Covid, Covid, nothing but Covid…

Covid covers all the front page of South China Morning Post 

And I’ve seen that there’s a new version of Covid, in China, similar to the original Wuhan virus, which they are calling “White lung” (白肺, Bái fèi). Blocking lungs, needing ventilators (again…). True or not I don’t know. It comes from reports inside China of X-rays posted by doctors. I can’t vouch for whether or not it’s misinformation, or a conspiracy theory. If true, it’s bad news. A highly contagious version with higher death toll than Omicron, and causing more hospitalisations. So I won’t be taking up the new China enticements of border reopening and no quarantine. 

China is no longer reporting Covid figures at a national level. The other day they reported 4,103 cases and zero deaths (!). But a Beijing based friend, tells us he is one of 70% of the city who has Omicron. Same day the Mayor of Qingdao, a city of 9 million, said his city alone had >500,000 cases and “thousands” of deaths. These actual on-the-ground figures made a nonsense of the official data, which were always patent nonsense. (A side note: YouTube rules around Covid are that you should quote info from the National Health Authorities. If you did that for China, you’d be promoting wild and monstrous misinformation).

Note: the surge in numbers predates the dropping of Zero Covid policy. The surge of Omicron (long predicted outside China)  led to the U-turn, not the other way around. People are now wondering what this means for the man most associated with ZCP, Xi Jinping. I just heard musings about this on Australia’s ABC Radio National. He staked a lot on the Zero Covid Policy, and Chinese netizens were encouraged to mock the west for “lying flat” (躺平,Tǎng píng). Mocking on the other side of their mouths, now, aren’t they?