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.

Lots of non-democracies have had only one wave, or two waves due to air travel and movement but all with low numbers of deaths. Simply, people are able and willing to access testing, follow the rules, and the government able to track and enforce them. It is much safer. I’ve now had a vaccine, so I won’t have to isolate every time I fly and I will get to see my children.

I have to keep telling myself the people on MN boasting about not following the rules are probably just talking about that, but I know from family that people don’t follow rules. It puts me off returning to the U.K. when we become empty nesters

How did they get food if they were welded inside their flats?

The Chinese government is lying through their teeth. There are hundreds of thousands of Uighers locked in concentration camps so they can become good Chinese citizens.

@CoronaIsWatching

How did they get food if they were welded inside their flats?

I suspect a lot of them didn't get food, or it was passed through windows, or given to them before they were welded in.

@Ericaequites

The Chinese government is lying through their teeth. There are hundreds of thousands of Uighers locked in concentration camps so they can become good Chinese citizens.

Yep, this too.

It's shocking what goes on in China on a daily basis.

They shut borders and quarantine anyone who comes in. When clusters appear everyone is tested and the asymptomatic cases are quarantined.

So a decent track/trace/testing regime and 100% compliance with quarantine/self isolation rules

www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china/organised-overkill-china-shows-off-rapid-lockdown-system-after-latest-outbreak-idUKKBN27F1DY

The chinese government says jump the population says how high and for how long

The UK government says the same and whilst we argue over what jump they want, what constitutes a jump and whether your feet have to properly leave the ground many have wandered off having lost interest

I think the truth of the matter is somewhere between the authoritarian regime and the lies China tells to keep a seat at the international table

So a decent track/trace/testing regime and 100% compliance with quarantine/self isolation rules

You can't really call it compliance when people were physically welded into their houses for weeks at a time.

The chinese government says jump the population says how high and for how long

No. The government says "jump" and the population do it because the alternative is "re-education camps", prison or death.

China is hugely authoritarian and has massive human rights issues. I wouldn't believe a word their government said at the best of times, let alone now.

How did they get food if they were welded inside their flats?

Why do you think they got food?

Communist / authoritarian countries are simply much better at forcing compliance with communal problems like a health crisis. I prefer our situation, all things considered.

Also they would have a lot of the structures already in place to track their population and organise how to control people.

I lived in China for 12 years and relocated this summer. No second wave is due to the following:
Borders are closed to international travelers and have been since 27th March
Strict quarantine procedures, my dh spent two weeks in a quarantine facility and sometimes this is followed by home isolation
Effective test and trace
During the initial lockdown they stopped travel between provinces
Mask wearing from day one back in January
Private clinics closed in January and people with symptoms had to go to hospitals to be tested and their contacts were traced. This is the very opposite of the uk approach of stay at home if you have symptoms
Very strict measures in schools: no entry to school if temp above normal and temps all checked at lunchtime too.
Temp checks air ports
Health code on phone: if it’s green you can eg travel on metro if it’s red you need to get tested, all okay, back to green and so it continues.
The pandemic has not been handled well in this country: too little, too late and therefore it comforts us to believe that China is lying about its case numbers.
Whatever the true figures this is what is happening now in the city I used to live I :
All school kids back
Halloween parties with no masks
Restaurants open
Weddings with no masks
Work as normal- my dh’s company went back at the end of Feb.
Zoo open
After school activities happening
Inter school sports competitions back on
This is not govt propaganda but directly from the school, from Facebook and from friends of mine. Of course it’s more palatable to believe that China is lying rather than reflect on our own poor management of the crisis.

@Introvertedbuthappy

I live here in China. Our lives are pretty much normal here. It's not BS. They tested the whole of Qingdao in a few days and the government have very tight control over the population. People just follow the rules. We still wear masks on the metro despite no local transmission since March. Also no one is allowed in without completing government quarantine and can only come in with both negative Covid test in last 3 days and a negative antibodies test.

This. It is bizarre that posters adamantly refuse to take notice of people who have first hand up to date fact.

Is it the hard-of-thinking element, believing that yelling abuse at the rival football team is a replacement for the nuisance of using their brains?

I have said this many times on different posts. We complied back in January because we were scared. Nobody knew much about the virus, incubation period etc so we put on our masks and got on with it and we did it quickly. Rumours of the virus spreading were in school on the Thursday before Chinese New Year, by the Sunday you could not enter the supermarket without a mask.

No one we know knows of anyone who has had it so I don’t think the figures are suspicious.

But China is a very big place. There are parts of the UK where it is likely that nobody knows anyone who has had the virus - that doesn't mean the virus doesn't exist in Europe.

Authoritarianism.
Mass testing immediately of whole areas.
Brutal regime to ensure everyone stays in line, along with monitoring in every street on every town.

Over a whole populaltion, coronavirus perhaps has a mortality rate of somewhere between 0.1% - 1%. Probably at the lower end of that scale.

This relatively low (though still worrying) mortality rate meant that most Western set about a well-intentioned, but basically doomed to fail, juggling act between what was perceived as the Economy on one hand and Public Health on the other.

China didn't do that. They quarantined an entire province, locked down hard (serverly enforced it) and then when it was at very manageable levels went hard on track and trace, even at the expense of what we would see as individual rights.

In a word, they simply acted how we would have had to act if pandemic hit which had a mortality rate of 10%. We could have doine what they did. We chose, from a governmental but also cultural/sociological perspective, not to, as we didnt not consider the threat/the consequences worth it.

I have British friends who live in China (and I used to live there).

They are SUPER careful. A friend travelled to a different city. She was tested before she went, tested when she got back and STILL had to do 2 weeks quarantine at each end (a month in total). Plus, she was lucky her quarantine wasn't in a government appointed hotel.

Anyone flying into China (which is seriously restricted. Only Chinese citizens and those with certain resident visa types) does 2 weeks quarantine in a hotel the government select for you (you still have to pay for it yourself).

Plus, if there are one or two cases, they test everyone in that city. MILLIONS of tests.

We should do the same. It works.

It isn't just China which has done well - there are a number of countries which have done well in controlling it and the reasons why have been that they have followed good science, and that governments have ensured compliance, and some have populations who have been through this before and come out the other side and so therefore understand the measures better.

A very key thing is to do with following good science in terms of the the measures to be taken and when. I think another key thing is that the countries involved have had good lines of communication and their scientists have made great efforts to explain things on the internet easily understandable in lay terms.

In relation to ensuring compliance, the countries above have taken the view that where it is an issue of public health with large numbers of people involved, this takes precedence over human right to freedom temporarily though have also put in place humane measures to make sure people are looked after.

This is not to say any inhumane breach of human rights in China or anywhere else is acceptable obviously - but looking at other countries which have been successful in controlling virus plus which do not have the same reputation as China might also be helpful here.

Everyone travelling into China are immediately put into a quarantine which is more like a prison, in total isolation - they are served food by a hatch with staff in full PPE. Two weeks and then you are tested and released. Squalid conditions, inedible food and patchy wifi. The most grim two weeks of my friend's life. It is very strict to say the least, inhumane others may say.

@Ihaveyourback
"Brutal regime to ensure everyone stays in line, along with monitoring in every street on every town".

The use of emotive language makes interesting discussion difficult. The simple fact is that the vast, vast majority of Chinese people are very glad that their government did what it did, instead of doing what we are doing.

Also no one is allowed in without completing government quarantine and can only come in with both negative Covid test in last 3 days and a negative antibodies test.

The common feature of all countries that have low rates seems to be enforcing strict quarantine.

However, I still think its reasonable to mistrust information from the Chinese government, and that the relevance of anecdotal information is limited in a country that is so big.

They get food delivered. Just like we can, but a lot more efficient. Supermarket deliver, takeaway deliver. It was a thing there long before it was a thing here.

@popcornlover

Love it.

We are a nation of Lemmings apparently.

@20mum
Exactly, bizarre indeed!
As a direct comparison my dh spent two weeks in a quarantine facility in China: he went straight from the airport to the facility on transport provided (not public transport) was tested on arrival, temp taken twice per day and tested again after 13 days and able to leave as test was negative, as was the first one.
He arrived in uk in July:
No testing
Able to use public transport to get home
14 days self isolation at home where nobody checked he stayed in, no phone call nothing.
No great mystery why there is no second wave in China...