Now that China has given up Zero Covid, with all its clear metrics, it’s proving harder to manage the “freedom of no-lockdown”.
Karman Lucero, “For China’s officials.leaving zero-Covid behind is far harder than enforcing it”
The policy, [zero-Covid] while damaging, came with clear metrics that allowed local government officials to demonstrate their compliance
The new mandate to simply let people get on with their lives leaves officials with no way to show success other than by downplaying the resulting rise in infections
There’s also the dodgy death statistics. In China the incentive is to under report Covid deaths, because that’s how local officials are measured. In the United States the incentive is to over report because the federal government pays families of Covid victims $8,000 towards “funeral expenses”. Thus China has more deaths than reported, the U.S. fewer than reported. By how much in each case we just don’t know. Perhaps some day will get closer to the true deaths from Covid worldwide. ADDED: The WHO says there are more Covid deaths than reported (eg, in Our World in Data) based on Excess Deaths stats. But recent data showing many excess deaths have nothing to do with Covid, throe some doubt on that WHO assessment.
