The big failure of China's Zero Covid policy was not its dismantling or the fact that it leaked. It's that they failed to use the time it bought them to sufficiently vaccinate their population. It was a shocking failure for a government that supposedly prides itself on its ability to mobilize and guide society.

Several smaller countries in the Asia-Pacific region also used Zero Covid strategies, some of them almost as draconian as China's. But the difference is that they got their old people vaccinated.

While I can't question the numbers from the article, it's completely missing the major point:

As someone living in China, it was very obvious that covid zero had ultimately failed when Omnicron and its mutations hit the mainland. They could spread faster than a 72-48h detection window (mandatory testing rhythm depending on the city) could detect new infections to isolate people.

Consequently, the reporting of new infections was stopped for about a week (thought testing continued) and then literally over night all testing booths, QR code apps and associated infrastructure disappeared completely from malls, office buildings, restaurants and whatnot.

The day after about 40% of my office were infected (either showing symptoms or reported a positive self-test), the next day another 30%, and by the end of the week we were all sick. And this is not merely anecdotal evidence, about the same spread pattern was observed in most larger cities. This could under no circumstances have happened if the virus hadn't already spread far and wide, and merely the reporting had ceased so people were left in the dark.

Curbing the covid zero policy was the result of a spread beyond containment, not the root cause thereof.

It's almost as if the rush to end COVID protections in order to protect corporate profits was a bad idea.

As sad and sobering as this is, it does mean their very strict quarantine was effective in delaying the deaths of 2M people for 2-3 years.

That's 75,000 lives* worth of time saved. (80 years per life estimate)

This is the best summary I could come up with:

BEIJING, Aug 25 (Reuters) - China's abrupt move to dismantle its strict COVID-19 regime, which unleashed the virus onto its 1.4 billion residents, could have led to nearly 2 million excess deaths in the following two months, a new U.S. study shows.

It found an estimated 1.87 million excess deaths from all causes occurred among people over 30 years of age between December 2022 and January 2023, and were observed in all provinces in mainland China except Tibet.

China's decision last December to end the three-year zero-COVID policy, which included mass-testing and stringent and persistent quarantine lockdowns, led to a massive surge in hospitalisations and deaths that health experts say were largely unreported by the government.

The study, published on Thursday in JAMA Network Open, said the number of excess deaths far exceeded official Chinese government estimates in January that 60,000 people with COVID-19 had died in hospital since the zero-COVID policy was abandoned a month earlier.

Global health experts repeatedly called on China to reveal more data as reports of rising hospitalisations and deaths started to surface, and especially as the threat of new variants became a concern.

"The National Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention said the proportion of the new variant EG.5 increased from 0.6% in April to 71.6% in August, becoming the dominant strain in most provinces in China," the Global Times reported.

The original article contains 475 words, the summary contains 227 words. Saved 52%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!