The most likely outcome here seems likely to involve continued lockdowns until China reaches herd immunity via mass infection, all while starving tens to hundreds of millions of people. Millions will die from covid or from lockdowns (starvation, no medical care etc), which will all be hushed up. In the end, once herd immunity has been reached and the bodies have been cleaned up, the CCP will celebrate the success of their zero covid strategy and raise the “mission accomplished” flag in time for Xi’s reelection and throw anyone who disputes the official account in prison.
The official covid numbers will remain low enough to give the farce a superficial patina of legitimacy to the claim, and the Chinese people who are unhappy about being starved by a failed containment strategy will have no way to coordinate due to iron tight government control of all communication networks.
I guess there’s more of a question about how things happen in the longer term. Slowing growth seems more likely to present a real problem to the CCP’s continued rule, but many dynasties have ruled china for hundreds of years with virtually no economic growth, so it doesn’t seem all that likely to me that it will matter.
The most likely outcome … Millions will die … which will all be hushed up
China has an Internet and a public sphere. Almost everyone has a smartphone. It would take a garrison society with no electronic communications to cover up something like that. Also, Chinese government policy can change. If they have to capitulate on Covid, they’ll do it, and in a way that saves face...
I should have phrased this differently. I’m not suggesting that chinese citizens won’t actually know that tons of people died. What I’m conjecturing is that it will not be acceptable to talk about the real death toll in public, and there will be wide error bars around people’s estimates of how many people died because the official counts will be so artificially low.
True. It would be interesting to know how much a single (non-fatal) infection reduces the odds of mortality from subsequent infections. My guess is more than a single vaccination, but probably unlikely it can decrease it by as much as a 3-dose mRNA vaccine regiment.
The most likely outcome here seems likely to involve continued lockdowns until China reaches herd immunity via mass infection, all while starving tens to hundreds of millions of people. Millions will die from covid or from lockdowns (starvation, no medical care etc), which will all be hushed up. In the end, once herd immunity has been reached and the bodies have been cleaned up, the CCP will celebrate the success of their zero covid strategy and raise the “mission accomplished” flag in time for Xi’s reelection and throw anyone who disputes the official account in prison.
The official covid numbers will remain low enough to give the farce a superficial patina of legitimacy to the claim, and the Chinese people who are unhappy about being starved by a failed containment strategy will have no way to coordinate due to iron tight government control of all communication networks.
I guess there’s more of a question about how things happen in the longer term. Slowing growth seems more likely to present a real problem to the CCP’s continued rule, but many dynasties have ruled china for hundreds of years with virtually no economic growth, so it doesn’t seem all that likely to me that it will matter.
China has an Internet and a public sphere. Almost everyone has a smartphone. It would take a garrison society with no electronic communications to cover up something like that. Also, Chinese government policy can change. If they have to capitulate on Covid, they’ll do it, and in a way that saves face...
I should have phrased this differently. I’m not suggesting that chinese citizens won’t actually know that tons of people died. What I’m conjecturing is that it will not be acceptable to talk about the real death toll in public, and there will be wide error bars around people’s estimates of how many people died because the official counts will be so artificially low.
Except that herd immunity isn’t really a (permanent) thing; only temporary
True. It would be interesting to know how much a single (non-fatal) infection reduces the odds of mortality from subsequent infections. My guess is more than a single vaccination, but probably unlikely it can decrease it by as much as a 3-dose mRNA vaccine regiment.