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.

Not defensive thebiggestmoose. The whole thread is about why they don't have a 2nd wave and Europe does.

If you want to start a 2nd thread, feel free. But what we are discussing IS why.

I asked my friends about the Shanghai 'outbreak'. 6 cases. This report comes from a British person before anyone wants to start talking about lies / conspiracy / cover ups.

Ok Joswis I'll try and stay on topic in a way that you deem acceptable ( although you seem happy to go off topic yourself, clearly you don't like people disagreeing with you)

So a few thoughts:

The Chinese government can act in ways that would be seen as too authoritarian in the West. Like the PP our cultures are just different - here we tend toward "freedom to" and Chinese culture tends towards "freedom from" which is much more effective in dealing with a pandemic

Also the fact that China has suffered several coronavirus outbreaks in the recent past means they have experience of how to react

Also possible that the previous pandemics that they have suffered may have resulted in them having some residual immunity to this particular coronavirus

There is research behind carried out looking at the mutations of the virus that suggest that Europe is currently being affected by particular strains that might be more virulent

@thebiggestmoosebiggest
“The Chinese government can act in ways that would be seen as too authoritarian in the West.”

That is true, but does capture the entirety of the difference. Another angle would be that: the Chinese government can sacrifice short term comfort in making sensible and beneficial long term decisions - the sort of decisions s typical democratic government would shy away from due to being too unpopular in the short term.

They also had a good stock and production of PPE, rather than run down the stocks they had like we did.

'Cause China has an entirely state control media and social media system.

Just because you havent heard of something happening in China doesnt mean it isnt happening'

^^
This is the correct answer.

the Chinese government can sacrifice short term comfort in making sensible and beneficial long term decisions - the sort of decisions s typical democratic government would shy away from due to being too unpopular in the short term.

It also means that they can make massive mistakes, e.g. the Great Leap Forward, without facing scrutiny.

However, it doesn't therefore follow that the reasons they aren't facing a second wave aren't the same as other democratic countries who have followed similar policies.

Because there are no excess deaths

Issues around media and freedom of thought and speech are urgent now in the west, but the fact that they are urgent is rather the point, isn't it?

I have thought for a while that many people in western countries, particularly the people who think of themselves as progressives, are coming closer to accepting an authoritarian type of governance and becoming less interested in maintaining a democratic perspective, and this thread is doing nothing to dispel that idea.

And it's not that I don't see the appeal of that kind of state authoritarianism, or why some might find the chaos of a democratic nation - not just governance but people's character - as a liability. But I won't be surprised to see more and more people simply accepting the loss of what, notlong ago, were considered the basic right of citizens.

@merrymouse *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’.*

Sad, but true.

@Krampusasbabysitter

China has an incredibly poor record of human rights and also a strong reputation for withholding, misleading and false information. So, yes on the one hand, it is very likely that the virus spread may have been contained by very severely enforced lockdown rules with none of the flouting seen in the West. However, news coverage of this new virus was initially actively suppressed in China and those who leaked the information did not fare well. Another confusing aspect is that tests on tissues taken from patients in the west, for example in France, showed Covid infection months before it supposedly spread to the West. A great number of people reported extreme flu like symptoms as far back as last November, clouding the supposed timeline and start of this pandemic. There are also doubts about the scale of the number of deaths in China. In order to access any kind of public service in China and be officially registered or acquire a health code requires a mobile phone. Records showed that the number of active phone accounts in spring 2020 dropped by almost 21 million compared to the end of 2019. Even if some of the drop can be explained by the closure of some telecom companies, there is still a huge unexplained number of phone account holders vanishing. Another report showed huge numbers of coffins for cremation being ordered and dispatched in spring in the most affected regions that far surpass the official death toll reported by China. So, I expect the real figure to be en par with that of other countries or possibly even higher.

My best friend is Chinese and from Wuhan. None of what you said was experienced by anone in her family. Three of them DID get the virus but survived.

But don't let that stop your conspiracy theory enjoyment.

@Goosefoot

Issues around media and freedom of thought and speech are urgent now in the west, but the fact that they are urgent is rather the point, isn't it?

I have thought for a while that many people in western countries, particularly the people who think of themselves as progressives, are coming closer to accepting an authoritarian type of governance and becoming less interested in maintaining a democratic perspective, and this thread is doing nothing to dispel that idea.

And it's not that I don't see the appeal of that kind of state authoritarianism, or why some might find the chaos of a democratic nation - not just governance but people's character - as a liability. But I won't be surprised to see more and more people simply accepting the loss of what, notlong ago, were considered the basic right of citizens.

It should be possible to draw comparisons between countries without being accused of not valuing democracy and human rights. All the posters constantly repeating arguments about China’s bad track record are simply engaging in a form of reductio ad hitlerum.

Other countries than China have also successfully staved off second/third waves of Covid cases. The U.K. is among the worst performing countries. While I’m all for freedoms, one could argue that the mosT basic right, i.e the right to life, has been severely infringed by our policies during the first wave. There are serious issues over how triage and DNR operated, and how elderly patients were discharged to care homes. Together, these practices may well have accounted for thousands of deaths.

If we can’t change our approach to quarantine and self isolation, we are bound to repeat these mistakes, with thousands more dying unnecessarily.

Because unlike in many European countries,people in China are extremely obedient! I'm not saying that is a good thing btw,just saying that they are far more scared of the consequences if they break the rules. Alternatively,maybe they are having a second wave but with their reputation for secrecy,they haven't admitted it to the rest of the world.

It should be possible to draw comparisons between countries without being accused of not valuing democracy and human rights. All the posters constantly repeating arguments about China’s bad track record are simply engaging in a form of reductio ad hitlerum.

Other countries than China have also successfully staved off second/third waves of Covid cases. The U.K. is among the worst performing countries. While I’m all for freedoms, one could argue that the mosT basic right, i.e the right to life, has been severely infringed by our policies during the first wave. There are serious issues over how triage and DNR operated, and how elderly patients were discharged to care homes. Together, these practices may well have accounted for thousands of deaths.

If we can’t change our approach to quarantine and self isolation, we are bound to repeat these mistakes, with thousands more dying unnecessarily.

No one is saying you can't compare - unless they are doubting the information available which is valid.

What they are saying is that there are cultural and legal differences that mean what works there might not work here, and we might not want to accept the things that would make it work.

Yes, there are huge cultural differences between the UK and China and undoubtedly the systems which are already in place in China make it easier to introduce an effective track and test system. Most people in cities live in compounds so preventing non residents from entering compounds is also straightforward, unlike policing the rule of 6 here in the UK.
However, what I find so frustrating with the uk approach is the slow response. We saw what was happening in Italy and sat and twiddled our thumbs and allowed mass events to go ahead. Likewise we were lax with regard to quarantine measures, dithered about face masks for weeks and weeks, spent millions on a track and trace system that appears to be not fit for the purpose, failed to ensure care homes had sufficient PPE...
Why? Arrogance, ignorance or incompetence...?

@ShanghaiDiva that is what my brother keeps saying, why did we dilly dally, he offered to send us masks and told us to start wearing them. He explained the Q code, how it worked and why were we not using them. He truly is baffled by the laggardly response in Europe.

There is nothing suspicious, we have friends living in China - the lockdown is an actual lockdown where even a fly cannot leave a province and enter another, only one member of the family can go out to do weekly food shop once a week, no exemptions for mask wearing in public places, schools shut completely and no need to say any shop that isn't essential closed, not sure if anyone even had money help from the government. Very hard half a year at most but virus contained and lives resumed now. Here we enjoy freedom too much, even with government paying us to help contain we still have rebels.

@Goosefoot, you raise some very valid points on this thread, which have given me food for thought. The same cannot be said of the many posters who are just piling in for a bit of China bashing. (My username makes clear I’m not a PCC sympathiser).

I remember how, back in January, when Wuhan went into lockdown, thousands of posters came to express complete and utter disbelief that a city the size of London could ever be locked down. Fast forward to now, we’re embarking on our second lockdown with frankly no end in sight. What sort of freedom is that? Or is it just freedom in name only, because we tell ourselves that we are - we MUST be - different from the Chinese?

They have apps that work - we have an app that doesn’t work. They have legal restrictions that are enforced - we have restrictions that are not being complied with or enforced.

We have 66,000 excess deaths. China doesn’t.

*CCP not PCC

I think some of the answers in this thread explain more why we got it so bad here rather than why China hasn’t got a second wave. Without a good dose of humble pie and with this amount of superiority and ignorance instead I doubt we’ll fare well. Add a gov that cannot track not trace ...

@ShanghaiDiva

Yes, there are huge cultural differences between the UK and China and undoubtedly the systems which are already in place in China make it easier to introduce an effective track and test system. Most people in cities live in compounds so preventing non residents from entering compounds is also straightforward, unlike policing the rule of 6 here in the UK. However, what I find so frustrating with the uk approach is the slow response. We saw what was happening in Italy and sat and twiddled our thumbs and allowed mass events to go ahead. Likewise we were lax with regard to quarantine measures, dithered about face masks for weeks and weeks, spent millions on a track and trace system that appears to be not fit for the purpose, failed to ensure care homes had sufficient PPE... Why? Arrogance, ignorance or incompetence...?

This isn't necessarily as straightforward as people think.

Most countries were trying to avoid bringing in measures too early because it's a principle in public health/pandemic control that if you start too early, it causes all kinds of problems.

Essentially, there is a limited amount of time that a population will observe restrictive measures. If I recall correctly, it's about six weeks. Longer than that, and they know compliance begins to fall off.

What that means is that if you begin even a week early, you've lost a sixth of the time you had, and that can be significant. But it's a bit of a judgement call and governments don't always get it exactly right.

Lots of countries also managed to make errors around care homes, which I think suggests it wasn't as simple as people seem to think.

@Enrosadira

I think some of the answers in this thread explain more why we got it so bad here rather than why China hasn’t got a second wave. Without a good dose of humble pie and with this amount of superiority and ignorance instead I doubt we’ll fare well. Add a gov that cannot track not trace ...

Yup.

@Goosefoot, I agree this is not easy or straightforward. But Asian people (don’t want to generalise, but true of many Asian countries) just seem to be so much more sensible about precautions.

I lived in Hong Kong until this summer, and in January, literally overnight, everyone started wearing masks everywhere, and mostly staying home. They didn’t need to be made mandatory (for political reasons, the government couldn’t do that - because they tried to make masks illegal during the protests 🙄) but everyone just wore them. And they were easy and cheap to buy too - after the initial few weeks when worldwide stock was low. I brought back a stock of thousands which I distributed to friends here, including a GP friend, who also advised me to bring back lots of antibiotics and other drugs, as the NHS stocks are running low.

Having gone through 2 waves in Hong Kong, I was completely terrified when we landed in London and saw people without masks everywhere. I spent the summer telling my London friends to beware the next wave, that it would be worse than the first. People here were very nonchalant - packed high streets, people standing next to each other, loads of shoppers in stores not wearing masks. Mumsnet is packed with threads full of people proud to be non compliant.

The tories have completely messed up their messaging, with Johnson constantly making a show of how much he abhors imposing restrictions, how he admires the Jaws’ mayor who keeps the beach open when there’s a man-eating shark around. All he has done is fanned the flames of a libertarian base who think only of their own immediate gratification.

This is not the right message, or policy. It lacks empathy and care and foresight. It is a pity that there are no strong female voices in the cabinet who would be listened to.

Even now, every press conference has a mandatory ’sweet hereafter’ section, where we’re told about the moonshot/world leading app / ramping up testing /vaccine about to be ready. This just dilutes the message. People only want to hear the positive bit, and forget the rest. They don’t get how grim things are.

For me, what just petrified me was when, back in March, Johnson came out and said ‘if you’ve got symptoms, stay home, don’t get tested, don’t seek medical help, don’t go to a hospital unless you can’t breathe.’ I get that this is because there were no tests, no beds, no ventilators and no PPE. But it is hard not to see this as a huge moral (and operational) failure.

Proper track and trace, widespread testing, implementation of lockdown /circuit breaker measures, people taking precautions even after lockdown is loosened ( which includes voluntarily wearing masks, everywhere) and border controls and screening ..
Meanwhile at heathrow, it’s 7 months since our first lockdown and there’s still no sign if temperature scanning equipment. so yeah, we will keep having rolling waves id restrictions here, until you get a vaccine..

A lot of users with numbers in their name defending China. A lot of new accounts too. Funny that...