Covid Dec 2022 ..mass china outbreak!?

[Mr Gus]

@DrEricDing on twitter
You might want to take a look on twitter, & make your own minds up, however the footage may well support the statements he is putting out.

Sinovac is weaker than our astra & pfizer vaccs, but so many variants & sub variants, it looks like the weaker vaccine is taking people down fast, allowing it to mutate freely.

***Rapid*** infection, bbc is out there, naturally.

[Stinsy]

It has been difficult to know the truth about the COVID pandemic in China since the beginning and nothing has changed now.

In the UK most people are vaccinated and/or have had COVID a few times now so they have decent immunity and it therefore is not much more than an ordinary cold. China is relying on a much less-effective vaccine and has pursued a “zero COVID” strategy so their population has much poorer immunity.

However we will be forced to balance reporting for the Chinese state broadcaster with social media posts by political activists.

[Bugtownboy]

If the Chinese vaccine is less effective and, as looks highly likely, China has a new Covid epidemic, there is the worry that a new variant is ‘produced’ - one with features that make it evade current immunity and has greater pathogenicity.

Let’s hope we’re on the ball with this - there doesn’t seem to be any change in the openness of reporting from China, which is worrying.

[dan_b]

The Chinese and Russian (Sputnik!) vaccines are both less efficacious than the various "Western" vaccines for all sub=types (which were also shown to be more effective when you had a mix of vaccines for the booster phase) - but another factor for China is that they don't really have a widespread culture of vaccination, especially in their older populations, who are of course those who are most at risk anyway.

Meanwhile over here, the COVID-booster programme has also seen a rather low rate of uptake.

Get vaccinated people.

[AE-NMidlands]

If the Chinese vaccine is less effective and, as looks highly likely, China has a new Covid epidemic, there is the worry that a new variant is ‘produced’ - one with features that make it evade current immunity and has greater pathogenicity.

Let’s hope we’re on the ball with this - there doesn’t seem to be any change in the openness of reporting from China, which is worrying.

I definitely heard it reported on BBC radio a few weeks ago that the Chinese vaccine wasn't as effective as ours, so any surge in infections would be worse than we would expect here.
A

[Bugtownboy]

And don’t forget your flu vaccine - even if you have to buy it from Boots etc.

[Oldgreybeard]

It's anyone's guess as to what's going on with Covid within China. Their vaccine may or may not work well, they may or may not have had an effective programme to vaccinate their very large population, and they may or may not be using the pandemic for political control and leverage, both within China and with the outside world. All we have really is speculation.

Unless you personally know someone trustworthy in China, that has a very secure communications channel out of China (not just an ordinary consumer-grade VPN or whatever that can very easily be breached by those that operate the "Great Firewall of China") then I would say that it is close to impossible to get any really honest evidence of anything like this. Heck, China controls even the most mundane things and stops them being talked about, or spread via any form of media, very well indeed.

China's been doing this for decades, has full and complete state control of just about everything, and all of their customers in the West have been accepting this is just fine and dandy as long as they get cheap (and perhaps bugged) goods. Just as with energy and the regimes in Russia and the Middle East, morals go out the window when we want to buy something we need at a reasonable price.

As the old saying goes, "Truth is the first casualty in war" and there is a war of sorts going on between the differing ideologies of many states around the globe, so perhaps we should just accept that truth is not really a universal concept. Great shame, as I have had some Chinese friends for years, that live here. They aren't dissidents, just came here to learn English and decided to stay. They know as little of what is going on as we do, but they are clear that we cannot trust anything in the media, as in China everything is state controlled by one means or another. Interestingly, neither of them thinks democracy is a good system, but that's getting political and best not debated further here. I will say that I've long felt that a benign dictatorship seems to be a stable form of government. The problem is that dictators are rarely benign.

[dan_b]

Spot on - paid for mine a couple of weeks ago. I don't qualify for it, or the COVID booster, for free, and you can't buy the COVID booster privately which is a shame.

And don’t forget your flu vaccine - even if you have to buy it from Boots etc.

[dan_b]

Published data from October 2022 in the Clinical JOurnal of Infectious Diseases shows people vaccinated with Sinovac were 2.3x more likely to get infected than those vaccinated with Pfizer/BionTech mRNA vaccine.

Official Chinese Govt figures released in November show around 30% of people aged 60+ — approx 80 million people — were not vaccinated and boosted In the highest risk population of 80+ it's closer to 60%. And you can expect those figures to have been severely massaged UP.

[Mr Gus]

We were looking at the variant charts at 3am today, there is a mass of sub-variant in china (was in bed so no handy overlay of variant floating around Europe that i could see...

However, the guys information looks like there are maybe 12-16 variants out there, at sometime after 2am the guardian also popped up a basic summary without impact sadly (west is too relaxed re covid right now)

Having been in Cham valley pre xmas 2019 & seeing illness take hold there, this is the winter proving ground we have been waiting for () having then explained to our then 15 year old how it was likely to go down & why our travel plans were null & void for likely the next 3+ years, ..here we are with the unvaccinated scenario playing out having had several years percolation time, Wuhan flu was blamed on China by many till variants had the origin names changed, this time I fear a bigger lashing out from the west due to both the weaker (rapidly rolled out vaccine variant for russia, africa & china, but moreso when the numbers surface in public psyche of the millions upon millions within a 1.4 billion populace country unleashing another round of omicron upon the world, trump type evisceration amplified!?

Sadly we noted, chinese were stocking up on ibrupofen (useless against covid)

Supply here of cold & flu capsules / paracetamol have been sporadic these past 24+ months, please take a few trips through the tills & get your dumb govt "suicide limit" (not enough to kill you) a few times over per person (easier to swallow, esp if prone & already feeling rough)

Generic cold & flu from aldi / lidl etc are fine, remember your limit of 3 doses in 24 hrs due to paracetamol processing within the body at 6-8 hr intervals
Galpharm being the widely available generic in supermarkets & poundstores.