistic picture” about the #COVID19 situation from China’s top experts at a key meeting on Tuesday as worries grow about the rapid spread of the virus.”
scmp.com/news/china/art…
2/8 - “The WHO has invited Chinese scientists to a virtual closed meeting with its technical advisory group on viral evolution on Tuesday, to present data on which variants are circulating in the country. It is not open to the public or media.”
3/8 - ““We want to see a more realistic picture of what is actually going on,” said @MarionKoopmans, a Dutch virologist who sits on the WHO committee. Speaking to Reuters ahead of the meeting, she said some of the data from China, such as hosp. numbers, is “not very credible”.
Read 8 tweets
Jan 4
1/9 - “China is mourning a growing number of public figures lost to #COVID19, from academics to opera singers, whose deaths have complicated the government’s efforts to minimise the scale of the unfolding outbreak sweeping across the country.”
ft.com/content/67d7c3…
2/9 - “Since authorities last month scrapped most restrictions instituted to keep the virus at bay, #SARSCoV2 has rampaged through China’s vulnerable population with unparalleled speed, leaving hospitals inundated with the sick and elderly and crematoria overwhelmed with demand.”
3/9 - “The havoc has left China’s propaganda organs struggling to shape a coherent narrative and defend the rollback of Xi Jinping’s signature #ZeroCovid, especially after spending two years playing up the death toll in the west as evidence of China’s superior governance.”
Read 9 tweets
Dec 25, 2022
1/9 - “I think people think of science as something that you get up at bat and you hit a home run the first time around. It isn’t that way — it’s a gradual, iterative process that is cumulative, and that will ultimately get you to the endgame you want.”
latimes.com/science/story/…
2/9 - “Science collects data, and you act on the data that you have at the time. In January 2020, we were learning about aspects of the coronavirus, and we had to, by necessity, make recommendations, make guidelines. We had to publicly discuss our understandings of the virus.”
3/9 - “Science is self-correcting. So what we knew in Jan was one thing. When we later learned that the virus is readily spread by aerosol, and that 50% to 60% of the spread was by people who didn’t even know they’re infected, we had to change our recommendations and guidelines.”
Read 9 tweets

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