Why is China not seeing an increase in cases?

[ProseccoSupernova]

Or are they not just recording it?

The latest outbreak of about 50 cases linked to that fish market they tested 11million people in 7 days

My Wuhan colleagues say they tested everyone in 3 days.

@AKissAndASmile

Remember Jenny Harries saying in one of the briefings that the WHO's advice to 'test test test' doesn't apply to a developed nation like ours? Exceptionalism again. Well that aged well.

That was scandalous! I listened to that clip like

That was inexplicable for me.

Across Asia, mask wearing is normal. Nobody moans about it.

So That's why south Korea is imposing huge fines on non-wearers.

And then there are the political protests in SK against 'rona controls

Anti-mask protests in Japan called "cult-like"...

I dunno what "nobody" means to other people.

Because covid was much much more widespread in China before they couldn't hide it anymore (especially in the epicentre of Wuhan) and had to announce it to the world. Indeed there are examples of patients in France now confirmed as being infected in Dec 2019. As a result China has built a herd immunity/ resistance quite quickly and ahead of the rest of the world.

Also worryingly China will take economic advantage of the West being economically damaged now and in future years as a result of covid.

Various reasons:
Compulsory quarantine in quarantine centres
More effective contact tracing
Green health code on phone required for entry to school etc
Temp checks at school
Border still closed to international tourism
I disagree that the virus was more widespread before it was announced. I lived in China for 12 years and in late 2019 and early 2020 there seemed to be no evidence of the virus where I lived (500 Kms from Wuhan) : no increase in mask wearing, nothing odd happening at doctors or hospital, no additional control measures, no transport restrictions, nothing.

@ShanghaiDiva I would be really interested in your views of the threads full of posers who refuse to wear maska/refuse to isolate/refuse to use te track and trace app/think they are above the rules.

When the pandemic started here, I commented that when the virus started in China I was glad I didn’t live in a democracy. Several charming mumsnetters called me an idiot...
The city I lived in is practically back to normal: school activities, Halloween parties, travel within China, parents at work and kids at school. There are still restrictions in place, but the Chinese implemented tough measures and this continues in some areas eg no parents allowed in university halls of residence to drop of kids, encouraging students not to travel outside the province during the national holiday etc.

On a simplistic level perhaps this highlights the difference between east and west: putting the needs of the whole before the wants of the individual. My dh spent two weeks in a quarantine facility in China before he was allowed into our house, so two weeks home isolation in the uk (which he also did) is not so demanding in comparison.

Also worryingly China will take economic advantage of the West being economically damaged now and in future years as a result of covid

Taking advantage is the wrong word.
We are all gaily buying tons of stuff made in China and buying it through Amazon (US company) - it's not China to blame it's us doing the buying.

I have to gather data on everything we sell at work, one of them being the country of origin, and I can confirm that a lot of our stock comes from China. Most of our face masks are from China.

Link here to the blog of an English librarian working in Shanghai. The entries for April are so interesting regarding quarantine and how thorough it is over there.
turninglifespages.blog/2020/04/

It's extremely unlikely covid was here in December. This virus spreads exponentially.....perfectly mathematically. There is no way we wouldn't have noticed.

Track trace and isolate

There is no thought given to depriving peoples of their liberties and harsh consequences of those that don’t

There has been outbreaks and their shall continue to have outbreaks but the are dealt with immediately with a level of enforcement we would find unacceptable

I wouldn’t trust their numbers on reporting

@Straven123

Also worryingly China will take economic advantage of the West being economically damaged now and in future years as a result of covid

Taking advantage is the wrong word.
We are all gaily buying tons of stuff made in China and buying it through Amazon (US company) - it's not China to blame it's us doing the buying.

Agreed, it's our choice.

Isn't terrible that the leaders of China are trying as hard as they can to further the economic welfare of their country.

So much better to allow a tiny group of privileged twats have a philosophical argument about Europe get so out of control that they have a referendum that will scupper the UK for generations. And elect utter nobbers so they can further their own aims at the expense of everyone except the very rich.

FREEDOM

Britain has been interfering all over the world stage for hundreds of years. We're just grumpy that China is now much better at it.

@AKissAndASmile

It's extremely unlikely covid was here in December. This virus spreads exponentially.....perfectly mathematically. There is no way we wouldn't have noticed.

How many cases do we need for it to be noticed at a countrywide scale? 90% of the students at Northumbria were asymptomatic. So, the first few cases come over from China with one or two young health slim middle class individuals last autumn, they don't have many if any symptoms and pass it on to another one or two people who also are young, healthy, slim. This keeps happening for a month or two, with everyone having not many symptoms, and no-one seriously ill, just what appears to be a bad cold in the winter. It's impossible to track this, the numbers are small, we're not testing or even looking for symptoms. Eventually it starts to hits a population that is more vulnerable but one or two very old and sick people die of a respiratory infection in February. We aren't testing anyone who hasn't been to China so although we are aware of the disease we still aren't looking in the correct places so we don't think there is anything unusual about those deaths. But at that point it is already spreading round hospitals and then very vulnerable people get sent back from hospitals to the care homes and all hell breaks loose in March.

If the infection rate is reported as 1 in 100000 that's 670 people countrywide who are ill enough to be tested. If 90% of people are asymptomatic (like those students), that's actually 6700 with Covid-19. With a doubling rate of 7 days that's 3 months for the infection rate to get to 1 in 100000 infected from 1 person. Bit like this summer with our loosening lockdown from July to where we are now. It was bubbling away below the surface but test and trace wasn't sensitive enough to pick it up. Now think how long it would have taken over the winter last year to get to the stage where we were picking up 5000 positive tests a day but were only testing a few thousand very sick people in hospital. With exponential growth you have a long stage where your monitoring system isn't sensitive enough to see the growth.

AKissAndASmile

There is now evidence it was here in December.

I think it was here before Christmas.

I agree China probably wasn’t sharing enough formation or closed the airports quick enough. They allowed sick people to leave the country. How could they keep them? Imagine America’s response!

It’s taken months for mask elevating because the NHS didn’t have masks let alone the general population.

Hygiene was dodgy, no reason for the shops to have run out of hand soap, it should be a household staple!

The whole thing will now get ten times worse as selfish people continue to spread the virus. You need everyone to make the effort to stop the spread. If that means not seeing family, so be it. I haven’t seen my family for 12 months. It may well be another 12 months.

We can track exactly where we got what we thought was this disease.

Dd managed a wedding in December. A lot of the guests were Chinese Nationals who were here just for the wedding.
Then dd got ill and spread it through the family.

Never even considered it was Covid until months later when there was a list of symptoms for Covid and I ticked every one

Don’t think we could have spread it as we were so ill we didn’t go anywhere. Even in February I was struggling to walk any distance.

China and most other Asian countries are doing the following

• limiting inbound travel for non-citizens
• testing at the airport or requiring a negative test result before boarding flight
• strictly enforced two week quarantine for all arrivals
• quarantine in government facilities for close contacts of confirmed cases

In the UK people test positive but don’t properly isolate or members of their household don’t, so the virus keeps circulating.

As a result China has built a herd immunity/ resistance quite quickly and ahead of the rest of the world.

They have a population of 1.4 billion people, so the likelihood of them having herd immunity is zero.

DD (Newcastle student) was horribly ill over Christmas and new year. DH and I were fine. More flu like than a cold. One of her housemates tested positive a couple of weeks ago, and as DD started displaying symptoms she and another housemate were tested. They were both negative. The spread just doesn't seem to follow a logical pattern.

This what happens when you arrive in China and are then placed in centralised quarantine: after being tested you are bussed to the facility, your luggage is disinfected, temp checked every day, tested again on day 13 and if negative allowed to go home.
Photo is of my dh.

@ShanghaiDiva I find your last two posts scary. Especially when you say you are glad you don’t live in a democracy. Has it really come to this now!

@Bool
To be clear I said when the virus started I was glad that I did not live in a democracy as China was able to quickly implement rules and regulations due to the nature of the one party system. It was not fun, but it was successful as we all complied. At a time of national crisis prompt and decisive action is vital.
Compare what happened in the uk: freedom was slowly eroded, action was taken too slowly and the problems continue.
I lived in China for 12 years and am well aware of the shocking things that happen there and am not advocating the uk moving to a one party system.

Even with the mess we have here I’d choose U.K. system but I haven’t had the actual experience of China.

Shanghai that pic is incredible