The ordeals of forced quarantines with little medical support and mass COVID-19 testing were beginning to fade into nightmarish memories for the people of China. But their well-deserved freedom, newly emerging after a three-year-long lockdown, was fleeting as people were swiftly dragged into a new, more terrifying reality.
On Dec. 8, 2022, the CCP made a complete U-turn on its pandemic-restrictive policies, plummeting Chinese society into a state of shock. This dramatic shift in policy did not happen gradually as it did in other countries. If the coronavirus could speak, it might say that it too was shocked that it was allowed to resume its wild celebration party all over China.
Why the Virus Is Spreading Unchecked in China
One factor of the unchecked spread is that there was little to no preparation done before lifting restrictions. Elderly vaccination rates were low and so was their natural immunity. China has not been fully open since 2019 and has endured an endless cycle of home lockdowns and camp quarantines. Lives evolved around PCR testing and scanning health QR codes leaving little time or permission for trips to the park or gathering with friends after a day of hard work.In addition, China’s health system was ill-prepared for an epidemic of such proportions. They had three years to prepare their medical infrastructure for opening up yet instead focused on building massive quarantine sites.
The outbreak, however, did not start only after the restrictions were lifted. The restrictions were lifted because the outbreak could not be contained.
Even in Beijing, the heart of the CCP with the strictest measures, hospitals were becoming overwhelmed in late October. When Xi Jinping was praising zero-COVID to his comrades and getting re-elected for a third time, hospitals were struggling to deal with the rise in cases.
When the entire nation was locked down, the propaganda about people having enough to eat did not conform to reality. A social media post–since taken down–showed a man in Shanghai who called a police station and asked that if he broke the anti-lockdown measures and was thrown in jail, would he get three meals a day.
The groceries the man ordered on an app kept getting delayed and he only had water left in his house. He had stomach cramps from not having any food to eat.
The police told him that he would simply get sent back to his house since they had no way to house him. Chinese people have not been eating properly in the past few years, and have weakened significantly. They were under monumental stress due to the lockdown measures and from being placed in life-threatening situations.
Zero-COVID Did Not Work–Period
Are we to believe the numbers produced by the CCP? For the past three years, the death rate by COVID infection based on CCP data is about 800 times less than the global average. Same virus, same variants—is it possible that the low death rates were attributed to their lockdown policies?The only explanation for the extraordinarily low numbers in China is that the CCP severely covered up its death toll data from the onset of the outbreak. Once they lied about the data, they had to keep lying to keep up with their “glorious” story of winning the war against the virus.
Besides deaths caused by the virus, how many Chinese people died unnaturally due to the extreme policies? Multitudes of people with deteriorating medical conditions could not be treated in a timely fashion due to the lockdowns or the medical facilities’ unwillingness to accept non-COVID patients.
In addition, malnutrition and stress are two major factors contributing to how well the immune system performs. The harsh lockdown in the past three years created a population vastly vulnerable to virus infection due to reduced immune function.
How Nationalizing Medical Supplies Doomed the Chinese
At the beginning of the pandemic and even before it broke out in late 2019, the government quickly bought up mask-producing companies and “nationalized them,” meaning that governments on the local, provincial, or national level gained control of production, dictating quotas and prices. This is what brought on the shortage, price hike, and overall 3M fiasco. When the world was in dire need of masks, China used them as dirty leverage against other countries.While the rest of the world was learning to live with the evolutions of the pandemic, China continued on its narrow zero-COVID path. The government not only nationalized mask companies but also dropped the production of fever medicine and other remedies that would help combat the illness since fever-lowering meds would help with bypassing the COVID-19 screening protocols.
As a result, China today is seeing an extreme shortage in fever medicine during this peculiar season where the flu, respiratory syncytial virus, COVID-19, and other viruses are infecting large numbers of people. Production might not be able to meet the demand for a few months, and there is no point in blaming the people that stocked up on medicine.
The real issue at hand is the government’s wanting to make a fortune out of this disaster. Many countries like India and the U.S. have offered expedient aid, yet the CCP declined their offers, saying that all is well.
Turning the page on the tragedy the Chinese are currently experiencing won’t change the story. Before, people struggled to leave their homes for medication or necessary treatment due to the draconian zero-COVID policies. Now, they are facing a shortage of effective antiviral drugs and a tsunami of infections that are paralyzing the medical system. Either way, the outcome of sky-high death tolls remains the same.
If the CCP’s deliberate show of power is such that people lose their freedoms under a dictatorship, then it is not hard to believe that the massive lockdowns and massive deaths are two sides of the same coin. The world needs to demand that the CCP reveal the real COVID data before and after the opening-up of China. The wicked intentions of the CCP held fast before and after opening up, so why should we believe in the integrity of their data at any time?
