Re delaying the inevitable: Indeed, if we look at the cost of the lockdowns in terms of expenditure, lost income and of course the significant numbers of lost lives in December 2022 and January 2023, there seems to have been literally no upside to the approach taken.
At no time has there been any evidence to support the contention that draconian lockdowns of whole cities and even countries is an effective method of stopping community spread of infectious respiratory pathogens.
Unfortunately it is probably impossible to separate the isolate the effectiveness of sporadic lockdowns from the other measures adopted by China (mass comprehensive testing in combination with the quarantining of all cases and close contacts). We do however know that - after much trial and error - in the aggregate the measures adopted did manage to "stop community spread" and thus delay the Omicron tidal wave by almost exactly one year. How else can you explain this one year delay?
The constant emergence of cases in Wuhan, in Shanghai, in Beijing even after lockdown commenced proves absolutely that the lockdowns did not at any time stop community spread. That never happened.
Your claims contradict objective reality. After Shanghai's two month lockdown, cases really did fall to almost zero for several months thereafter. Moreover, you did not answer the question. How do you explain the one year delay?
That's a good question. I wonder, did anyone in New Zealand attempt to calculate the R0 rate at the time? I.e. how quickly did Omicron spread? According to the statistics on worldometers.info, at its peak on March 5, 2022, New Zealand recorded 4,248 new cases per 1 million inhabitants. By comparison, by mid December 2022, China probably had a daily new case rate about 10x this level. When did New Zealand actually cease attempting to use quarantines, lockdowns and the like to stop the spread? In other words, was the March 5th peak attained because the containment efforts failed, or because they were abandoned?
One explanation I found intriguing is that some illnesses are body cleanup processes. If your friends or family take ill, you yourself take ill as well, starting the cleanup in response to theirs. Kind of like throwing up, where the smell of vomit makes other people more likely to throw up. The smell of vomit is a non-verbal way to spread a warning about bad food.
Given its questionable origins, the Spanish flu might not be a good example to cite. As you may be aware, some analysts believe it was caused by vaccines given by the US Army. Newer data are likely to be more helpful.
Chinese national authorities have only published very scanty data related to Covid, though as mentioned in the article, local authorities are often more forthcoming. Some of the data from Ordos does also refer to transmission, for example. The article contains a hyperlink to an article with some of this data - albeit in Chinese.
Indeed, I read an analysis that vaccines caused the Spanish Flu. Someone commented that Wuhan had seen a vaccine rollout in the summar of 2019. This is a third explanation for the Wuhan deaths, in addition to a new illness or a staged propaganda event.
I haven't found any practical research into how Covid spreads. What I've found is all model based.
And that's one of the curious things about Covid. No new research institutions were founded, no new virology professors were hired, and no new funding was redirected to research departments.
Perhaps you are forgetting the vast numbers of human resources marshalled by the various Chinese health departments and their vendors? Are you sure that professors are the best source of innovation and research?
Well, I can't read Chinese, so I wouldn't know about Chinese health departments or their vendors. What studies into the method of Covid transmission did they come up with?
There's a LOT folks in other countries that do not know much about China. And, frankly, there's a LOT of reason to not trust whatever "official" stats or narratives come out of China. And, every other country! lol. We all appreciate your being able to provide information and context re. China, but there is no need to be defensive about it. I mean this in the most respectful way possible. Please just present info & context, but a defensive attitude is unnecessary, and may even be detrimental in some ways. We're ALL trying to figure things out! Thanks.
There's a lot to question re. COVID, and transmissibility is definitely one of them. Some medical and other folks (including psychologists) think that fear, including propaganda-induced fear, plus fear-induced stress, are much more powerful "pathogens" than previously realized, and may well explain a large percentage of illnesses experienced during this still-ongoing(!) Plandemic, as well as a large percentage of illness in general. The human mind is extremely powerful - and fear of something, especially an illness, often manifests in that something (illness) coming true. What we believe often comes to pass. In addition, less-than-adequate nutrition, exercise, and Vit. D, can all contribute significantly to how susceptible individuals are.
No "new" research institutions, virology professors, or funding was or is "needed" to get answers re. COVID... Why??? That's because this entire thing has been a DOD exercise. Initiated by DOD, funded by DOD, created at the behest of the DOD, planned & coordinated by the DOD. Yes, I'm speaking of both the virus and the "vaccines" which are NOT vaccines (see 26 US Code 4132 (a)(2) for THE Congressionally approved definition of vaccine). The "vaccines" are actually "countermeasures" - yes - bioweapons, to combat potentially or actually released bioweapons. The virus is a bioweapon, and so are the injections. WE ARE ALL THE DOD'S LAB RATS.
Feb 7, 2023·edited Feb 7, 2023Liked by Austrian China
Actually, "Spanish Flu" has been definitively traced back to US gov't labs, as a flu vaccine that actually transmitted the "live" virus, thus making people sick. Just like what had happened with numerous early batches of smallpox vaccine. And, just like what is happening with Billy Boy Gates' polio vaccine in India, I believe. And, "turtle" is correct - transmissibility between humans, and humans and animals, was NEVER successfully demonstrated for the SF - lots of evidence of that.
Two other tentative lessons might be mentioned, but data are still lacking:
1) The vaccines deployed in China (Sinovac, Sinopharm) did not seem to protect Chinese from getting infected with Omicron; however, the government has published no comparative data. Nor is there any data examining whether or not the vaccines had any measurable effect on the severity of illness.
2) Three years of energetic containment measures apparently led to a highly susceptible population. The result was an Omicron tsunami which washed across China, infecting hundreds of millions of people at record speed and resulting in the death of large numbers of elderly. Would fewer people have died if Covid-19 had not been held at bay for so long? The answer is not clear, but it is without a doubt a key question.
Taken from my response to an earlier comment of yours...
There's a lot to question re. COVID, and transmissibility is definitely one of them. Some medical and other folks (including psychologists) think that fear, including propaganda-induced fear, plus fear-induced stress, are much more powerful "pathogens" than previously realized, and may well explain a large percentage of illnesses experienced during this still-ongoing(!) Plandemic, as well as a large percentage of illness in general. The human mind is extremely powerful - and fear of something, especially an illness, often manifests in that something (illness) coming true. What we believe often comes to pass. In addition, less-than-adequate nutrition, exercise, and Vit. D, can all contribute significantly to how susceptible individuals are.
That is an interesting reminder of one of the major differences in testing between China and many other countries around the world. After 2020 China very rarely used nose swabs. Almost everything was back of tongue.
Hi, thanks for your articles. I have a question about this statement:
"in Shanghai the cremation backlog is so severe that as a rule, multiple corpses are now being cremated together, thus commingling the ashes."
I've never seen any credible evidence from any country that health services, including crematoria, really were overwhelmed. It was clear to me that backlogs, bed shortages etc. were due to the treatment of Covid-19 differently to other infectious agents i.e. obsessive quaranting, cleaning, bureaucratically-imposed staff absences and PPE practices. Do you know if this could be a factor in Shanghai?
PS I note in one of your answers to another comment on this article that lockdowns may have caused a kind of backlog of elderly deaths brought on by respiratory illness. My understanding is that much of China was not in extended lockdown throughout the pandemic? I had the misfortune to live in one of the lockdown centres of the world, the state of Victoria in Australia. Before Covid really took hold here in early 2022, we experienced waves of other respiratory infections like the flu, other colds and RSV each time we came out of a 4 month lockdown.
The available health care services were certainly not prepared to deal with the sudden demand, so most people simply had to do their best to cope at home. Keep in mind, hundreds of millions of people were infected all at once! This has never before happened in the history of humanity.
As mentioned in one of our articles published in December 2022, this would certainly have been much easier if the government had issued useful guidance regarding effective home treatment. Yet even with very limited helpful treatment, the overwhelming majority of those under 65 muddled through and eventually recovered on their own.
At the moment hospitals do not seem to be overrun, but anecdotal reports in combination with the crematoria situation hint that occupation rates must have been at capacity for quite a while. The government was clearly not interested in sharing this information. Prior to the government's capitulation in early December, hospitals were operating without any capacity issues. Was there ever a capacity issue, even back in February 2020 in Wuhan? Maybe, but it's hard to say given the paranoia going around at the time.
While the apparent very high mortality level among the elderly does indeed seem to be an outlier in comparison with rates registered elsewhere, given the lack of knowledge about effective treatment and the astronomical numbers of people without previous immunity who were infected within a very short period of time, frankly any other result (with regard to hospital capacity) would have been surprising, no?
As to your final question, for the most part in terms of duration lockdowns in China were never comparable to what went on in places like Victoria. Most were fairly short, with the 2 month long strict Shanghai lockdown being one of the longest. There were however a few exceptions, specifically the border cities like Ruili (next to Myanmar). As mentioned in the article, these cities seem to have had clouds of something infectious constantly wafting over the border, and as a result, had their economies shattered by the endlessly recurring lockdowns declared in response. In Ruili, the authorities depopulated an entire section of the city adjacent the border in a desperate attempt to stop the spread. Much of Xinjiang province suffered from travel restrictions for many months, but this was not really a lockdown comparable to what went on in, say, Shanghai. As for the rest of China, there was certainly a "backlog" of Omicron infections which under normal circumstances would have spread around the country a year earlier, but I am not aware of any data on rates of other respiratory illnesses. Even if such data exists, it's probably not meaningful, because hospitals were in no position to do normal data collection during the "pandemic" era.
The information on border areas is so interesting and illuminating! I guess I still don’t see the difference between Covid spreading around compared with a different bad cold or flu. Effective treatment was withheld in Australia as well but no medical system overwhelm… On the other hand a friend of mine got Covid whilst visiting family in India in very early 2022 and received a government-issued package containing many non-pharma ingredients like zinc and strong anti-microbial herbs which was obviously assessed by the authorities as needed. Thanks again for your work, it is much appreciated from one of the epicentres of anti-China hysteria.
Unfortunately hysteria about foreign menaces seems to be one of the most effective methods of distracting attention from real problems close at hand.
Although most strains of Covid do seem to be - at least on average - somewhat more dangerous than severe flus, probably the most glaring difference is the extremely high R0 value associated with Omicron. I would guess that its level of infectiousness is literally unprecedented in recent history. But with almost everyone in the world having already been exposed now, I would also venture to guess that this fact will decline in relevance, since most people already have at least a degree of natural immunity.
I agree that the phenomenon along the borders is extremely intriguing. As I recall the same thing also happened in Dandong along the border with North Korea, where this mysterious infectious substance was blowing across the Yalu river and apparently actually infecting people with Omicron. That is a long way - over 500 meters! I hope one day someone will come up with a plausible theory to explain what was going on.
Great analysis! Just a couple of thoughts below w/r to China.
How do we know that folks in China actually ran PCR-tests??? WE DON'T. WE CAN'T.
And, given that tens of thousands of swabs (or more) were taken daily in each city, for months on end, how could it be ensured that all samples even arrived at testing centers, were tested, tested properly and accurately, equipment properly maintained, instrumentation properly calibrated for each run, everything sufficiently stocked on time as needed, and all test results accurately matched back to the samples??? THAT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE/IMPROBABLE. (Check with Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame.)
Therefore, it's most likely that tests WERE run, though quite likely not as many as samples collected, but that "results" were most likely randomly selected. And, folks were notified of their test "results" via phone. How easy would that be to pull off??? VERY.
All the city (ward?) managers (sorry, I forget the exact term) were tyrants and incredibly inhumane to residents (having them welded into their apartment blocks, for example), and "cheated" and lied (like busing sick folks to other cities/wards), in order to be able to tell those above them that their city is compliant with Xi's demands of "zero COVID". What wouldn't they stoop to in order to keep up that narrative in order to not displease Xi??? NOTHING. NADA. BUTKUS.
We know for a very good reason: Because we lived in China while this was going on all around us. Enormous resources were devoted to the PCR testing regime and scores of companies sprung up to get a piece of the business. We even know the owner of one of these companies.
Just to cite one example: Only tens of thousands of tests per day in each city? This is off by a factor of several thousand. At least in the cities, millions of tests were really being done every day across the country, though usually on a 10:1 basis - i.e. ten test swabs were combined together to be analyzed. This reduced the processing requirement by a factor of at least 9. If a test came back positive, those ten people were all retested. All test results were viewable via various apps authorized to access the data.
Of course both careless and inadvertent mistakes were made, and some of the companies with contracts to process the tests did indeed occasionally cheat by producing false negative results. Some local party officials under pressure to report zero infections also tried to cheat, and some succeeded. As you imply, the government's demands of lower level officials were often both unfair and unrealistic, and such conditions indeed led to cheating. However cheating could only work sustainably in a scenario where there were no positive results were being produced. Actual positive results tended to reveal the cheating and severe consequences followed for the cheaters. In other words, that was not a sustainable business model.
To put matters another way: As we wrote multiple times before, the government's zero-Covid policy was a hopeless one, and the absurd demands imposed upon local officials were a subset of that policy. Luckily for us all, unrealistic policies tend to clash with reality, and reality almost always tends to win out in the end. Every time cheaters were discovered and exposed, it was a huge loss of face for the government. The same is true every time people died due to outrageous measures taken to implement the government's lockdowns - like dragging off feeble elderly people in the middle of the night. In the case of the above-referenced cheating, eventually that reality first forced the government to come up with more realistic expectations of officials. Then it forced them to scale back their draconian lockdown measures. And finally of course it forced them to give up their zero-Covid policy.
Generally speaking: Be wary of bogeyman stories about countries far away which you are told to hate and/or fear. All countries have issues, and China is no exception. But how often do these actually get shared on Western social media? Not very often. Instead, what circulates tends to be the sheer endless propaganda created to smear China. Among other things we try to help Western readers tell the difference between the fake reports and the real issues which rarely get reported on in the West. We can certainly understand that it is not easy.
Thank you for the correct information. My questions were not necessarily China-centric - I would have posed them no matter what country! Just the VOLUME of testing/tests alone invites many questions re. accuracy. And, rightly so. I'm a Geoscientist, completed a MSc in Geochemistry, worked in a water testing laboratory, and have studied numerous chemistry testing instruments and methodologies - such an incredible volume of testing/tests would raise many questions in anyone's mind with even basic knowledge of such things.
Just as an aside, corruption and draconian measures don't need to be "sustained" or "sustainable" to have major adverse effects, or lasting effects.
There's another reason why we know that the effects of cheating on test processing must have been limited: We know because the measures adopted, of which mass testing was an integral part, actually "succeeded" for almost an entire year in holding back the Omicron tidal wave.
Readers living in the West who are suspicious that they might not be getting an accurate picture of China might find our two part series on the 'China Dystopia' narrative to be enlightening. The first part is here:
I'm curious about what the basis is for this statement: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place. This can happen by direct human to human contact but also within buildings, especially between households above or below each other. From what was observed in southern Chinese border cities, it is hard to avoid concluding that some kind of infectious genetic matter was literally blowing across borders."
I no longer believe COVID illness is entirely virus-caused. The fear factor has been ramped up to 12, and the fear "porn" (propaganda) as well. People who are afraid of getting some illness often get it, essentially because they believed they would. The human mind is incredibly powerful. And, the symptoms of COVID are similar to many other common respiratory illnesses... Notice how colds, flus, and even pneumonias pretty much disappeared for 2 years? And, that now people are actually being diagnosed with them again? Coincidence?
Unless a genetic analysis was done on a phlegm sample to definitively ID the cause (like a specific virus or bacteria), doctors/other medical or healthcare folks are GUESSING based strictly on the symptoms & severity of symptoms. Period. A guessing game. That's the state of our medical system.
I am quite sure I was not afraid of Covid when I got it. On the contrary, we were quite aware of how to treat it so treatment was never an issue. We also know plenty of other people who were not fearful at all and got it all the same.
Regarding your claim of symptoms being similar to other respiratory illnesses: While there is obviously always going to be some overlap, the set of symptoms caused by the strains of Omicron which swept through Shanghai in April and through the rest of China in December seems to have been fairly unique. For example, sniffles were not a part of them, but coughing and throat pain were. Moreover, the overwhelming correspondence between symptoms and test results speak a clear language. I had colds and bouts of the flu off and on over the past three years just like before, none of which led me to test positive. (That said, the mass testing did not start in earnest until April of 2022, so prior to that my personal data was limited.)
When I got Covid, the symptoms were completely different than other respiratory viruses I've had (and I've had plenty). Even the congestion felt different.
I also had a few colds during the pandemic years, and none of them tested positive.
As we have often written, much data is indeed questionable. If the national government is to be believed, deaths "due" to Omicron were under 100,000. As elaborated in the article, this is not believable at all. What data are you referring to specifically?
At the same time Beijing has claimed 80% of the population has been infected/exposed to COVID, which would be ~1.1 Billion.
Obviously both numbers cannot be true, but if the 80% exposure rate is a valid claim, then China has had by far the most rapid spread of the virus of any country on earth.
Yet even the anecdotal data is challenging. The VP of Rumijin hospital in Shanghai has claimed ER/ED visits for COVID at over 1,600 per day--a tally which, if extrapolated across Shanghai's nearly 400 hospitals is hundreds of thousands of COVID cases per day for just that city. That is a rate which is not reflected by the reported data for any other country.
This was something that was apparent after the initial Wuhan lockdowns in 2020, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus moved beyond China: the actual severity of the outbreak outside of China has, in almost every case, been measurably less severe than what appears to have been the case inside China. Yet that is not a severity that is reflected even among the Asian-American demographic here in the US, despite there being a large contingent of ethnic Han Chinese.
Thus the conundrum: why is COVID so much worse inside China than outside? Is it merely being greatly misreported due to tainted, corrupt, made-up data? Is COVID legitimately causing greater public health impact in China than elsewhere in the world or is the reporting just that sloppy?
In theory, outside of variances in the overall health among national populations and various ethnic communities worldwide, we should expect to see broadly similar disease impacts as we go from nation to nation. We do not see that in mainland China.
At some point someone needs to put forward an explanation as to why that is.
Sometimes governments tell the truth; sometimes they lie. This is the same everywhere. Luckily for humanity there are lots of other sources of information we can use to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of these, the most reliable sources are always our own direct experiences as well as those of the people we know personally.
The information in the above article does not rely on any data from Beijing. For some reason you seem to doubt even "hundreds of thousands of COVID cases per day" for Shanghai. Real numbers were far higher. At the peak of the outbreak there were certainly over a million new cases per day in Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities.
Speculating why this might be so is certainly a meaningful question, but it's not one we are in a position to answer.
Step One: Establish what happened. This is what we did. Step Two: Look for explanations which fit the data. That remains to be done. One must always be careful not to fall into the trap of picking and choosing data based on its compatibility with one's expectations. That said, given that the policies adopted by China over the past three years were radically different from those implemented by other countries, is it logical to expect similar results?
You are in error. I am not doubting. I am stating that there is a fundamental divergence between what has been reported in China and what has been reported elsewhere, even anecdotally.
What is being presented is is different in China than it is anywhere else.
Basic biology, basic virology, basic epidemiology says that should not be the case--yet apparently it is.
My interpretation of 'success' of Chinese lockdown is not like yours. Quarantine of the young and healthy only delayed what turned out to be worse in terms of infectiousness and spread, and I believe the emotional impact of isolation, being deprived of effective treatment and comfort, love, and care from loved ones, killed far more medically vulnerable and frail elderly than would otherwise have happened. Isolation breaks the transmission line while you are isolated, but you are unable to get any normal pathogen challenges to maintain general up-to-date resistance and memory immunity, and no coronavirus exposures that can provide some cross-immunity, and then when isolation ends you're a sitting duck for Omicron or whatever else they manufactured without your political consent when it became clear that the original man-made strain wasn't infectious or deadly enough to achieve what was intended. Don't the case numbers show exactly that?
Thank you. However I think lockdowns do not and cannot 'work' if the term 'work' means 'action leading to beneficial product or result'. All the products and results of lockdown have been harmful IMO.
We certainly never supported them in any way. They are not compatible with basic human rights - end of story. That such unenlightened illiberal policies don't seem to lead to better outcomes, even from a collectivist bean counter perspective, should not surprise us either. Yet whether or not we support them does not change the facts on the ground. Two relevant facts mentioned above are: (1) that the Chinese health authorities did indeed figure out quite a bit about transmission paths and (2) that with dogged unrelenting efforts they amazingly did manage to TEMPORARILY stop the spread of Covid-19. Ultimately to no avail of course and as you note, at an astronomical price.
Given that the "CCP" is a term invented in the West, anything connected with it should indeed be considered potentially part of that same fantasy. We can't help you much there, however; best to stick with NTD and the Epoch Times for compatible material ;)
Hahaha. Certainly not as Marx or Lenin imagined it ;) For that matter, even back in socialist days (pre-1990) neither China nor the Soviet Union nor any country in Eastern Europe claimed to be "communist". Communism was always envisioned as the goal, not the status quo. The status quo was called "socialism". That theoretical differentiation still exists today.
In comparison with other major economies around the world, despite our current left-wing government, certainly China does not rank as a particularly socialist society. In economic terms, the US and Western Europe are far more socialist than China. Check out for example https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/which-country-has-the-larger-private-sector.
I should apologize for not explaining the reference to the term "CCP". The correct term for the ruling party in China is the "CPC". The term "CCP" seems to have been created by the Falungong (Epoch Times) people. Due to their endless brazen lying about China it tends to provoke allergic reactions among many.
As for the meaning of the word "communism" as used in the former "communist" countries this is not a matter of guessing minds. This is how it was always defined. This is however off topic so I will leave it at that.
Unfortunately for you and the word communism, it has NEVER matched the reality of Communist nations. There are ideals and then there are how selfish, idealistic humans actually do things.
“statistically speaking the correlation with the PCR test results was extremely high, a result some Western observers find very difficult to accept”. Thank you for this compelling case. In Australia, the virus/infectious agent was successfully contained for long periods of time via strict geographic isolation, and lockdowns when deemed necessary by the authorities. Nevertheless, and despite continued widespread and frenetic testing, resisters in Australia still overwhelmingly claimed the PCR test had something like a 1% positivity rate. I couldn’t find anyone here who would consider that our experience in Australia simply did not bear out the claim… It seemed they would prefer to latch onto any opposing idea to the official narrative instead of deal with the challenges that come with consistent rigour.
By a "1% positivity rate" you mean that 1% of all tests were coming back positive based on XX numbers of cycles? Does this also include people who had previously tested positive but were simply re-testing? If we compare that to the situation in say, Shanghai in late April of 2022, when the authorities were still losing their containment battle, the new positive rate in Shanghai at its peak was officially around 0.1%. If we allow for substantial fudging, maybe 0.15% at the most.
Sorry for any confusion, I'll try to explain again. Unless I am misinterpreting your point, in a nutshell, I was confirming the same experience here as you have pointed out about PCR tests. For long periods of time in Australia, there were no positive results from PCR tests at all, despite lots of testing! I think this demonstrates the ludicrousness of the assertion I often heard/hear in the freedom movement that there is a 1% false positivity rate at standard ct regimens. This claim seemed to be imported from outside the country, from places where Covid-19 was prevalent, making it impossible to judge. However, in Australia, the reality of many tests and very few positive results for long periods of time in 2020 and 2021, and often none, bears out your conclusion about the high level of accuracy of PCR tests. I don't know how many cycles were typically used but I did find this for one small territory, the ACT: that specimens from a high ct value may be repeated or combined with other epidemiological and clinical factors https://www.health.act.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-06/FOI21-14%20-%20CHS%20Response%20DISCLOSURE%20LOG.pdf
Oh and I doubt any notice would have been taken of whether the person had tested positive already because there were very few cases in Australia before late 2021.
Sounds indeed very similar to the experience in China up to December 2022. After that so many tests began to come back positive that the previous testing regime had to be completely jettisoned. (Previously for those without a history of previous infection 10 swabs were processed together each time to save resources.)
The vehemence with which many in Western resistance circles castigate PCR tests as useless/inaccurate often seems to have a religious flavor to it. It is curious that many seem to find it hard to accept that one can acknowledge the accuracy of the test results without supporting lockdowns and/or mass testing. It's like an "all or nothing" mentality. I am assuming you are implying that this was also the case in Australia.
We don't have this phenomenon at all in China, because (occasional mistakes aside) you would be hard put to find anyone who doubts the basic accuracy of the tests as they are currently interpreted. By the time that spring 2022 rolled around, there was no need to convince anyone of this because almost everyone had access to plenty of first and/or second hand evidence. I.e. by that point most people knew someone who had been infected among their friends and acquaintances. Of course few people appreciate the fact that this accuracy does NOT apply equally to test results from people who have already recovered from or are currently recovering from an infection, but this is a detail. As mentioned, the Chinese health department officials did acknowledge this to an extent by reducing the cycle threshold for this group to 35, and in some places in the end to 30. At the end of the day, what level (if any) can be applied reliably for such cases seems to remain unclear.
Feb 12, 2023·edited Feb 12, 2023Liked by Austrian China
Yes, that is what I've encountered within the resistance. Curious indeed, and very frustrating! It seems people in China are better at applying their rational faculties with consistence!
The question of the case of previous infection is very interesting . Something to think about and watch for, and whether it relates to natural immunity, something the CDC et al tried to disappear from the human experience and history of infectious disease.
This report confirms most of what I already knew, and confirmation bias is what trolls will call it!
Lockdowns are disastrous, at best all they do is delay the inevitable.
All lifeforms on earth do indeed shed toxins, and they are many methods of transmission, as toxicology often parallels virology.
Also, the testing likely isn't what they tell us, at best it shows DNA damage, or antibody activity, nothing more!
Re delaying the inevitable: Indeed, if we look at the cost of the lockdowns in terms of expenditure, lost income and of course the significant numbers of lost lives in December 2022 and January 2023, there seems to have been literally no upside to the approach taken.
At no time has there been any evidence to support the contention that draconian lockdowns of whole cities and even countries is an effective method of stopping community spread of infectious respiratory pathogens.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-disaster-of-lockdowns
Unfortunately it is probably impossible to separate the isolate the effectiveness of sporadic lockdowns from the other measures adopted by China (mass comprehensive testing in combination with the quarantining of all cases and close contacts). We do however know that - after much trial and error - in the aggregate the measures adopted did manage to "stop community spread" and thus delay the Omicron tidal wave by almost exactly one year. How else can you explain this one year delay?
The constant emergence of cases in Wuhan, in Shanghai, in Beijing even after lockdown commenced proves absolutely that the lockdowns did not at any time stop community spread. That never happened.
Your claims contradict objective reality. After Shanghai's two month lockdown, cases really did fall to almost zero for several months thereafter. Moreover, you did not answer the question. How do you explain the one year delay?
Wasn't the situation in New Zealand similar? As soon as they opened up, blam.
That's a good question. I wonder, did anyone in New Zealand attempt to calculate the R0 rate at the time? I.e. how quickly did Omicron spread? According to the statistics on worldometers.info, at its peak on March 5, 2022, New Zealand recorded 4,248 new cases per 1 million inhabitants. By comparison, by mid December 2022, China probably had a daily new case rate about 10x this level. When did New Zealand actually cease attempting to use quarantines, lockdowns and the like to stop the spread? In other words, was the March 5th peak attained because the containment efforts failed, or because they were abandoned?
You write: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place."
Studies that have looked for transmission have found none. If you take 10 people with flu and 100 without them, scientists have not found a way to get the 100 to pick up flu. They made them breathe in each other's face for minutes, fed them coughed-up slime, and even injected blood into their veins. https://medium.com/microbial-instincts/spread-of-spanish-flu-was-never-experimentally-confirmed-9f91b37c4dd8
One explanation I found intriguing is that some illnesses are body cleanup processes. If your friends or family take ill, you yourself take ill as well, starting the cleanup in response to theirs. Kind of like throwing up, where the smell of vomit makes other people more likely to throw up. The smell of vomit is a non-verbal way to spread a warning about bad food.
Studies of Omicron? Remember, that is what we are talking about here.
The example I linked is about the Spanish flu, back in 1918.
Where can I find studies on how Omicron is transmitted?
Given its questionable origins, the Spanish flu might not be a good example to cite. As you may be aware, some analysts believe it was caused by vaccines given by the US Army. Newer data are likely to be more helpful.
Chinese national authorities have only published very scanty data related to Covid, though as mentioned in the article, local authorities are often more forthcoming. Some of the data from Ordos does also refer to transmission, for example. The article contains a hyperlink to an article with some of this data - albeit in Chinese.
Indeed, I read an analysis that vaccines caused the Spanish Flu. Someone commented that Wuhan had seen a vaccine rollout in the summar of 2019. This is a third explanation for the Wuhan deaths, in addition to a new illness or a staged propaganda event.
I haven't found any practical research into how Covid spreads. What I've found is all model based.
And that's one of the curious things about Covid. No new research institutions were founded, no new virology professors were hired, and no new funding was redirected to research departments.
Perhaps you are forgetting the vast numbers of human resources marshalled by the various Chinese health departments and their vendors? Are you sure that professors are the best source of innovation and research?
Well, I can't read Chinese, so I wouldn't know about Chinese health departments or their vendors. What studies into the method of Covid transmission did they come up with?
There's a LOT folks in other countries that do not know much about China. And, frankly, there's a LOT of reason to not trust whatever "official" stats or narratives come out of China. And, every other country! lol. We all appreciate your being able to provide information and context re. China, but there is no need to be defensive about it. I mean this in the most respectful way possible. Please just present info & context, but a defensive attitude is unnecessary, and may even be detrimental in some ways. We're ALL trying to figure things out! Thanks.
There's a lot to question re. COVID, and transmissibility is definitely one of them. Some medical and other folks (including psychologists) think that fear, including propaganda-induced fear, plus fear-induced stress, are much more powerful "pathogens" than previously realized, and may well explain a large percentage of illnesses experienced during this still-ongoing(!) Plandemic, as well as a large percentage of illness in general. The human mind is extremely powerful - and fear of something, especially an illness, often manifests in that something (illness) coming true. What we believe often comes to pass. In addition, less-than-adequate nutrition, exercise, and Vit. D, can all contribute significantly to how susceptible individuals are.
No "new" research institutions, virology professors, or funding was or is "needed" to get answers re. COVID... Why??? That's because this entire thing has been a DOD exercise. Initiated by DOD, funded by DOD, created at the behest of the DOD, planned & coordinated by the DOD. Yes, I'm speaking of both the virus and the "vaccines" which are NOT vaccines (see 26 US Code 4132 (a)(2) for THE Congressionally approved definition of vaccine). The "vaccines" are actually "countermeasures" - yes - bioweapons, to combat potentially or actually released bioweapons. The virus is a bioweapon, and so are the injections. WE ARE ALL THE DOD'S LAB RATS.
See Sonya Latypova's discussion re. the jabs, starting at 38:51 (she also has LOTS of info & docs on her substack) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZqGGmHHPzY
And, re. the virus, see Dr. Richard Fleming's book, "Is COVID-19 a Bioweapon?", and his website - https://www.flemingmethod.com
Actually, "Spanish Flu" has been definitively traced back to US gov't labs, as a flu vaccine that actually transmitted the "live" virus, thus making people sick. Just like what had happened with numerous early batches of smallpox vaccine. And, just like what is happening with Billy Boy Gates' polio vaccine in India, I believe. And, "turtle" is correct - transmissibility between humans, and humans and animals, was NEVER successfully demonstrated for the SF - lots of evidence of that.
Two other tentative lessons might be mentioned, but data are still lacking:
1) The vaccines deployed in China (Sinovac, Sinopharm) did not seem to protect Chinese from getting infected with Omicron; however, the government has published no comparative data. Nor is there any data examining whether or not the vaccines had any measurable effect on the severity of illness.
2) Three years of energetic containment measures apparently led to a highly susceptible population. The result was an Omicron tsunami which washed across China, infecting hundreds of millions of people at record speed and resulting in the death of large numbers of elderly. Would fewer people have died if Covid-19 had not been held at bay for so long? The answer is not clear, but it is without a doubt a key question.
Taken from my response to an earlier comment of yours...
There's a lot to question re. COVID, and transmissibility is definitely one of them. Some medical and other folks (including psychologists) think that fear, including propaganda-induced fear, plus fear-induced stress, are much more powerful "pathogens" than previously realized, and may well explain a large percentage of illnesses experienced during this still-ongoing(!) Plandemic, as well as a large percentage of illness in general. The human mind is extremely powerful - and fear of something, especially an illness, often manifests in that something (illness) coming true. What we believe often comes to pass. In addition, less-than-adequate nutrition, exercise, and Vit. D, can all contribute significantly to how susceptible individuals are.
Lets look at the bright side - check out all the clean nostrils!
That is an interesting reminder of one of the major differences in testing between China and many other countries around the world. After 2020 China very rarely used nose swabs. Almost everything was back of tongue.
Mask science
https://geoffpain.substack.com/p/how-masks-capture-your-exhaled-covid19
Hi, thanks for your articles. I have a question about this statement:
"in Shanghai the cremation backlog is so severe that as a rule, multiple corpses are now being cremated together, thus commingling the ashes."
I've never seen any credible evidence from any country that health services, including crematoria, really were overwhelmed. It was clear to me that backlogs, bed shortages etc. were due to the treatment of Covid-19 differently to other infectious agents i.e. obsessive quaranting, cleaning, bureaucratically-imposed staff absences and PPE practices. Do you know if this could be a factor in Shanghai?
PS I note in one of your answers to another comment on this article that lockdowns may have caused a kind of backlog of elderly deaths brought on by respiratory illness. My understanding is that much of China was not in extended lockdown throughout the pandemic? I had the misfortune to live in one of the lockdown centres of the world, the state of Victoria in Australia. Before Covid really took hold here in early 2022, we experienced waves of other respiratory infections like the flu, other colds and RSV each time we came out of a 4 month lockdown.
The available health care services were certainly not prepared to deal with the sudden demand, so most people simply had to do their best to cope at home. Keep in mind, hundreds of millions of people were infected all at once! This has never before happened in the history of humanity.
As mentioned in one of our articles published in December 2022, this would certainly have been much easier if the government had issued useful guidance regarding effective home treatment. Yet even with very limited helpful treatment, the overwhelming majority of those under 65 muddled through and eventually recovered on their own.
At the moment hospitals do not seem to be overrun, but anecdotal reports in combination with the crematoria situation hint that occupation rates must have been at capacity for quite a while. The government was clearly not interested in sharing this information. Prior to the government's capitulation in early December, hospitals were operating without any capacity issues. Was there ever a capacity issue, even back in February 2020 in Wuhan? Maybe, but it's hard to say given the paranoia going around at the time.
While the apparent very high mortality level among the elderly does indeed seem to be an outlier in comparison with rates registered elsewhere, given the lack of knowledge about effective treatment and the astronomical numbers of people without previous immunity who were infected within a very short period of time, frankly any other result (with regard to hospital capacity) would have been surprising, no?
As to your final question, for the most part in terms of duration lockdowns in China were never comparable to what went on in places like Victoria. Most were fairly short, with the 2 month long strict Shanghai lockdown being one of the longest. There were however a few exceptions, specifically the border cities like Ruili (next to Myanmar). As mentioned in the article, these cities seem to have had clouds of something infectious constantly wafting over the border, and as a result, had their economies shattered by the endlessly recurring lockdowns declared in response. In Ruili, the authorities depopulated an entire section of the city adjacent the border in a desperate attempt to stop the spread. Much of Xinjiang province suffered from travel restrictions for many months, but this was not really a lockdown comparable to what went on in, say, Shanghai. As for the rest of China, there was certainly a "backlog" of Omicron infections which under normal circumstances would have spread around the country a year earlier, but I am not aware of any data on rates of other respiratory illnesses. Even if such data exists, it's probably not meaningful, because hospitals were in no position to do normal data collection during the "pandemic" era.
The information on border areas is so interesting and illuminating! I guess I still don’t see the difference between Covid spreading around compared with a different bad cold or flu. Effective treatment was withheld in Australia as well but no medical system overwhelm… On the other hand a friend of mine got Covid whilst visiting family in India in very early 2022 and received a government-issued package containing many non-pharma ingredients like zinc and strong anti-microbial herbs which was obviously assessed by the authorities as needed. Thanks again for your work, it is much appreciated from one of the epicentres of anti-China hysteria.
Unfortunately hysteria about foreign menaces seems to be one of the most effective methods of distracting attention from real problems close at hand.
Although most strains of Covid do seem to be - at least on average - somewhat more dangerous than severe flus, probably the most glaring difference is the extremely high R0 value associated with Omicron. I would guess that its level of infectiousness is literally unprecedented in recent history. But with almost everyone in the world having already been exposed now, I would also venture to guess that this fact will decline in relevance, since most people already have at least a degree of natural immunity.
I agree that the phenomenon along the borders is extremely intriguing. As I recall the same thing also happened in Dandong along the border with North Korea, where this mysterious infectious substance was blowing across the Yalu river and apparently actually infecting people with Omicron. That is a long way - over 500 meters! I hope one day someone will come up with a plausible theory to explain what was going on.
There were, and still are, medical/healthcare personnel shortages due to vaxx mandates...
You mean in the West?
Great analysis! Just a couple of thoughts below w/r to China.
How do we know that folks in China actually ran PCR-tests??? WE DON'T. WE CAN'T.
And, given that tens of thousands of swabs (or more) were taken daily in each city, for months on end, how could it be ensured that all samples even arrived at testing centers, were tested, tested properly and accurately, equipment properly maintained, instrumentation properly calibrated for each run, everything sufficiently stocked on time as needed, and all test results accurately matched back to the samples??? THAT'S MATHEMATICALLY IMPOSSIBLE/IMPROBABLE. (Check with Dr. Ian Malcolm of Jurassic Park fame.)
Therefore, it's most likely that tests WERE run, though quite likely not as many as samples collected, but that "results" were most likely randomly selected. And, folks were notified of their test "results" via phone. How easy would that be to pull off??? VERY.
All the city (ward?) managers (sorry, I forget the exact term) were tyrants and incredibly inhumane to residents (having them welded into their apartment blocks, for example), and "cheated" and lied (like busing sick folks to other cities/wards), in order to be able to tell those above them that their city is compliant with Xi's demands of "zero COVID". What wouldn't they stoop to in order to keep up that narrative in order to not displease Xi??? NOTHING. NADA. BUTKUS.
We know for a very good reason: Because we lived in China while this was going on all around us. Enormous resources were devoted to the PCR testing regime and scores of companies sprung up to get a piece of the business. We even know the owner of one of these companies.
Just to cite one example: Only tens of thousands of tests per day in each city? This is off by a factor of several thousand. At least in the cities, millions of tests were really being done every day across the country, though usually on a 10:1 basis - i.e. ten test swabs were combined together to be analyzed. This reduced the processing requirement by a factor of at least 9. If a test came back positive, those ten people were all retested. All test results were viewable via various apps authorized to access the data.
Of course both careless and inadvertent mistakes were made, and some of the companies with contracts to process the tests did indeed occasionally cheat by producing false negative results. Some local party officials under pressure to report zero infections also tried to cheat, and some succeeded. As you imply, the government's demands of lower level officials were often both unfair and unrealistic, and such conditions indeed led to cheating. However cheating could only work sustainably in a scenario where there were no positive results were being produced. Actual positive results tended to reveal the cheating and severe consequences followed for the cheaters. In other words, that was not a sustainable business model.
To put matters another way: As we wrote multiple times before, the government's zero-Covid policy was a hopeless one, and the absurd demands imposed upon local officials were a subset of that policy. Luckily for us all, unrealistic policies tend to clash with reality, and reality almost always tends to win out in the end. Every time cheaters were discovered and exposed, it was a huge loss of face for the government. The same is true every time people died due to outrageous measures taken to implement the government's lockdowns - like dragging off feeble elderly people in the middle of the night. In the case of the above-referenced cheating, eventually that reality first forced the government to come up with more realistic expectations of officials. Then it forced them to scale back their draconian lockdown measures. And finally of course it forced them to give up their zero-Covid policy.
Generally speaking: Be wary of bogeyman stories about countries far away which you are told to hate and/or fear. All countries have issues, and China is no exception. But how often do these actually get shared on Western social media? Not very often. Instead, what circulates tends to be the sheer endless propaganda created to smear China. Among other things we try to help Western readers tell the difference between the fake reports and the real issues which rarely get reported on in the West. We can certainly understand that it is not easy.
Thank you for the correct information. My questions were not necessarily China-centric - I would have posed them no matter what country! Just the VOLUME of testing/tests alone invites many questions re. accuracy. And, rightly so. I'm a Geoscientist, completed a MSc in Geochemistry, worked in a water testing laboratory, and have studied numerous chemistry testing instruments and methodologies - such an incredible volume of testing/tests would raise many questions in anyone's mind with even basic knowledge of such things.
Just as an aside, corruption and draconian measures don't need to be "sustained" or "sustainable" to have major adverse effects, or lasting effects.
There's another reason why we know that the effects of cheating on test processing must have been limited: We know because the measures adopted, of which mass testing was an integral part, actually "succeeded" for almost an entire year in holding back the Omicron tidal wave.
Readers living in the West who are suspicious that they might not be getting an accurate picture of China might find our two part series on the 'China Dystopia' narrative to be enlightening. The first part is here:
https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/china-dystopia-psyop
Thank you! I'll definitely watch that.
We added some info to the above response regarding the cheating issue, which indeed was real. Thanks for raising this question.
I'm curious about what the basis is for this statement: "Without a shred of a doubt, transmission of some illness-causing factor is taking place. This can happen by direct human to human contact but also within buildings, especially between households above or below each other. From what was observed in southern Chinese border cities, it is hard to avoid concluding that some kind of infectious genetic matter was literally blowing across borders."
Can you elaborate?
Did you see the response to the questions posed earlier by Lorraine Pratley? This response included some additional details.
I no longer believe COVID illness is entirely virus-caused. The fear factor has been ramped up to 12, and the fear "porn" (propaganda) as well. People who are afraid of getting some illness often get it, essentially because they believed they would. The human mind is incredibly powerful. And, the symptoms of COVID are similar to many other common respiratory illnesses... Notice how colds, flus, and even pneumonias pretty much disappeared for 2 years? And, that now people are actually being diagnosed with them again? Coincidence?
Unless a genetic analysis was done on a phlegm sample to definitively ID the cause (like a specific virus or bacteria), doctors/other medical or healthcare folks are GUESSING based strictly on the symptoms & severity of symptoms. Period. A guessing game. That's the state of our medical system.
I am quite sure I was not afraid of Covid when I got it. On the contrary, we were quite aware of how to treat it so treatment was never an issue. We also know plenty of other people who were not fearful at all and got it all the same.
Regarding your claim of symptoms being similar to other respiratory illnesses: While there is obviously always going to be some overlap, the set of symptoms caused by the strains of Omicron which swept through Shanghai in April and through the rest of China in December seems to have been fairly unique. For example, sniffles were not a part of them, but coughing and throat pain were. Moreover, the overwhelming correspondence between symptoms and test results speak a clear language. I had colds and bouts of the flu off and on over the past three years just like before, none of which led me to test positive. (That said, the mass testing did not start in earnest until April of 2022, so prior to that my personal data was limited.)
When I got Covid, the symptoms were completely different than other respiratory viruses I've had (and I've had plenty). Even the congestion felt different.
I also had a few colds during the pandemic years, and none of them tested positive.
The biggest problem with the data from China is that much of it simply makes no sense.
To take the Chinese data at face value, we have to ponder why COVID-19 is so much worse inside China than outside.
https://newsletter.allfactsmatter.us/p/the-continuing-epic-fail-corporate
Unless we address that reliance on China’s COVID data is simply unwise.
As we have often written, much data is indeed questionable. If the national government is to be believed, deaths "due" to Omicron were under 100,000. As elaborated in the article, this is not believable at all. What data are you referring to specifically?
Pretty much all the data reported by Beijing.
The total number of Covid cases is reported to be ~2 million people
https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2020-03-01..latest&facet=none&pickerSort=asc&pickerMetric=location&Metric=Confirmed+cases&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~CHN
At the same time Beijing has claimed 80% of the population has been infected/exposed to COVID, which would be ~1.1 Billion.
Obviously both numbers cannot be true, but if the 80% exposure rate is a valid claim, then China has had by far the most rapid spread of the virus of any country on earth.
Yet even the anecdotal data is challenging. The VP of Rumijin hospital in Shanghai has claimed ER/ED visits for COVID at over 1,600 per day--a tally which, if extrapolated across Shanghai's nearly 400 hospitals is hundreds of thousands of COVID cases per day for just that city. That is a rate which is not reflected by the reported data for any other country.
This was something that was apparent after the initial Wuhan lockdowns in 2020, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus moved beyond China: the actual severity of the outbreak outside of China has, in almost every case, been measurably less severe than what appears to have been the case inside China. Yet that is not a severity that is reflected even among the Asian-American demographic here in the US, despite there being a large contingent of ethnic Han Chinese.
Thus the conundrum: why is COVID so much worse inside China than outside? Is it merely being greatly misreported due to tainted, corrupt, made-up data? Is COVID legitimately causing greater public health impact in China than elsewhere in the world or is the reporting just that sloppy?
In theory, outside of variances in the overall health among national populations and various ethnic communities worldwide, we should expect to see broadly similar disease impacts as we go from nation to nation. We do not see that in mainland China.
At some point someone needs to put forward an explanation as to why that is.
Sometimes governments tell the truth; sometimes they lie. This is the same everywhere. Luckily for humanity there are lots of other sources of information we can use to separate the wheat from the chaff. Of these, the most reliable sources are always our own direct experiences as well as those of the people we know personally.
The information in the above article does not rely on any data from Beijing. For some reason you seem to doubt even "hundreds of thousands of COVID cases per day" for Shanghai. Real numbers were far higher. At the peak of the outbreak there were certainly over a million new cases per day in Shanghai, Beijing and other major cities.
Speculating why this might be so is certainly a meaningful question, but it's not one we are in a position to answer.
Step One: Establish what happened. This is what we did. Step Two: Look for explanations which fit the data. That remains to be done. One must always be careful not to fall into the trap of picking and choosing data based on its compatibility with one's expectations. That said, given that the policies adopted by China over the past three years were radically different from those implemented by other countries, is it logical to expect similar results?
You are in error. I am not doubting. I am stating that there is a fundamental divergence between what has been reported in China and what has been reported elsewhere, even anecdotally.
What is being presented is is different in China than it is anywhere else.
Basic biology, basic virology, basic epidemiology says that should not be the case--yet apparently it is.
Perhaps so... which should make finding out why even more intriguing, no?
My interpretation of 'success' of Chinese lockdown is not like yours. Quarantine of the young and healthy only delayed what turned out to be worse in terms of infectiousness and spread, and I believe the emotional impact of isolation, being deprived of effective treatment and comfort, love, and care from loved ones, killed far more medically vulnerable and frail elderly than would otherwise have happened. Isolation breaks the transmission line while you are isolated, but you are unable to get any normal pathogen challenges to maintain general up-to-date resistance and memory immunity, and no coronavirus exposures that can provide some cross-immunity, and then when isolation ends you're a sitting duck for Omicron or whatever else they manufactured without your political consent when it became clear that the original man-made strain wasn't infectious or deadly enough to achieve what was intended. Don't the case numbers show exactly that?
Are you sure we disagree? For the most part your take sounds accurate to me.
Thank you. However I think lockdowns do not and cannot 'work' if the term 'work' means 'action leading to beneficial product or result'. All the products and results of lockdown have been harmful IMO.
We certainly never supported them in any way. They are not compatible with basic human rights - end of story. That such unenlightened illiberal policies don't seem to lead to better outcomes, even from a collectivist bean counter perspective, should not surprise us either. Yet whether or not we support them does not change the facts on the ground. Two relevant facts mentioned above are: (1) that the Chinese health authorities did indeed figure out quite a bit about transmission paths and (2) that with dogged unrelenting efforts they amazingly did manage to TEMPORARILY stop the spread of Covid-19. Ultimately to no avail of course and as you note, at an astronomical price.
There is only one lesson to be learned from the Chinese Covid experiment. Do not trust any information coming out of the CCP ruled country.
Given that the "CCP" is a term invented in the West, anything connected with it should indeed be considered potentially part of that same fantasy. We can't help you much there, however; best to stick with NTD and the Epoch Times for compatible material ;)
So... China is NOT communist, in any way, shape, or form??? Now who's fantasizing???
Hahaha. Certainly not as Marx or Lenin imagined it ;) For that matter, even back in socialist days (pre-1990) neither China nor the Soviet Union nor any country in Eastern Europe claimed to be "communist". Communism was always envisioned as the goal, not the status quo. The status quo was called "socialism". That theoretical differentiation still exists today.
In comparison with other major economies around the world, despite our current left-wing government, certainly China does not rank as a particularly socialist society. In economic terms, the US and Western Europe are far more socialist than China. Check out for example https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/which-country-has-the-larger-private-sector.
Do you think you can read Marx or Lenin's mind just from their writings?? People seem to forget they were very good at lying, er Propaganda...
I would note that Xi has been taking the CCP back to their authoritarian roots lately.
I should apologize for not explaining the reference to the term "CCP". The correct term for the ruling party in China is the "CPC". The term "CCP" seems to have been created by the Falungong (Epoch Times) people. Due to their endless brazen lying about China it tends to provoke allergic reactions among many.
As for the meaning of the word "communism" as used in the former "communist" countries this is not a matter of guessing minds. This is how it was always defined. This is however off topic so I will leave it at that.
Unfortunately for you and the word communism, it has NEVER matched the reality of Communist nations. There are ideals and then there are how selfish, idealistic humans actually do things.
“statistically speaking the correlation with the PCR test results was extremely high, a result some Western observers find very difficult to accept”. Thank you for this compelling case. In Australia, the virus/infectious agent was successfully contained for long periods of time via strict geographic isolation, and lockdowns when deemed necessary by the authorities. Nevertheless, and despite continued widespread and frenetic testing, resisters in Australia still overwhelmingly claimed the PCR test had something like a 1% positivity rate. I couldn’t find anyone here who would consider that our experience in Australia simply did not bear out the claim… It seemed they would prefer to latch onto any opposing idea to the official narrative instead of deal with the challenges that come with consistent rigour.
By a "1% positivity rate" you mean that 1% of all tests were coming back positive based on XX numbers of cycles? Does this also include people who had previously tested positive but were simply re-testing? If we compare that to the situation in say, Shanghai in late April of 2022, when the authorities were still losing their containment battle, the new positive rate in Shanghai at its peak was officially around 0.1%. If we allow for substantial fudging, maybe 0.15% at the most.
Bear out which claim?
Sorry for any confusion, I'll try to explain again. Unless I am misinterpreting your point, in a nutshell, I was confirming the same experience here as you have pointed out about PCR tests. For long periods of time in Australia, there were no positive results from PCR tests at all, despite lots of testing! I think this demonstrates the ludicrousness of the assertion I often heard/hear in the freedom movement that there is a 1% false positivity rate at standard ct regimens. This claim seemed to be imported from outside the country, from places where Covid-19 was prevalent, making it impossible to judge. However, in Australia, the reality of many tests and very few positive results for long periods of time in 2020 and 2021, and often none, bears out your conclusion about the high level of accuracy of PCR tests. I don't know how many cycles were typically used but I did find this for one small territory, the ACT: that specimens from a high ct value may be repeated or combined with other epidemiological and clinical factors https://www.health.act.gov.au/sites/default/files/2021-06/FOI21-14%20-%20CHS%20Response%20DISCLOSURE%20LOG.pdf
Oh and I doubt any notice would have been taken of whether the person had tested positive already because there were very few cases in Australia before late 2021.
Thanks for the clarification.
Sounds indeed very similar to the experience in China up to December 2022. After that so many tests began to come back positive that the previous testing regime had to be completely jettisoned. (Previously for those without a history of previous infection 10 swabs were processed together each time to save resources.)
The vehemence with which many in Western resistance circles castigate PCR tests as useless/inaccurate often seems to have a religious flavor to it. It is curious that many seem to find it hard to accept that one can acknowledge the accuracy of the test results without supporting lockdowns and/or mass testing. It's like an "all or nothing" mentality. I am assuming you are implying that this was also the case in Australia.
We don't have this phenomenon at all in China, because (occasional mistakes aside) you would be hard put to find anyone who doubts the basic accuracy of the tests as they are currently interpreted. By the time that spring 2022 rolled around, there was no need to convince anyone of this because almost everyone had access to plenty of first and/or second hand evidence. I.e. by that point most people knew someone who had been infected among their friends and acquaintances. Of course few people appreciate the fact that this accuracy does NOT apply equally to test results from people who have already recovered from or are currently recovering from an infection, but this is a detail. As mentioned, the Chinese health department officials did acknowledge this to an extent by reducing the cycle threshold for this group to 35, and in some places in the end to 30. At the end of the day, what level (if any) can be applied reliably for such cases seems to remain unclear.
Yes, that is what I've encountered within the resistance. Curious indeed, and very frustrating! It seems people in China are better at applying their rational faculties with consistence!
The question of the case of previous infection is very interesting . Something to think about and watch for, and whether it relates to natural immunity, something the CDC et al tried to disappear from the human experience and history of infectious disease.