China opening up. Why isn't the UK being more wary?

[Fordian]

in China: Countries tighten rules as tourism set to resume www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-64111492

Why haven't we learned? If we'd shut down 10-14 days earlier than March 23rd 2020 this whole thing may not have been as hard for us.

China's neighbours, Italy and most probably the USA are not throwing their doors open to Chinese tourists, yet the UK sits on the 'let's see' fence.....

If you think a negative test is needed before flying internationally, why not on flights within the UK ? Or trains? Covid is all over the place so makes just as much sense

Apart from the fact that we’ve already had this strain and no surge is expected - what are people advocating on a positive test?

Tell them to travel to location and stay there, how would you monitor it

Hopefully people will feel reassured by information re strain though

What will happen is, we'll end up having to test before other countries allow the UK in if we have huge numbers of infected Chinese coming in. It's all political mind. Covid is endemic now. Nothing we can do about it.

Other countries had zero covid policies too. Australia and NZ for a start. We didn't impose additional restrictions on them. And we haven't imposed additional restrictions on any other country experiencing a covid wave either.

@MrsPelligrinoPetrichor

I absolutely think a negative test is what is needed when travelling.

You may think that but it's not an idea that's is going to go down well with the significant number of people who have to travel between the UK and elsewhere on a frequent basis, especially the fully vaccinated.

I think most travellers were prepared to grin and bear all the travel restrictions and hoop jumping during the height of the pandemic, "needs must", etc, but I think nowadays you'll get a lot of kick back if it gets suggested as a permanent, just in case, can't be too careful, restriction.

This is some seriously batshit conspiracy theory stuff

@MintyFreshOne
They don’t want to admit they were wrong and everything they forced the rest of us to do was wrong too. EVERYTHING

The lockdowns and people staying home almost certainly saved 100,000s of lives in the UK alone among people over 65 who were able to avoid Covid for 18+ months while the vaccines were being developed and delivered.

Undoubtedly some of the measures were flawed and others went too far, but saying it was all wrong is simplistic nonsense.

I was referring to the definition of direct the poster I was responding to used. They said there are “no direct flights going to China right now.” I am aware of different usages, I guess I could have said they were wrong instead of you as there are plenty of flights with intermediate stops going to China.

Seems like I was trying to avoid being argumentative in the outset with the original poster and as a result have ended up being argumentative with you anyway! Not my intent though…

Yes.

We have people who have yet to work out that China, even under its zero covid policy, was unable to contain covid.

We have people who have failed to work out that covid spread despite travel bans. NZ had draconian travel rules and still didn't stop covid. Places which only banned travel direct from hot spots, failed to grasp the idea that merely caused people to travel through third party countries. This meant they often went undetected by authorities anyway - and if someone did test positive, it disincentived isolation or seeking help where necessary because they'd entered a country they should not have.

We have people who haven't grasped that covid is endemic. And that we need to approach things from a point of building up immunity in various ways.

You can not stop a disease once it reaches a critical level is the lesson - lockdowns and travel restrictions only slow it down - and this time needs to be used wisely for the development of vaccines and effective treatments and production capacity and rollout to the population to be at an appropriate level.

We are now at a stage where development of new covid vaccines is easier and quicker due to technology and production capacity are at a level significantly above where they were. Rollout to the population if there was a particular issue, could be ramped up quickly if needed.

And we need to continue to expose ourselves to other viruses because its becoming apparent that failure to do this, has its own consequences - China won't just be hit by covid but also all the other flu bugs etc from the rest of the world that its limited exposure to for the duration of its travel ban. That means not only is its population significantly unprotected against covid, but its immunity levels for other viruses will be lower than might be expected.

Ironically the biggest impact covid in China is likely to have is on manufacturing and exports, not giving us all covid again (which we cannot ultimately avoid).

The Chinese vaccines are significantly less effective at preventing symptoms, but they are still very effective at preventing serious illness and death.

Mountain out of a molehill.

Ah got the context now and FWIW I never picked up on anything even close to appearing argumentative.....

It can all get very messy - Chuck in things like the fact code shares often appear as stand alone/separate flights on some airport boards, and there's a lot of scope for people thinking we're being overrun with individual aircraft arriving from well, just about anywhere, not just China.

ATB

They've all had effective vaccines though.

The current official estimate is that 1 in 45 people are infected with Covid in the UK. About 1.5 million people. A few people arriving from China is going to make very very little difference to that number even if they ALL have Covid. Unless there is a reason to think it is a different and noticeably more dangerous strain, which I dont believe it is.

100%. There seems a weird mix of irrational panic coupled with wanting to punish China for being where Covid originated, but there is no sensible rationale for restricting Chinese visitors any more than you'd restrict people travelling within the UK.

Right now, a UK person with Covid (and there are lots of them!) can go to work, visit relatives in hospital, socialise and travel abroad, spreading the virus as they go. So can anyone visiting from any other country. That's what endemic means, and that is the stage we are at.

What’s the point in testing them when covid is rife here anyway? I went out with a large group of friends recently, most of them came down with covid afterwards, half tested and when positive isolated but half had exactly the same symptoms but didn’t test as didn’t want it to ruin their Christmas plus there is no legal requirement to isolate now. Unless it’s a new more deadly strain what’s the point, when it’s already rife here anyway?

An influx of Chinese Covid patients may be a burden to our already chatoic NHS. Besides, some here mentioned Covid variants in China. I think they've got the point -- Chinese government is a constant liar and who knows what they are hiding from us this time?
So a negative test (not something too demanding I guess) is an effective solution to protect our people.

Do you seriously think these are health tourists? What's your position on the UK people travelling abroad with Covid (as there are plenty going in that direction too)?

How many Chinese people would have to come to the UK to cause this, given the hospitalisation rate and the fact the majority of travellers will be younger people?

Think about it.

The maths simply don't add up to this as a scenario.

www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19latestinsights/hospitals

The overall hospital admission rate of patients with confirmed COVID-19 in England continued to increase to 9.56 per 100,000 people in the week ending 18 December 2022. This is the highest rate seen since the week ending 23 October 2022.

The intensive care unit (ICU) and high dependency unit (HDU) admission rate increased to 0.29 per 100,000 people. This is the highest rate seen since the week ending 30 October 2022.

The hospital admission rate for COVID-19-confirmed-patients is much lower now than earlier in the coronavirus pandemic, despite similar infection levels. You can read more about comparisons between infections, hospital admissions, and deaths on our infections page.

Now the majority of those hospitalisations will be in people who are older, have underlying health issues, are more likely to live in poverty and are more likely to be obese. That's not the typical demographic for tourists and people travelling for work or study.

So how many people come to the UK from China?

The number of tourist visits from China to the United Kingdom declined dramatically in 2021 compared to 2019 due to the impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. While inbound tourist visits from China peaked at over one million in 2019, they sunk to just 17 thousand in 2021, the lowest figure recorded since 2009.

^www.statista.com/statistics/515789/chinese-tourist-visits-to-the-united-kingdom-uk/#:~:text=Tourist%20visits%20from%20China%20to%20the%20UK%202009%2D2021&text=While%20inbound%20tourist%20visits%20from,lowest%20figure%20recorded%20since%202009.^

This is for a whole year. It doesn't include work/study trips by the look of it, but it does give an incite into numbers. You might expect infection rates to be higher, but you also would expect them to be a much lower risk group for hospitalisation even allowing for lower immunity levels too.

Think about those numbers for a second.

Overwhelmed hospitals due to Chinese visitors? Really?

The bigger issue is for new variants affecting Brits, but we can't stop those anyway. Cos reality.

Exactly, I posted upthread how we have 144,000 Chinese students living at our Unis right now…it seems sinophobic to be panicking over 1/10th that number of Chinese coming as tourists.

An influx of Chinese Covid patients may be a burden to our already chatoic NHS. Besides, some here mentioned Covid variants in China. I think they've got the point -- Chinese government is a constant liar and who knows what they are hiding from us this time?

Ffs most Covid+ people don’t even need medical care. Do you think planeloads of octogenarians will be arriving from China to the UK?

Besides, it has been reported that the strains in China were ones that had already circulated elsewhere. It’s totally pointless

There does not need to be lots of Chinese visitors to have a big impact on the NHS. China have have riots and protests against lockdowns amidst another wave. They are under pressure to remove restrictions.

They were not entirely honest about when Covid was in circulation, it was certainly before December 31st 2019. And the first official diagnosis were 2 Chinese students. From there it all escalated quickly...

China also not been transparent about where it came from so I would not trust anything they say.

Actually, they were honest when Covid first emerged.

You act like it’s easy to tell when a new corona virus has emerged when there were already over 2 million different corona viruses know to us and all having the same symptoms, and tens of thousands more the same progression to pneumonia or organ failure and death.

Covid isn’t like a brand new Black Death…as in a disease never before seen with unique symptoms and progression.

I don’t think anyone knows exactly how/when it mutated to be able to infect humans. China has certainly cooperated and contributed on numerous multi-national scientific teams looking at its origins.

There does not need to be lots of Chinese visitors to have a big impact on the NHS.

This is just scaremongering.