Protests hasten Chinese exit from zero-Covid policy

Asia Times ^

[FarCenter]

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The traditional Chinese vaccines such as Sinovac proved not only far less effective against the original Covid variants, but nearly totally ineffective against omicron and incapable of mitigating infection severity. As omicron hit, China was left without defenses other than lockdown affecting hundreds of millions of people.

So now what? With the specter of another Shanghai-type lockdown looming in several major cities and protests growing, all signs are that the new CPC leadership team around premier-designate Li Qiang has pushed for, and is determined to chart, a path to live with Covid – as most of the world has done.

The plan is to concentrate all efforts on treatment of the disease – minimizing deaths rather than pursuing ultimately futile measures of prevention, which have become a major economic and political liability.

During his early November visit to Beijing, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz took along 12 CEOs of major German companies, among them Ugur Sahin, head of the Mainz-based BioNTech vaccine maker. That was hardly an accident. German-Chinese collaboration in implementation of a key element in China’s new Covid policy is in the works.

Stock investors caught wind of the imminent shift in Chinese Covid policy, bidding up mRNA stocks aggressively at midday in the US Monday session. BioNTech rose sharply in the morning after Reuters reported that the German government is working to ensure that the German firm, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine, advances its joint venture with its Chinese partner.

Hours later the largest US manufacturer of mRNA vaccines, Catalent, jumped as investors calculated that China would draw upon spare capacity in the world pharmaceutical industry to buy hundreds of millions of doses.

[Robert DeLong]

I see no evidence of that, yet. The Chinese people are starting to fight back, but will they be successful? That remains to be seen.

The American people seem to think this will never happen here, but apparently they have not been paying much attention to what has transpired in this country in the last 2+ years.

[circlecity]

That’s why they are so set on disarming us - they know this is coming here.

[Robert DeLong]

But of course that is why they are trying desperately to disarm us.