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China, Winter Olympics and Covid
Jan. 7th, 2022 03:23 pmR. (Husband — there are so very many R’s in my life) and I have been back and forth many times for the last year plus over China’s efforts to prevent all community transmission of covid in its many variants. I, personally, have been incredibly impressed by their success at keeping case numbers, hospitalizations, deaths — all possible measures — so very, very low. The people of China can rightly be proud of how well they have worked together through an incredibly difficult process, and I believe the government in China can be proud at having succeeded in a task broadly understood to be impossible elsewhere in the world. It’s easy to point to New Zealand, or even Australia, however, they are much smaller, and have more favorable geography. And you can’t say, well, it’s a dictatorship, they can do anything, because there are plenty of dictatorships on this planet and none have accomplished anything nearly so impressive as China’s control over community transmission of covid in its many variants.
Alas, now we have this:
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-beijing-xian-6767d4005dc16652da5c9ade29fd632a
The Winter Olympics are coming, and here is Omicron so very difficult to stop, and a city in seemingly endless lockdown, having all the usual and expected troubles replacing the usual mechanisms for food distribution with ones that create far few opportunities to transmit the virus. But this is so much worse. China has, in a short period of time, flipped first from a one child policy, to a two child policy for some, to a two child policy for all, to a please have three policy, to making it incredibly difficult to get a vasectomy and increasing fear among young people that other forms of birth control, such as the pill, will also be taken away or severely limited.
And now, a pregnant woman cannot get care in an emergency that results in miscarriage, because of efforts taken to prevent transmission of covid.
That’s not, “we’re running out of vegetables”. That’s a deep fissure. That one is going to be trouble.
Alas, now we have this:
https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-business-health-beijing-xian-6767d4005dc16652da5c9ade29fd632a
The Winter Olympics are coming, and here is Omicron so very difficult to stop, and a city in seemingly endless lockdown, having all the usual and expected troubles replacing the usual mechanisms for food distribution with ones that create far few opportunities to transmit the virus. But this is so much worse. China has, in a short period of time, flipped first from a one child policy, to a two child policy for some, to a two child policy for all, to a please have three policy, to making it incredibly difficult to get a vasectomy and increasing fear among young people that other forms of birth control, such as the pill, will also be taken away or severely limited.
And now, a pregnant woman cannot get care in an emergency that results in miscarriage, because of efforts taken to prevent transmission of covid.
That’s not, “we’re running out of vegetables”. That’s a deep fissure. That one is going to be trouble.