Why doesn’t China have a second wave?

[Custardcream67]

China had the initial wave of infections early 2020 then hardly any cases since. Their population is much bigger than UK. How can they have it so under control. Seems suspicious to me.

Because they can follow rules

Test-and-trace and out of home quarantine.

The "welding people into their homes" bit was just pandemic control theater.

China did not get the wave under control until they realized that a major part of transmission was within homes and they started putting infected people in hotel rooms until no longer infectious.

And what about those of us who experienced lockdown in China. Are we lying too?
Ime Xinjiang, HK and Taiwan are all covered by Chinese media. The most significant lack of media coverage/ media blackout I experienced was the 30 year anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

They have recently had one of their big holidays lots of travelling about so they may see a spike there is an outbreak in Shanghai at the moment. But as others have said they are rule followers and they also had a sophisticated app that alerted any contact with positives and you needed codes etc to go out. They use technology in a far more advanced way than the Uk

Just imagine if this was Ebola instead of COVID. Only authoritarian countries would survive. Grim

I was genuinely scared of Ebola and we would have had no chance based on how we are getting on with COVID

They are taught to work hard and follow rules from a young age. Via school and Young Pioneers and parents.

@onedayinthefuture

For everyone saying things are back to normal in China, is it completely back to normal? We've had many here people go on holidays and travel to see friends and family, days out at theme parks, bars and restaurants have been busy. Any social media pictures would show all this as looking pretty 'normal' on the face of it without showing all the restrictions and masks.

Are China having parties, sporting events with fans, concerts and nightclubs? I did see evidence of the pool party in Wuhan. Normal is when we can fully get back to pre-Covid.

Australia and NZ are having sporting events with crowds. I think the UK is struggling with the concept that maybe there was a different way of doing things that mean harsher restrictions for a shorter time and then no holidays in Spain. And as China and other places have shown that means LESS restrictions long term.

You’re talking about a country that successfully implemented a one child only regimen and forced abortions on countless women.

Brute force. Stay inside or you’re dead.

I think it's sensible to be suspect of the information they have shared - it's known that they are not reliable about information they release to their own citizens or to the international community.

Their strict tracing and quarantining made a difference - and are interrelated.

You can't just make a tracing system work without quarantine and control of people's contacts as it would very quickly become impossible to keep up. It's a huge job, even with the kind of electronic surveillance and AI they already have as part of their infrastructure. Even a relatively small tracing system involves paying many people who are just calling potential for many hours of work and those workers have to come from somewhere too.

Even if we don't consider that people being willing to follow these directives is in part due to fear, (which is true) it's pretty naive to not realise that the strong tendency to accept that "the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" is part and parcel of a society that treats individual and human rights in a way that we would find unacceptable.

There is a reason that freedom of movement, and freedom of assembly, are basic rights in democracies. Democracies without those are not viable. So we should want people to feel resistant to curbing those, especially when there is no clear discussion about how long it will go on, or what exactly are the conditions that need to occur for them to be reinstated.

To put it another way, a country where it is legal and considered ok to have facial recognition AI everywhere so the government can keep track of what it's citizens do, is going to be able to track&trace in a way that a western country isn't.

Everyone is going on about China but Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam have done well, as have Hong Kong and Macau which have devolved governments.

The common thread of success is isolation of positive cases, enforced quarantine/observation of close contacts, and enforced quarantine of overseas arrivals. There was that story of BA aircrew in Hong Kong who tested positive and the colleagues were sent off to a government facility. They moaned about their human rights but the local community was supportive of the policy.

Europe saw cases fall in the summer for a virus known to thrive in cold weather. So it opened up to travel all across the region. This clearly was a mistake with hindsight.

@cyclingmad - so she lives in europe and wipes her phone when she wants to do drugs?

(you do realise that Singapore is an independent nation state and nothing to do with China? Though admittedly the 'ruling class' there are primarily chinese :))

They are definitely having outbreaks, so rather ripples rather than waves, but they have rigid control measures in place and a solid track and trace system to stop wide spread transmission. Unfortunately in the Uk they didn't get on top of the first one so subsequent waves are almost inevitable.

"The common thread of success is isolation of positive cases, enforced quarantine/observation of close contacts, and enforced quarantine of overseas arrivals. There was that story of BA aircrew in Hong Kong who tested positive and the colleagues were sent off to a government facility. They moaned about their human rights but the local community was supportive of the policy."

Agree. If you test positive in Thailand, you're immediately sent to isolation in hospital.
Plus mask wearing. E/SE Asians were into masks more than other places before all of this anyway so they're much more comfortable with wearing them.

Lol at everyone trying to make it sound like China is just your average run of the mill kind of place.

I dont really care how well they have controlled the virus.

I prefer to be a free woman in a free country

The Isle of Man and Guernsey have done very well. No one got sealed inside their home but there are strict quarantine rules. If you break them you go to jail in the IOM and fines of up to £10k in Guernsey. There was a small cluster in Guernsey recently, within hours the contacts were traced, isolated and tested. A few people in isolation then went on to develop it but they were already in isolation so had not spread it anyone. Life is 100% back to normal (after your quarantine if you come in) with eating out, Halloween parties and no need for masks. There are sanitisers at the entrance to shops and offices but that’s about it. People go on staycations, have parties and the clubs are all open.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/02/covid-lockdowns-are-cost-of-self-isolation-failures-says-who-expert

Two things can be true at the same time. China can have an appalling human rights record, and also be be using a method that other countries are also using successfully.

Lol at those who spectacularly miss the point regarding the comments on China.

Who knows what is happening in china ? Not even the Chinese. The country is on a scale we cant imagine both geographically and populated wide. Because a couple of people come onto social media and say " I was there " that is by no means the full story, even though to their knowledge, it is.

As someone else said , they implemented a one child policy, we cant even put a cap on how many loo rolls we buy!

I would also add that while the government has tried to ramp up messaging to young people (with Hancock’s clumsy ‘don’t kill granny’), I don’t recall any specific messaging to men.

I do. I think the message was ‘rules are for wimps, you can use your own judgement on anything including eye tests’.

So the Chinese don’t know what is happening?
No newspapers? No tv? No social media? No phones? No travel? No friends in other provinces? No relatives in Wuhan? No one travelling for work? No one working in quarantine facilities? No one working in hospitals?

@Dontforgetyourbrolly

Who knows what is happening in china ? Not even the Chinese. The country is on a scale we cant imagine both geographically and populated wide. Because a couple of people come onto social media and say " I was there " that is by no means the full story, even though to their knowledge, it is. As someone else said , they implemented a one child policy, we cant even put a cap on how many loo rolls we buy!

The Chinese are far more astute with technology than we are. They have social media platforms we don't use in the west, in addition to all the wests platforms that they access using VPNs.

They also travel extensively. It is a very wealthy country, with more millionaires than in the rest of the world put together.

I trust the reports coming out of China by my Chinese and western friends. Interestingly, they say the same thing. How strange!

So the friends that live in one major city, have family and friends in others at the other end of the country, as well as in Mongolia, Taiwan, Hong Kong etc.

One thing is standard from them all (all over China, Chinese AND foreigners alike) in that they are aghast at how incompetently western governments are handling it AND how western rule breakers are continuing to spread the virus.

This is a country where the populace dare to even mention the revolution and the people that died during it.

How do you think the state controls them?