I don't think that is true, the article states
I'm assuming Paxlovid is not in that plan, otherwise I'd be very angry Pfizer is continuously ripping off Chinese Health Insurance.
Coronavirus 2019-2020 thread (no unsubstantiated rumours!)
- Thread starter localizer
- Start date
supercat
Major
China's Azvudine is much more affordable than Paxlovid.
Chinese authorities and manufacturers are negotiating with Pfizer and Merck for the domestic production of their anti-COVID medications, Paxlovid and molnupiravir, respectively.
Chinese authorities and manufacturers are negotiating with Pfizer and Merck for the domestic production of their anti-COVID medications, Paxlovid and molnupiravir, respectively.
Seems like the US also received the same treatment at around the same time. Yet not a peep out of them except from Japan/SK where both claims China only dares to bully them but not the stronger nations. Dude, you don't get any stronger than the US. Now i wonder if the European countries also received the same treatment.
supercat
Major
One estimate suggests that 900 million in China have been infected. This is consistent with the estimate for the Henan Province, which suggested that 90% of the population was infected.
Death toll will be more accurately determined by analyzing excess mortality/excess deaths several months later.
All those who are 65 and above will be managed as critically ill regardless of symptoms if they haven't received 2 doses of vaccines.
Death toll will be more accurately determined by analyzing excess mortality/excess deaths several months later.
All those who are 65 and above will be managed as critically ill regardless of symptoms if they haven't received 2 doses of vaccines.
I was going to post that same man's article he wrote 3 weeks ago on the same publication that is SCMP.
Here was his take, criticism from the central gov't plan or lack thereof when it decided to open up the country and do away with all the lock down measures "recklessly" according to this author. This author clearly has a "WESTERN BIAS" implicit in his writing, the words he used describing the Chinese gov't covid-19 measures as "DRACONIAN" and sneering at the same government's pride in expressing confidently that lockdowns save 99 percent of the Chinese people from Covid-19 as if it were trivial. But then goes to bitterly complain that Chinese gov't did not have a clue and were at best helpless and worst clueless when it comes to the consequences or aftermath from doing completely away with their covid-19 policy.
Why did the central gov't decided to focus it's vaccination drive that primarily targeted the younger people and not the senior citizens? What was the scientific guideline that drove that vaccination policy? Is what was alleged by the author true?
Did Peking University really lost an extraordinary amount of it's older professors due to the covid-19 reopening which essentially blames the government indirectly? Is this true?
The rest of what the author tried to paint is pure garbage IMHO. For a person that finished with a degree in "journalism" western fakery/propaganda, and a degree in "English."
Morgues overwhelmed: why China’s new Covid crisis is all of its own making
- •Fever medicine is in short supply, hospitals are swamped, the death toll is soaring among the elderly, and morgues are overwhelmed with bodies
- •Beijing has had nearly three years to prepare for pandemic controls to be lifted and learn from other countries – so how has it messed this up?
Since Beijing’s sudden U-turn on more than two weeks ago, Chinese officials and state media have struggled to put a positive spin on the decision.
They have argued that the draconian controls – which have isolated the country from the rest of the world over the past three years – won the population of 1.4 billion valuable, life-saving time.
They have also tried to reshape public perception of the virus – until last month labelled serious and deadly in the official narrative to justify zero-Covid – by stressing that the latest Omicron variants may be highly contagious but the symptoms they cause are mild.
Moreover, they have tried to give the impression that the abrupt reopening in the middle of winter, when respiratory viral infections usually peak, was planned and thought out.
Alas, the reality could not be more starkly different – fever medicine in short supply, hospitals and emergency services swamped, an acute blood shortage in many cities, the death toll soaring among the elderly, and morgues and funeral parlours overwhelmed with bodies.
In a word, China is woefully underprepared for the chaos that is inevitably unfolding since the controls were lifted, as seen in other countries.
So here’s the question: since China has had nearly three years to learn from other countries and prepare for reopening, how has it messed this up?
Before trying to answer that, I would like to share the sad and harrowing experience of a dear friend in Beijing this week, whose father died after he was unable to get the medical care he needed.
My friend’s 84-year-old father, who had previously had a stroke, became unwell on Monday afternoon. My friend was on a business trip in Hainan and scrambling to get on a flight back to Beijing, while making calls to the 120 emergency hotline which was permanently jammed – presumably because of high demand.
At 10pm, his mother finally managed to get through and an ambulance arrived within 10 minutes. After another 10 minutes, my friend’s father had been transferred to the ambulance and was heading to Dongfang Hospital, a top-tier facility affiliated with the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. It is located in the middle-class neighbourhood of Fangzhuang, in the city’s southern district of Fengtai. It is 600 metres from the compound where the family lives.
When my friend landed in Beijing around midnight and rushed to the hospital he was shocked to find that his father was still in the ambulance. It had been parked in front of the hospital entrance for nearly two hours.
He was told the hospital had run out of ICU beds and oxygen tanks and his father was being kept alive on oxygen in the ambulance.
After waiting for another agonising hour or so, an emergency worker told my friend that they could not wait any longer as his father’s condition was worsening.
They decided to wheel his father into the ICU and try their luck. In a video taken by my friend, an emergency worker is heard telling an ICU doctor that the patient was dying and could not wait any longer.
Eventually they managed to get an ICU bed, but his father died about 15 minutes later. His death certificate states that he died at 1.59am on December 20, from sudden cardiac death.
You might wonder why my friend did not ask his friends or neighbourhood officials for help when he could not get through to emergency services earlier in the day. But help was difficult to find as most of his friends and neighbourhood officials were infected and self-isolating at home. Moving a seriously ill person requires professional expertise. Sending his father to another hospital was also out of the question. Every hospital in Beijing was experiencing more or less the same situation.
Later on, my friend found out that families of the seriously ill had been forced to bring their own beds into the hospital. One nurse told him that her workload was two to three times the normal and she was simply too weak to move an oxygen tank. She had been told that no help was forthcoming that night as many of her colleagues were infected and staying home.
When my friend wheeled his father’s body into the hospital mortuary, he saw body bags lined up against walls and inside a warehouse as the freezers had run out of space. He was told it would take at least seven days for his father’s body to be cremated because all crematoriums have been overwhelmed by demand.
My friend’s experience is not unique. There are similar horror stories all over Chinese social media. One influencer has started a daily death count, highlighting that prominent Peking University professors in their late 70s and early 80s have been dying at an abnormal rate.
As has been widely reported, China did an about-face on its zero-Covid policy, lifting almost all controls because of mass protests in late November. But the protests were just the trigger. The underlying issue is that China’s leaders have finally comprehended the magnitude of the devastating impact of the policy on the economy.
The lack of preparation for this has been made worse by the fact that the government got its priorities wrong from the start. Beijing has spent billions of yuan on prevention instead of treatment, on mass testing and building huge quarantine facilities and makeshift hospitals. Imagine how different it could have been if Beijing had poured all that money and resources into public health infrastructure – including grass-roots clinics across the country so that they could better cope with the surging cases.
The government also messed up its vaccination strategy from the outset. When China first started to roll out vaccines, the National Health Commission strongly recommended that only those people aged between 18 and 59 should get jabbed. That gave the impression that the vaccines were not suitable for people over 60, particularly those with underlying medical conditions. Its main rationale appeared to be that those aged 18 to 59 would have to work and needed protection against the virus while the elderly mostly stayed home.
The NHC’s advice ran counter to the prevailing practice in most countries, where priority was given to the elderly and other vulnerable groups. This has subsequently made it very difficult for the authorities to encourage older people to get vaccinated.
The acute shortage of fever medicine is also a situation of Beijing’s own making. Strict rules have for the past three years discouraged people from buying such medicine over the counter, with the aim of sending anyone infected with the virus to quarantine facilities and makeshift hospitals. That has meant all pharmacies across the country have limited stocks of fever medicine and pharmaceutical firms had significantly curtailed their production of it. Now the authorities have asked them to ramp up production around the clock.
In addition, since medical resources were directed into mass testing and quarantine three years ago, hospitals around the country simply don’t have enough ICU beds and equipment to cope with the surging coronavirus cases. Moreover, hospitals are in dire need of qualified and trained doctors and nurses to work in those ICUs. The authorities are now stepping up training and recruiting ICU doctors and nurses – but this takes time, which they don’t have at this critical moment.
Nah Nah. First of all the people who not supported Covid Zero dont get the right to complain, this crappy newspaper SCMP tiresly attacked China Covid policies even with the Delta Variant. Second of all there is not half measures with Omicron, this virus spread faster than measles, its already infected hundred of millions in weeks. Shanghai implemented half measures to try to do both keep open and Covid down a failed because is almost impossible to stop Omicron without strict lockdowns (Zero COVID Policies). Outdated MRna vaccines will do nothing to stop people from flooding hospitals and dying, not way beyond than other vaccines. Also how many outdated vaccines the West would had "donated" to China? like 20 million? out of population of 1400 million? Unless Pfizer decide to manufacture MRna Omicron specific vaccines in China to cover a good chunk of the population, there are useless.
When you see the list of just 20ish people the youngest is in his 90s and the oldest is 102 years old. I dont even aspired to live that long.