April 5, 2022, on Facebook ?
HO Ching views Shanghai's Anti-Covid lockdown
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005335308340
Feb 11, 2022, BBC correspondent blocks Chinese follower after being asked to 'report China objectively,' revealing foreign media's long- standing double standards
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252037.shtml?
April 5, 2022, Shanghai Covid lockdown extended to entire city
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60994022
April 5, 2022, on Facebook ?
HO Ching views Shanghai Anti-Covid lockdown
April 5, 2022,
https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005335308340
Mass testing is just a one time pulse check.
It doesn't guarantee that those in the clear would not be infected the next day, or one week later, or one month later.
Sure, we can do total lockdown to try to stamp out an emerging outbreak.
But we can’t do lockdowns forever, when covid is becoming endemic.
And lockdowns are never perfect.
We need to eat. This means we need to keep the food supplies flowing, from land, sea and air.
We need medical services. From delivery of medical supplies to delivery of babies.
We need essential services. From power generation to clearing of trash.
We need emergency services. From fire departments to hospitals and clinics.
With the Omicron with a lot more asymptomatic cases, and highly highly infectious, the old test, trace, treat, plus ringfencing of contacts that worked for the Wuhan and some VOC variants would be too slow and cumbersome.
Yet we cannot lockdown forever.
But the Omicron is fast, with a shorter incubation. So we could perhaps do a series of short lockdowns to tamp down the speed of transmission as a practical alternative? Like a weekend curfew for instance? Like a tapping of the brakes to slow down a car that is getting out of control.
Just to slow things down to manageable levels.
But that is a waste of time, money, resources and opportunities if we do just that. We would be fighting the last war, using ineffective strategies.
Yet, we are also not helpless against the Omicron unlike the first 6 months of the Covid pandemic outbreak in early 2020.
Today, we have antivirals. This will help reduce the risk of severe illness to the highly vulnerable folks like the elderly and the immunocompromised younger folks.
Today, we have vaccines.
Shanghai will do well to step up vaccination of their seniors to reduce their death rates. Do that as urgently as they do the mass testing.
One PCR test costs more than one vaccine shot.
A series of PCR test does not reduce the risk for the individual, but a series of vaccine shots can help save lives.
Not just vaccinate with 2 shots of their Sinovac and SinoPharm, but fully vaccinate with 3 shots, and also boost with a 4th shot.
Better still, authorise the Pfizer mRNA vaccine as a pilot for Shanghai, to use as their 3rd shot booster for seniors who already have their 2 shots, to use for unvaccinated seniors who have not yet had their shots, to use as a 2nd booster for the immunocompromised.
Managing a highly highly infectious Omicron is not about controlling the virus.
Control and contain measures are to slow the transmission to buy time to bolster the individual and population defences with vaccination, expand the healthcare support facilities, and pivot to home recovery and care for the vaccinated and the lower risk young.
Yup, like most places, we try to encourage positive thoughts and actions during a pandemic, to keep the spirits up, to maintain unity of purpose in the fight against covid.
But in the fight against the Omicron, we must make full use of the tools, and tackle the problem at its core.
After all, we don’t treat flu as scary, right?
So we must do what we can now that we have the tools to reduce the risks of an Omicron infection.
With vaccination, we can reduce the risk of severe illness and death from 20 times that of flu to twice that of flu.
This saves lives, and enable the economy to re-open and function again.
And the Omicron is many times more infectious than flu.
And while milder, Omicron can overwhelm hospitals by sheer numbers. A small percentage of a large number serious cases is a large overwhelming number if we do not manage it.
So covid control measures need to be repositioned for a different purpose - to slow the pace of transmission to buy time for more complete vaccination, esp of the elderly but also of younger adults down to the 30s, and of the vulnerable down to the teens and kids whenever vaccines are ready and authorised.
The overall covid strategy should aim at protecting lives and livelihood, reducing the risk of deaths and severe illness to manageable levels, similar to flu or other general infections, while enabling the fully vaccinated to go about life step by step towards normalcy.
Find tactical reasons to nudge families to vaccinate and double boost their elderly, and to fully vaccinate and boost themselves.
Help save lives and transition towards sunshine.
Shanghai Covid lockdown extended to entire city
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-60994022?
By Stephen McDonell, China Correspondent,
Chinese authorities have extended their lockdown of Shanghai to cover all its 25 million people after a fresh surge in Covid cases.
Initially, there had been separate measures for the eastern and western sides, but the whole city is now subject to indefinite restrictions.
Shanghai is the largest single city to be locked down to date.
The important financial hub has battled a new wave of coronavirus infections for more than a month.
Reported cases have risen to more than 13,000 a day, although the numbers are not high by some international standards.
Residents in some areas of the city said the strict policy meant no-one was allowed to leave their housing compounds, not even to collect essential provisions.
They reported difficulties in ordering food and water online, with restrictions on when customers are able to place their orders, because of a shortage of supplies and delivery staff.
This country's "zero-Covid" system is, at best, struggling to cope.
China has done Covid lockdowns before, but not on the scale of its financial mega-city.
The logistical challenges required to confine 25 million people to their homes, while keeping them fed, are huge.
Social media here is full of angry residents complaining that they can't order food because the delivery system is clogged up.
Centralised isolation facilities - many using only camp beds, with no showers or other facilities - are bursting with infected people squashed in next to one another.
One of China's few reliable media outlets, Caixin, has reported that close contacts of infected people will be moved to neighbouring provinces. This could potentially involve hundreds of thousands of Shanghai residents.
The Chinese government's complete elimination strategy has become something of a mantra, with the government ridiculing other countries for sacrificing their own people on the altar of opening up.
Some medical specialists here have tried to get the message through that, for a vaccinated person, catching the Omicron variant of Covid will probably not necessitate going to hospital - that you can simply ride it out at home until you recover.
Few people in China seem to be aware of this. Their officials and state media have kept it from them.
So the lockdowns continue and it's not only Shanghai closed right now. Jilin City (3.6 million people), Changchun (nine million), Xuzhou (nine million), the steel city of Tangshan (7.7 million) and various other towns and villages are keeping their residents indoors.
The strain on people, and the economic cost of it all, must be enormous.
The city is testing the limits of China's zero-Covid strategy, amid growing public anger over quarantine rules.
The policy sets China apart from most other countries which are trying to live with the virus.
But the increased transmissibility and milder nature of the Omicron variant has led to questions over whether the current strategy is sustainable in the long run.
· How is China's zero-Covid strategy changing?
· Omicron vs Zero-Covid: How long can China hold on?
"Currently, Shanghai's epidemic prevention and control is at the most difficult and most critical stage," said Wu Qianyu, an official with the municipal health commission.
"We must adhere to the general policy of dynamic clearance without hesitation, without wavering."
On Monday, Shanghai reported a record 13,086 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases, after a city-wide testing programme took samples from more than 25 million people in 24 hours.
At least 38,000 people have been deployed to Shanghai from other regions, in what state media have said is the biggest nationwide medical operation since the shutdown of Wuhan in early 2020.
Feb 11, 2022, BBC correspondent blocks Chinese follower after being asked to 'report China objectively,' revealing foreign media's long- standing double standards
https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202202/1252037.shtml?
Photo: Screenshot from Stephen McDonell's Twitter home page
Some foreign media have been hyping affairs related to Beijing 2022 long before the Games began. In the latest example, BBC's China correspondent Stephen McDonell blocked a follower from the Chinese mainland after the latter asked him to be objective and balanced in his reporting on the Games, given his continued indulgence in double standards, sarcasm and ignorance of the facts.
A Global Times reporter on Friday reached the blocked Chinese follower, who commented on McDonell's twitter on Thursday that "you should report the news objectively and rationally, and show the reader the truth without adding your own personal stance and emotions."
In the Thursday post, McDonell said "imagine how hard it would have been to get tickets if they'd go on sale" and feel "privileged" to be able to see these athletes. By saying this, McDonell is hinting that Chinese authorities would manipulate the ticket distribution, those who get the tickets will be deliberately "chosen."
It is an old trick for McDonell to turn a deaf ear to different opinions and deliberately distort information about China and attach tags to others and disregard facts, which is opposite to their self-proclaimed "professionalism," the blocked follower told the Global Times.
No one expects the foreign media to report only good things about China, but at least, they should endeavor to provide real, objective and rational reporting. I think this is a basic professional principle for journalists. And as readers, what I want to learn from media reports is real facts, rather than writers' personal stances, the follower said.
Besides losing professionalism, McDonell warned the Chinese follower, "you should not tell me how to do my job if you want to keep following me."
In response, the Chinese follower said "you are a journalist, we are readers, you can monitor the government, and we have the right to monitor journalists." Then he received a reply from McDonell saying "last warning" before he found that he had been blocked by McDonell.
McDonell on Friday released a post saying that the Chinese follower attacked him but he did not reveal the exact communication between them.
"How come it is I who attacked him when I did not use any insulting or attacking word in the comments?" the blocked follower said, asking McDonell to stop lying.
McDonell called the follower a "Party attack dog." He also used words like "doofus nationalists" and "rando apologists" to describe people having different opinions with him. In another tweet on Friday, McDonell attacked Chinese diplomat in Lebanon Cao Yi, accusing the latter of a "so-called" online campaign against him.
He would block all those who said favorable things about China and called them "Party attack dogs," another Chinese Twitter user who had also been blocked by McDonell told the Global Times.
In another McDonell's story posted on Friday, he continued his rhetoric by saying that "to be chosen as a spectator for these Olympic events, you are most likely to be from a Communist Party organization, a state company, or a student group" as "the planners have decided that such groups can be easily counted on to do what needs to be done (especially when compared to the general public)."
This is in accordance with a sarcastic style McDonell often used to mislead readers in China reports. In fact, the reason for Beijing organizers' decision of dispatching tickets instead of a public sales was in consideration of epidemic prevention.
McDonell became famous among Chinese readers as he published highly sarcastic reports of events in Wuhan in late 2020 by using an underworld filter to cast a shadow over people and life in the city that was uniting and fighting for a revival following the COVID-19 outbreak.
He also smeared an activity of the Chinese Embassy in Japan to invite Japanese residents to Xinjiang after the epidemic as a propaganda activity of the Chinese government. He tried to fuzzy focus when the Global Times debated with him over the issue.
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