Even China is struggling with Delta

Written By: - Date published: 8:37 am, November 3rd, 2021 - 8 comments
Categories: australian politics, China, covid-19, health - Tags:

The list of nations who have successfully kept Covid at bay is dwindling.  At the beginning of the year China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam and Thailand were all doing pretty well.  I am putting to one side the Pacific Islands who have performed exceptionally well but have had to completely isolate themselves to maintain their status.  Recently numbers dwindled down to two, China and Taiwan, although Taiwan had a recent incursion of Covid (not delta) that it had to deal to put down to prevention fatigue.

The Guardian has the details:

Since the first coronavirus cases were reported nearly two years ago, China has run a zero-tolerance Covid policy. Its success in preventing the virus from spreading across the vast country serves as a stark contrast to the situations in many western countries. Since last year, fewer than 100,000 cases have been officially recorded, among a population of about 1.4 billion. At least 4,634 have died.

By comparison, the US has reported nearly 46m cases and more than 740,000 deaths. The UK has reported nearly 9m cases and more than 140,000 deaths.

But the policy is intense. For just a handful of cases, measures have included strict border closures, localised lockdowns, travel restrictions, and the mass testing of tens of millions of people. Homebound flights booked by Chinese citizens who live abroad are often cancelled at the last minute.

On Thursday, a high-speed train from Shanghai was ordered to halt midway before arriving in Beijing, after an attendant was identified as a close contact of a Covid-positive patient. All the other 211 passengers onboard were immediately quarantined in designated places.

The steps taken are pretty extreme and include mass testing, halted transportation and local lockdowns.  And not the you can have a picnic outdoors with family sort of lockdowns.  The Chinese lockdowns are much more brutal and only tolerated because of the state of the relationship between the Chinese Government and its people.

But the moral authority is declining.  Again from the Guardian:

“People are starting to wane,” said Prof Chunhuei Chi, the director of Oregon State University’s centre for global health. “As with anywhere in the world we can see dragged into this pandemic for nearly two years, and everywhere we observe pandemic fatigue. That would surely also be affecting Chinese people.”

There is also a growing discussion about alternatives such as coexisting with the virus and dealing with it in other ways.

This graph shows what is happening in the nations I mentioned new case wise.  The numbers are new confirmed cases.  Admittedly the Chinese population is much larger than New Zealand’s but clearly it is struggling to suppress the virus.

And this graph shows vaccination rates.  Singapore has the highest vaccination rate and the highest infection rate.  Vaccines by themselves will not resolve matters.

And if you thought Delta was bad there is now a new Delta plus variant.  Whoever thought that letting Covid rip through populations thereby giving itself plenty of chances to mutate need to have their head read.

Rachel Sadler at Newshub has this description:

Delta Plus differs from Delta because it has an extra mutation – K417N – found in the spike protein covering the surface of the virus that allows it to infect healthy cells.

Some experts say Delta Plus appears to be 10 to 15 percent more transmissible than the original Delta strain, which could be a factor in the UK’s rising case numbers.

In recent months, this new strain has caused both the World Health Organization and the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to class Delta and its AY lineages as a variant of concern.

And to those who think that vaccines are a waste of time in terms of halting the spread of the disease because they do not stop vaccinated people from spreading the virus Newshub has this advice:

… while Delta can still infect vaccinated people, their symptoms and their likelihood of spreading the virus are significantly reduced. They are also much less likely to die from the virus.”

8 comments on “Even China is struggling with Delta ”

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  1. roblogic 1
    3 November 2021 at 9:57 am

    Very difficult to trust the numbers published by the CCP. The outbreak could well be 10x worse than they are letting on.

    https://twitter.com/libertyscott/status/1455360055746781184?s=20

    • RedLogix 1.1
      3 November 2021 at 10:22 am

      That CPD snippet is a good example of the selective misuse of data. The historic data is meaningless because it cannot be changed, the only thing that matters is the trend right now. And that paints a completely different picture.

      It's important here to understand the challenge China is facing. They don't have any good options to transition to natural gas, and their solar and wind potential is crap. The only obvious alternative they have is nuclear. Everything they say needs to be evaluated against that reality.

  2. roblogic 2
    3 November 2021 at 10:43 am

    "That CPD snippet is a good example of the selective misuse of data."

    Oh absolutely. The "People's Daily" forgot to mention that in 2019 China's greenhouse gas emissions were twice as much as the United States… and they are too embarrassed to front up at COP26.

    https://phys.org/news/2021-04-china-environmental-world-biggest-polluter.html

  3. Castro 3
    3 November 2021 at 2:25 pm

    Don't tell Mike Smith.

  4. RedLogix 4
    3 November 2021 at 3:07 pm

    Back on topic this new crisis presents Beijing with some tough choices. So far they've managed to keep a political lid on COVID. There has been a lot of domestic hype over how their response has been superior to the West that now paints them into a corner.

    All actions of the CCP must be first evaluated against their need to retain legitimacy and remain in power. In that light the obvious response is going to be a very heavy handed imposition of travel and lockdown restrictions. But as our experience in the West shows, you might succeed with them once or twice – but Delta is just technically too infectious for these to work. Particularly not in the densely populated cities in winter.

    Throw in an increase in the use of low grade domestic coal for power, and the air pollution problem will only worsen. (This already kills far more Chinese people than COVID is likely to.)

    Throw in power shortages that are widely impacting households and businesses.

    Throw in the crisis in the real estate sector that is hurting not only household savings, but hitting their ability to raise foreign capital.

    Throw in whole regions in the interior already unsettled by repression and neo-genocidal policies.

    And finally throw in a group of pissed off regional neighbours who aren't looking to do Beijing any favours.

    A perfect storm brewing. The big risk is that in the face this Xi Xinping will double down.

  5. Brigid 5
    3 November 2021 at 7:58 pm

    "A perfect storm brewing. " You wish.

    Wouldn't it be better to concentrate on the hopelessly inadequate climate mitigation strategies in the country you live in? Australia has been ranked by the Climate Council as the worst performing of all developed countries.

    I hardly think Xi Jinping or any national Chinese will be reading what you write but I'd posit that they'd be laughing like a drain if they were to.