Coronavirus week 120: Zero COVID and Chinese politics; nasal vaccines and Biden sloth

Contra the Great Barrington folks and other COVID deniers, minimalists and truth-distorters, the US, and most countries in the world, have not had a zero-COVID policy and never had.

China, the land of origin of COVID, possibly through a lab leak (shut up Orac) and, land of early mishandling of COVID, no matter its source, and land of stonewalling the rest of the world on COVID, though, HAS had a zero COVID policy, and still does.

Why? Per this piece, Chinese Communist Party politics.

In other words, Xi Jinping Thought. Angst over COVID would not only be a threat to the party in general, but more specifically, to his plans to be the next Deng or Mao by seeking a third term in office. Since the CCP "can't" admit to the Chinese general public how badly it screwed the pooch or how poor Chinese vaccines are, this is it.

For the Chinese people, and for globalized trade, per the story, there's one hope. The next Chinese Communist Party Congress is next month. It is then that Xi is expected to formally claim a third term as president. After that, with his position theoretically secured for the next five years, might he let his foot off the zero COVID brakes?

Whether he does or does not, the story adds that COVID has not only ramped up the party's surveillance efforts on the Chinese public, it's ramped up its skill, technological and otherwise, in doing so.

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Meanwhile, maybe we CAN call what Xi has been doing to the Uyghurs a genocide? Yes, Shanghai was also on true lockdowns, but not for 40 days straight.

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Elsewhere in the Atlantic, the same author, Michael Schuman, writes about "Chinese exceptionalism." It's not bad overall,  except for his claim that most Americans have learned the price we pay here for "American exceptionalism." In reality, no such thing has happened. 

It's also good on how, beneath the Potemkin village shell, China is still a developing nation in many ways. Despite the rush of post-COVID emergency hospital building (it's actually not a miracle if you note that the US uses the same prefab tilt walls for rapid building of things like strip malls), China has one-sixth the intensive care capacity and one-fifth the nurses of the US on a per-capita basis.

On vaccines? He notes that China had a manufacturer with a BioNTech license. Beijing wouldn't approve. Also, the Sinovac sucks against Omicron.

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India now has a nasal COVID vaccine. It comes from technology licensed in the US. Why don't we have that here? (On the other hand, possible prepper influencer Jessica Wildfire was where I first saw that, and in reality, given the history of nasal flu vaccine attempts in the US, they probably suck.)

Well, we're getting new vaccines, but it appears that you're on your own dime on paying for them, which of course means that under- and uninsured aren't getting them. (Two years from now, though, the Nation will officially, as normal, ignore third-party voting options on the issue of things such as national health care.)