Lian Qingchuan

26/12/2022

This is an article questioning the current epidemic situation and policy. But before I begin, I have to give a lengthy preamble so that my position is perfectly clear.

The first of all: in August 2021, I wrote an article arguing that we should begin to consider herd immunity. At that time the virus had mutated into the Delta strain and had not yet become Omicron. Yet the UK and the US had already fully reopened, and their herd immunity policies were taking effect.

A typical case was the European Championship, where tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of fans gathered in stadiums, rarely wearing masks for protection, and yet it did not trigger any serious health concerns.

The results derived from the herd immunity policies of the UK and the US were later widely adopted by other countries. Europe, Australia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and more than 100 countries adopted herd immunity policies one after another, and the world gradually returned to normalization. Vietnam, which adopted it later, did not suffer social chaos either; on the contrary, after opening up, it gradually took over many of China’s supply chain arrangements and became favored in the economy.

As of today, I am still in the “netherworld” (still testing negative). But several members of my family have already tested positive, including my wife.

I looked after her for many days and didn’t even wear a mask. I harbor no illusions of luck; I know that sooner or later I will get it too. With some luck I might get away with being asymptomatic, which would be a joy beyond words.

But whatever happens, and whatever happens to me, I have no regrets about implementing herd immunity or about doing it earlier, and I wholeheartedly support it.

As long as we are free, we have many possibilities. We can seek doctors and medicine, withdraw from the world, or stockpile food and medicine and maximize self-defense, and of course, we can willingly isolate ourselves for three to five years.

In the end, freedom is the most precious thing. If I have made every preparation and taken every protective measure and the Death still finds me, then I will have no complaint or regrets; life and death are fated, yet I want freedom. In a lifetime a person may encounter eleven thousand ways to die, and one of them will find you sooner or later. What is there to complain about?

The second piece of background: at the end of November, when the signs of reopening had become very clear, I had a discussion with my colleagues at Bingchuan, focused on the word “reopening” (放开). It is a very ambiguous word. Because to endorse reopening is, in effect, to be assumed to endorse lockdowns. If one at this point has any reservations about reopening, it seems to equate to endorsing lockdowns or even zero-COVID.

Therefore, we jointly concluded that “reopening” is a deceptive word, one that should never have become a description of a policy. More accurate is to speak of epidemic prevention policy, the question of which epidemic prevention policy to adopt. Zero-COVID should never have been a policy, lockdown should never have been a measure, and reopening should never be an evasion after policy failure.

Starting from Wuhan, I have been a firm opponent of lockdowns. A responsible and capable structure, one subject to oversight, would never dare to place tens of millions of people in helplessness, confinement, and a fend-for-yourself existence. And afterwards, the roulette-wheel lockdowns across the country, in megacities including Shanghai, Chengdu, and Xi’an; medium-sized cities like Yangzhou and Urumqi; and small cities like Ruili, with hardly a city escaping, were a cruelty unheard of in five thousand years of history and across ten thousand miles of land.

Therefore, all the citywide and partial lockdowns lacked both legal basis and reasonableness. Hence, “reopening” is a deception; to some extent it conceals the nature of lockdown as bad governance.

With the two points above, I want to state one attitude clearly: lockdowns are unreasonable, and herd immunity is a policy that should have been carried out long ago.

1.

This winter is extremely harsh. In the short span of less than one month, bad news has been reaching our ears without cease. In the news, the mother of the actor Wang Jinsong, whom I like, the father of the celebrity Fan Deng, the father-in-law of the socialist economist Hu Angang, the designer Wu Guanying, Zhou Zhichun, former deputy editor-in-chief of China Youth Daily… have all passed away one after another.

What we see in the news is only a thin sharp tip of the iceberg, and beneath the surface, who knows how large the hidden part is.

Even judging by this thin tip, the age range is very broad: there are centenarians, there are people in their forties and fifties in their prime, and there are young people too. So what the virus attacks and kills is not just a single group.

Because the criteria for COVID deaths have been temporarily modified, the number of people who truly die in this disaster may forever remain a mystery. But the probabilities can of course still be calculated; it is just that clear data will probably not appear now or in the short term, and must be left to virologists and future historians to study.

Many epidemic-prevention enthusiasts will use the above data, facts and situation to argue how correct zero-COVID and lockdowns were, and how many Chinese people the so-called lockdown policy saved.

Stop right there. The creation of the above tragedies is not because zero-COVID and lockdowns were so wise, but because the current policy is one of letting go, giving up and indulgence. Strictly speaking, it isn’t even a policy; it is letting it rot.

First of all, stop playing word games. Stop using ambiguous expressions like “the so-and-so measures” and “reopening.” Can we openly and correctly use a scientific term that fits policy language, such as “herd immunity”?

To this day, there is still no authoritative, public data telling the public what the infection rate of society as a whole has reached. A NetEase article once mentioned that at the National Health Commission’s teleconference on the 21st, it was said that from December 1 to 20, the cumulative number of infections nationwide was 248 million, a cumulative infection rate of 17.56%, with Beijing and Sichuan both exceeding 50%.

At a hospital in Shanghai where I sought treatment, a doctor told me the internal data: the infection rate among the hospital’s medical staff had exceeded 50% by the 22nd.

In a group I belong to of 15 people from all over the country, 92% are already infected.

Everyone can compile their own statistics and estimate the number of infections in various ways.

But the question is: why should we have to estimate on our own? Why can’t the infection data be made public, and a herd immunity policy be announced?

A herd immunity policy is not a policy of letting it rot; it must have a clear plan and direction.

The present situation is clearly herd immunity without plan or management, with the whole country scrambling to “peak.” In the monitoring of many media outlets and data institutions, the number of infections is growing geometrically. But what is the purpose of the peak? Under what management is the peak reached? What medical reserves does reaching the peak require? How great a price will reaching the peak exact? What accidents will occur during the peak, for example virus mutation, or, as rumor has it these past two days, the fact that the Delta strain still exists in the northern regions?

It seems that not a single province or city, including China’s highest epidemic command bodies, the National Health Commission and the CDC, has a clear goal or picture in mind.

Herd immunity has become a process of blind men feeling an elephant.

But real herd immunity is surely not such a disorderly, cost-be-damned, scramble-for-first-place peak. What proportion of the population must be infected to reach the immunity effect? What preparations and measures does the public need to make for herd immunity? What roles should governments at all levels, public health departments, grassroots organizations and communities play in a herd immunity policy? How should medicines be stockpiled and allocated? How should high-risk groups be registered and protected? What different measures should be taken to guard against different underlying conditions? How can the virus be prevented from mutating again? How should symptomatic and asymptomatic cases be distinguished?

The preparation, emergency response and reserves that herd immunity requires are extremely detailed and enormous. Herd immunity does not mean letting the public tough it out with bare-handed flesh and blood; it must be premised on sufficient medicine, medical care and defenses, avoiding excessively high rates of severe illness and death.

Publicly declaring a herd immunity policy is both an announcement to the public and a way to give the public a clear-headed awareness, so that, while relying on state institutions, they can also make sufficient preparations to protect themselves.

The public is unaware, unprepared and uninformed; the Dabai (the hazmat-suited workers) who were everywhere and bossing people around vanished overnight, leaving a bare-handed public and exhausted hospitals. Is this still herd immunity? This is herd infection.

2.

This winter. This is winter.

Over the past three years we have all been thoroughly taught that winter is when epidemic rebounds are fiercest.

Yet it was only in late November, when winter had already begun, that a herd immunity policy was adopted?

I still insist on the reasonableness of the herd immunity policy. Summer is more reasonable than winter; this is a natural principle, and also a basic piece of knowledge we have learned over three years of the epidemic.

But if the best timing has been missed, then entering herd immunity in winter is not unacceptable.

However, by the same logic, whenever one enters herd immunity mode, one must have sufficient preparation. And entering in winter requires even more sufficient preparation.

So the question is: why was herd immunity mode entered only in November? What were the policy considerations behind it? What was the basis for making this decision? What preparations were made when this decision was made? Were medical institutions adequately informed, trained and resupplied? Is there enough medicine? Do high-risk groups have an emergency mechanism?

Speculation takes many forms. For example, that before November there had in fact already been relatively large-scale infection. For example, that there was large-scale falsification of nucleic acid test results.

These may be speculation, or they may be rumors; I am unwilling to believe any of them.

But the answer I still cannot get is: why? Do we not deserve an explanation?

Even if there is no explanation, I will accept it. But given the following facts, can we get a reasonable response:

Infections in the north are higher than in the south; shouldn’t the north receive a full tilt of medical resources? Symptoms in the north are more severe than in the south; can the authorities give more thorough guidance, telling the public in the north how to deal with more severe symptoms? What symptoms should be handled in what way?

On many social media platforms I have seen that funeral homes, including those in Beijing, are already running at full capacity, with prices soaring. Shouldn’t the authorities also respond to this and try to solve it?

In the north, and in those provinces, cities and municipalities with higher infection rates, can there be thorough guidance on how to avoid infecting oneself while caring for infected family members? For someone like me, whose family members have been infected for many days while I have not yet been, how can I avoid infection, or, if it is unavoidable, can I hope it will be asymptomatic? Can someone help me achieve adequate self-protection and self-confirmation?

And even in the south, how should children and the elderly, the vulnerable groups, be protected? For high-risk elderly people and those with underlying conditions, how can they be protected as much as possible? Which symptoms can be handled at home, and which symptoms mean going to hospital immediately?

Rumor has it that elderly people’s symptoms may not be like those of the young and strong, and may not include fever. Or that some symptoms overlap with underlying conditions. How can they be distinguished? Can someone help distinguish them?

All of these are related to winter. Why, having entered winter, do we feel only the endless cruelty of winter and the rampage of mass infection, but not any hope of immunity?

This winter, how does the herd become immune?

3.

I was mocked by a colleague, who said I am a “keyboard warrior” (口炮党).

Thinking about it, it is indeed shameful. I began raising herd immunity in August 2021, yet when herd immunity truly began, I had almost no preparation.

My wife, who is more alert, had prepared ibuprofen and a pulse oximeter. But that was all. With help from many people, I finally got ibuprofen and acetaminophen. But last night, when discussing in the group, someone mentioned the need for electrolyte water, and I was once again bewildered, because I had not prepared that either.

Dr. Miao Xiaohui said that after reopening he called out loudly: stay calm, how could antipyretics and analgesics possibly run short? “And the result? Just like ‘how could air possibly run short,’ such a mature question, unexpectedly it really did run short, and in a mature way.”

He is a doctor. Even he is short of medicine.

I want to ask: why was there no preparation at all when herd immunity had already been decided?

In July 2021, Zhang Wenhong was concerned with three issues: vaccines needed to be widely administered, because although (the Delta variant at the time) could penetrate vaccines, vaccines played a sufficient role in preventing severe illness and death. For the elderly, it was all the more a matter of vaccinating everyone who should be vaccinated.

ICUs needed to be built in large numbers, because even in Shanghai, ICU beds were very scarce.

Personal protection still had to be done.

Yet today, after nearly a year and a half, vaccination rates have not seen a qualitative breakthrough compared with then. Especially among the elderly, vaccination has not been sufficient.

According to Medical Circle (《医学界》), a relatively authoritative Chinese medical outlet, from March to mid-December 2022, the full-course vaccination rate among people over 60 in China rose only from 80.27% to 86.6%; the full-course booster rate among those over 80 was only 66.4%, with 15.153 million having completed booster immunization, only 40%.

On ICU beds there are two different sets of figures. In general news reports, China had a total of 67,000 ICU beds in 2021, 4.8 ICU beds per 100,000 people, while the US has 34 per 100,000 and Germany 29.2 per 100,000. Medical Circle reports that 2021 saw an increase of 3,624 over the previous year.

On November 17, Guo Yanhong, director of the Emergency Response Department of the National Health Commission, put forward the requirement that “ICU beds should reach 10% of total beds.” What does that mean? It means requiring the national total of ICU beds to reach 143,000, a gap of nearly 80,000, more than half.

But on December 9, at a press conference of the State Council joint prevention and control mechanism, Jiao Yahui, director of the Department of Medical Administration of the National Health Commission, said that the nationwide total of critical care beds is currently 138,100, of which 106,500 are in tertiary medical institutions. Critical care beds are close to the level of 10 per 100,000 people.

As a medical layman, I don’t know where the difference between Director Guo and Director Jiao lies, or what word game is hidden in it. My instinct tells me that for ICU beds in hospitals to have doubled in one year, while the whole country was caught up in a frenzy of lockdowns and nucleic acid tests, is simply a fairy tale.

And on December 1, the Wall Street Journal reported that as more resources were poured into epidemic prevention over the past two years, the pace of China’s healthcare resource construction slowed starting in 2021. The growth rate of intensive care beds slowed from nearly 9% the previous year to 5.8% in 2021.

Interestingly, in April this year, an article on Guancha.cn opposing China “lying flat” already judged China’s ICU scarcity in its title: “After Lying Flat, 150 Million People Will Be Unable to Be Hospitalized, 3.5 People Fighting for One ICU Bed.”

The article calculated very clearly:

“At the peak of the US epidemic, the proportion of ICU capacity occupied by critically ill COVID patients was about 30.4%. Based on this estimate, and considering that the US ICU density per 100,000 people is about 9 times China’s, if China and the US had roughly the same proportion of cases, the ICU occupancy demand at China’s Omicron peak would be 273.6%, so China’s ICU bed gap would be about 173.6%. Taking into account the median pre-existing ICU utilization rate in China of 75%, the ICU gap would be 94,500 beds, about 2.49 times China’s existing 38,000 ICU beds; that is, on any given day about every 3.5 patients would be fighting for one ICU bed.

Calculating on this basis, over the whole 2-month Omicron peak, assuming the number of days ICU patients stay in the ICU equals the number of days COVID cases stay in hospital, 761,500 person-times of demand in one epidemic wave would go unmet, and 2.2846 million person-times over the three waves of the year. Considering that the US has over 5 million ICU patients a year with a median mortality rate of 20% (within the 10%-29% range), and that the mortality rate of those who need but cannot get into an ICU doubles, that is, 40% die, China’s patients who die in a year because of medical runs and being unable to get into an ICU would exceed 913,800 person-times.”

In short, over three years, the number of ICU beds has not risen on a large scale, and its growth rate even fell last year; there is no way it can meet the needs of this wave of herd immunity.

If vaccines and ICUs are projects requiring long-term preparation, then the strangest, yet most widespread, matter is the across-the-board shortage of everyday cold and fever medicines.

The shortage of antipyretics and analgesics that Dr. Miao Xiaohui mentioned is a strange pain that most Chinese people are experiencing right now. China is the world’s largest producer of fever-reducing drugs, accounting for one third of global ibuprofen output and 70% of global acetaminophen output.

And now, from north to south, from resource-rich Beijing and Shanghai to my hometown’s small county seat, fever medicine is being snapped up everywhere.

The article from Daily Persons (《每日人物》), “Why Can’t We Buy Fever Medicine,” lays out very clearly the whole process by which fever medicine can’t be bought in the world’s largest producer of it.

Its most important conclusion is crystal clear: with the sudden turn, production, distribution and sales alike have all fallen into systemic disorder.

It points to just one problem: no preparation.

I live in Shanghai, and my friends all live in developed cities like Beijing, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Hangzhou. We still have some resources, some connections, some channels, and despite the difficulty we can find ways to survive. But the countryside, especially poor villages, in remote villages in Sichuan, Gansu, Guizhou and Yunnan, what will happen to them if a large-scale infection breaks out?

Medicine in rural hospitals is even more tight, staff more scarce, knowledge more lacking. There have already been some reports of people with fevers lingering inch by inch, relying on IV infusions… it is heartbreaking just to read.

Over the past few decades, because of urbanization and industrialization, large numbers of the rural young and middle-aged have moved to cities. The hollowing out of the countryside does not mean no one lives there anymore, but that those who live in the countryside are largely the elderly and left-behind children. They are precisely the groups most vulnerable to harm in this wave of herd immunity.

Cities, preoccupied with themselves, do not see the countryside. But what will the situation in the countryside be in this wave of epidemic impact that will last for months? (See Zhang Feng’s article, “A Henan Village Silently Endured the ‘Epidemic’.”)

I don’t know. Because information is too scarce. What floods my social feeds is every kind of reaction people have after testing positive, but I basically can’t see the countryside.

In the winter of 2019, the first COVID infection appeared in Wuhan. In the winter of 2022, we finally entered herd immunity. In three years, what exactly have we learned?

Vaccines are penetrated, ICUs are still scarce, fever medicine can’t be bought, and the countryside is unseen.

Three years on, before the COVID virus, we are still a naked child, a defenseless body, patients with no medicine to cure them. Act of nature, or man-made disaster?

4.

I frequently see an image in my social feeds: a chart published by Hong Kong of the effectiveness of different vaccines in preventing infection. Previously Hong Kong only published effectiveness against severe COVID/death; now the data is comprehensive.

This data actually comes from a research paper by the University of Hong Kong’s medical school published in the authoritative international medical journal The Lancet in October 2022, comparing the Comirnaty mRNA vaccine and Sinovac’s inactivated vaccine.

I can’t understand anything too technical, but what I can see is the conclusion: two doses are no longer enough to prevent Omicron; after three doses of Sinovac, the effectiveness in preventing infection among people under 60 is 51%; three doses of Comirnaty reach an effectiveness above 70% in all age groups.

Adding the time factor, the more complete data show that three doses of Comirnaty fall from 89% at 14 days after the dose to 77% six months later, which is still very effective protection. Three doses of Sinovac fall from 36% at 14 days after the dose to 8% six months later, essentially having lost its protective effect.

So it’s already very clear which vaccine is more useful, isn’t it? This is not a rumor fabricated by American imperialism or some foreign force, is it? This is research done by scientists and technologists in Hong Kong, a part of our motherland.

On December 22, 11,500 doses of the Comirnaty vaccine, jointly developed by Germany’s BioNTech and China’s Fosun Group, arrived in Beijing, and are expected to be administered to German citizens in China starting at the end of the year.

Vaccines are a sensitive story. In 2020, I ran a live news program, and every discussion about vaccines was rejected by the platform.

There have recently been two news items about vaccines.

On December 20, at a US State Department press briefing, a reporter asked spokesperson Price whether there was any intention to provide vaccines to China. Price said very directly that we plan to do everything we can to help China bring the epidemic under control, which is in the interest of the international community. The US is the world’s largest donor of COVID vaccines.

At the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s regular press conference the next day, spokesperson Mao Ning said that the work of administering booster doses (third and fourth doses) is progressing in an orderly manner, and that medicines and test reagents can generally meet demand. This rejected the American offer of help.

Germany’s Der Spiegel reported on the 21st that German President Steinmeier said on the 20th that Germany could immediately provide hundreds of millions of doses of the BioNTech vaccine (that is, Comirnaty) to China, and that the German federal epidemic prevention authority was also willing to help. However, Beijing rejected Germany’s proposal.

Zeng Guang, a member of the National Health Commission’s high-level expert group and former chief epidemiologist of the Chinese CDC, said at a meeting on December 22: “Whether people previously had two doses or three, they can all begin taking a fourth dose. The fourth dose must switch vaccines; inactivated vaccines can no longer be used.”

The effectiveness of inactivated vaccines has already been fully shown in Hong Kong’s anti-epidemic struggle. Compared with either America’s Pfizer vaccine or Germany’s Comirnaty vaccine, it lags far behind in preventing infection.

The previous section mentioned that vaccination rates among China’s elderly are in fact very insufficient. If they could receive the Pfizer vaccine or the Comirnaty vaccine, then for six months their probability of infection would be very low. Isn’t this a great opportunity to save large numbers of elderly people?

In 2020, China provided large quantities of aid, such as masks and nucleic acid testing equipment, to many countries including Japan, Italy and Iran, leaving a momentary tale of “mountains and rivers differ, yet wind and moon share the same sky,” and the recipient countries’ gratitude toward China was plain to see. Wasn’t that a beautiful moment for improving relations between countries?

Why can we aid other countries, but other countries cannot aid China? In natural disasters like earthquakes, typhoons and tsunamis, every country, including the US, Germany, Japan and China, has at some time gratefully accepted aid from other countries. What is the difference in the matter of an epidemic?

If the US and Germany together, if we took the initiative, would be enough to donate one dose of mRNA vaccine to every Chinese person. Then at a 77% infection-prevention rate, how many infections would be avoided, and so many of the current medical pressures, whether ICUs, or fever medicine, or rural healthcare, would be greatly eased. Why not? What are we holding on to so stubbornly? Isn’t it that human life is at stake, isn’t it that the people come first?

5.

These past few days, I have mobilized many connections, found many people, joined many groups, trying to buy a box of Paxlovid, the COVID wonder drug produced by the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

Again, I am a medical layman, and I really shouldn’t be fighting for this drug. Because I don’t know its pharmacological action, or when to use it, or what it does.

This is the only thing I can do in despair, or perhaps my only comfort. My father, over 80 years old, lives in the countryside, where medical conditions are poor. If he happens to be infected, I am certain he would have almost no chance of being given this wonder drug.

My plan is: if he is infected, I will take the drug and go find a doctor.

This drug is very expensive and very hard to buy. When I first saw information about this drug, I immediately asked a doctor at United Family Healthcare. He said the hospital has only a small stock, supplied only to severe patients.

An article by a Beijing doctor, “Looking at Class Mobility in High-End Healthcare from Pfizer’s COVID Drug Paxlovid,” confirms this. “Given the current medical run, … the heavier the underlying condition and the older the patient, the higher the chance of getting the wonder drug. … Paxlovid is a dream that must be fought over until heads are bloodied, yet remains out of reach.”

That is in Beijing, the place with the richest medical resources in all of China. If it takes that much fighting in Beijing, then in a township clinic below the county seat, do you think there’s any chance of being prescribed this drug?

In this matter, I have no world, no country in my eyes, only my old father. As long as I can grab the drug, I can be a despicable, shameless person. Besides, I only want to buy it.

I have read many things; this drug is best used within five days of infection, and is more effective for moderate cases and below.

There are many accounts of this drug: one says it is distributed by Sinopharm, another by Fosun Pharma, and another, now more widely accepted, says China National Pharmaceutical Group (中国医药).

But whoever distributes it, the first thing we can be sure of is that the distributor is a state-owned company. The second thing we can be sure of is that domestic supply is severely insufficient. The third thing we can be sure of is that demand is very large.

In one group I have already seen at least five or six such messages: an elderly person at home with serious underlying conditions, already diagnosed with COVID, no drug in the hospital. So family members are begging everywhere, pleading with everyone, looking for this drug.

Another Beijing doctor wrote in a post that they overcame every obstacle to import a batch of Paxlovid, saving many lives.

What do you want me to believe? I can only overcome every obstacle to get the drug; what if I fail to find it when the time comes?

But I am puzzled. If doctors all consider this an effective drug, and patients’ families are all desperately searching for it, shouldn’t every hospital be stocked with it?

We don’t know how many people are truly infected, how many regions, cities, townships and villages are already covered. But since this life-saving drug has already been produced, shouldn’t it be supplied to everyone who needs it?

Why can only China National Pharmaceutical Group distribute it? Why can’t so many other pharmaceutical companies distribute it? China has so many pharmaceutical factories; why can’t they get authorization from Pfizer to produce it? Chinese pharmaceutical companies have such strong capability for generic copies; why can’t they make a generic?

Paxlovid was approved by the US FDA on November 22, 2021, as a wonder drug for the clinical treatment of COVID. A whole year and more has now passed; why does China not have sufficient reserves, why have pharmaceutical companies not obtained authorization, why have generics not been produced?

India already has a generic version, and so does Japan.

On the 25th, it was rumored that Paxlovid will be distributed at community health service centers in Beijing. This is undoubtedly good news; if even community health centers can get this drug, it means mainstream hospitals can obtain it in relatively sufficient quantity, and of course many lives will be saved in time.

However, the news stops at the “capital of capitals,” “the foot of the imperial city” (皇城根儿). Shanghai has not heard of it, Chengdu has not heard of it, and our small mountain village in Fujian has no way of hearing of it.

Across the whole country, how many could there be?

The old question comes again: in three years of COVID, what have we actually done? Why, to this day, do we not even have clinical drugs?

6.

Last week, I took part in an argument.

The topic was rebutting Rao Yi, president of Capital Medical University, for an attack on Zhang Wenhong.

In the days that followed, articles supporting Zhang Wenhong and supporting Rao Yi poured out one after another, almost drowning out other discussion about this epidemic.

Speaking up was something I did out of necessity, because it was a resurgence of the lockdown faction. But I must admit that such arguments are not pleasant. A mud-slinging match like this draws people away from the key issues of herd immunity, and thus overlooks the real problems.

It cannot be denied that as herd immunity widens and deepens, even some former “reopening faction” members have begun to waver. And the lockdown faction has become even more brazen, wantonly attacking the “reopening policy,” which is the herd immunity policy I have been emphasizing all along.

The focus of the attacks is nothing more than a few points at several levels:

The number of deaths in society keeps rising. Even without accurate data, the number of celebrity deaths in the news is already shocking enough. On the 25th, Li Ziliu, the former mayor of Guangzhou, who was widely praised when I worked there, passed away. Clearly even some senior officials cannot escape misfortune, let alone ordinary people.

During the lockdown period, many statements, including Zhang Wenhong’s, said that Omicron is “just a big cold.” But many people have experienced symptoms including fever, body aches, sore throat, and loss of taste and smell, far more severe than a cold.

In research by Zhang Wenhong, Jin Dongyan and some other scholars, the proportion of asymptomatic infections is very high, even as high as 90% in some studies. But from what people share online and the general perception, most people seem to have symptoms. “Asymptomatic infected people have vanished.”

On these issues, first of all, a premise has long since changed: the number of infections.

According to World Health Organization data, the US has had 99 million confirmed cases in three years, 29% of the total population. Note that even under Trump’s laissez-faire policy period, states all implemented relatively strict management policies, and it was not lying-flat herd immunity. On this basis, the US death toll still reached 1.08 million. Of course, as to how many Americans have actually had COVID, there are several different versions; the Harvard version says 94%.

So with China now fully opened up, how many infections will there be? To date there is still no clear official estimate or statistic. Zhong Nanshan predicts that 90% will be infected with Omicron; Feng Zijian, former deputy director of the Chinese CDC and member of the national COVID joint prevention expert group, predicts the first wave will infect 60%, with eventually 80 to 90% infected; Lu Mengji, a virus expert at the University of Duisburg-Essen’s medical school in Germany, predicts one third will be infected around the Spring Festival, while Wu Zunyou predicts the proportion infected around the Spring Festival will be 10-30%.

At the lowest estimate, the number infected around the Spring Festival is 140 million; at the 60% estimate, it is 840 million; and at 80%, it exceeds 1 billion. With such a base number, everything changes.

To restate: I am almost a medical layman, so I cannot do scientific analysis. But I am an educated rationalist, so starting from common sense, I can roughly reason out some facts on the basis of the number and proportion of infections.

How large is the death toll? If, as stated above, there have already been 248 million infections, then using Zhang Wenhong’s calculation, Singapore’s rate of 0.06%, lower than the flu death rate, the death toll would reach nearly 150,000; even with the lowest figure of 140 million infections, the death toll would be 80,000. With such a huge concentrated death toll, what appears in the newspapers is naturally quite considerable.

Why does it feel like everyone around has symptoms, and fairly severe ones? This is a very typical survivorship bias. Among my friends, the number who recover to normal in three to five days is about the same as those who drag on for ten days to two weeks, and the number with mild symptoms is about equal to those with fairly severe symptoms. As time passes, fewer of those with mild symptoms post, so those left are generally the ones with more severe symptoms. Who has a stronger urge to speak up: someone with “razor-blade throat” and “cement nose,” or someone who slept it off and had nothing happen?

Asymptomatic people have vanished? This is even more nonsense. First of all, asymptomatic people can’t be detected at all. With nucleic acid testing cancelled and antigen kits impossible to find, asymptomatic people don’t even know they’re infected, so how can we talk about detecting them? Even if an asymptomatic person lives right next to you, you wouldn’t know.

Although this is all common sense, the more central problem is precisely this: when the whole society has given up counting infections and the authorities publish no accurate statistics, we have no way of knowing the real infection data. The death toll, the proportion with symptoms, the proportion without symptoms, the basis for judgment is fundamentally missing, and people can only judge death counts, the proportion of severe cases, and the existence of the asymptomatic by feel. Are we going back to the primitive age of data, making decisions by feel?

On this basis, all the arguments lose their fundamental meaning.

What I find very regrettable is precisely this: because herd immunity has been launched suddenly, without preparation, and without experience to draw on, what the whole expert team can do is in fact enormous, the details extremely complex, the forces to be mobilized extremely large, and the levels to be united extremely broad.

Can the delivery of mRNA vaccine donations be pushed through and quickly rolled out among the elderly? Can ICUs be built faster, even by asking for international support, at the speed at which makeshift hospitals were built? Can Paxlovid be quickly introduced so that all severe patients can use it in time and in sufficient quantity? Or can generic production be accelerated? Can ibuprofen and acetaminophen be distributed to the whole population so that every infected person has medicine to use? Can medical resources be effectively allocated so that the countryside doesn’t fall into boundless darkness? Can every province and city be pushed to publish real and valid infection data so that the public has a true understanding of its situation? Can volunteers, including the Dabai who were once everywhere, be mobilized to monitor high-risk groups in real time and coordinate responses so that, once a case is found, it can be rescued in time?

Rao Yi, Wu Zunyou, Liang Wannian, Zhang Wenhong, they are all people in this society with influence, strength and ability. On all of the problems above, they can influence decisions, or at least local decisions, so that the whole society suffers a smaller impact during herd immunity. Even reducing casualties by a hundred or a thousand, or reducing infections by 1 million or 10 million, would be an enormous contribution to society.

But Rao Yi spent a great deal of time writing and arguing with others, attacking Zhang Wenhong. The internet is full of endless verbal and written condemnation of Zhang Wenhong, doubts about the reopening policy, and exhaustive descriptions of every symptom. But the real problem is how to reduce infections, reduce severe cases, reduce infections.

The nation is in peril; what is everyone doing?

7.

Chinese people are very fond of quoting a line by the English Romantic poet Shelley: “If winter comes, can spring be far behind?”

This winter, it is an extremely cruel, even inhumane, line. Because on the road of crude herd immunity, it is the last winter for many people, who will never see spring.

And this price originally did not need to be paid.

After three years, we have finally reached the correct conclusion: herd immunity and long-term coexistence with the virus are the common destination of all roads in facing COVID.

This is also a basic piece of common sense: lockdowns cannot smother the virus, and nucleic acid tests cannot cure COVID. The prescription written by epidemic-prevention enthusiasts and lockdown enthusiasts has lasted a full three years; it did not eliminate the virus, but zeroed out society.

Power increasingly out of control, society increasingly withered, livelihoods increasingly hard-pressed. This is the overall price paid for lockdowns.

Zhang Wenhong says that it is a foregone conclusion that we are about to come out of this epidemic, and this trend will not reverse. This is a prediction, and also an inevitability, because society as a whole and our lives can no longer bear the price of strict lockdowns.

But the process is very hard and perilous. The more careful the planning, the richer the resources, the more help obtained, the smaller the price society pays. It is just like the recovery of an individual: we don’t need to amputate a limb to cure a scrape. Getting out of this difficulty at the least cost is what truly shows a society’s governing capacity.

The prescription has long been there.

To prevent more people from being infected, what is needed is vaccines. mRNA vaccines, including Pfizer’s and Comirnaty, have been proven effective; take them and use them, give them to the elderly.

Paxlovid can treat severe patients. Take it and use it, give it to everyone who needs it.

Ibuprofen and acetaminophen, distribute them free to everyone, so that those with strong immunity can get through easily with these cheap basic medicines.

Mobilize the forces of society and communities to effectively monitor and care for high-risk groups, so as to reduce their death rate.

Mobilize the strength of the whole world to quickly build ICUs, so that severe patients can have a chance to live.

Those experts, doctors and nurses are far more professional than I am, and what I believe is that once decisions and policies are made, those who countless times have worked sleeplessly to save us, to save our society, will be willing to once again selflessly contribute their wisdom, time, blood and sweat, once again be our angels, our warriors, our saviors, sparing us from the virus wave like a tsunami.

Will we be that lucky?

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