China’s three-year zero-Covid policy, which consists of isolating sources of infection, quarantining all contacts, and locking down buildings, factories, and even entire cities whenever authorities get nervous, might be understandable in the first half of the year its 2020 when nobody really knew what to do with an unknown virus that was spreading across the planet spreading disease and death but proving unsustainable in the following seasons. Not only because the omicron variant is spreading like wildfire and cannot be stopped with these measures, but also because the population is fed up with so many rigid screws and its economic consequences.
The transition from zero Covid to a policy of coexisting with the virus in tune with the rest of the world was a necessity when the Communist Party enacted it on December 7th. But suddenly doing it without doing his homework – mass vaccination and strengthening the health system – was a new mistake. The epidemiological models predicted one and a half million deaths in six months, and the country is firmly inching towards that number. Official data lacks the slightest credibility, but independent estimates speak of millions of new infections every day. With few people previously infected and the Chinese vaccines that the government insisted on using were scarce and suboptimal, the population is poorly immunized. As much as Omicron is less deadly than the original versions of the virus, hospitals are already saturated, intensive care unit beds won’t be able to handle it, and mortality is sure to skyrocket whether Beijing acknowledges it or not.
A more difficult question to predict is how this situation will affect the rest of the world. The warning has started to spread. The United States, Italy and Japan are already requiring travelers from China to test negative to enter their territories, and the European Commission is considering doing the same. All of these countries are adequately immunized against severe forms of the disease, either through vaccination, previous infection, or both, so there is no justification for public alarm at this time. The biggest concern right now is the opacity with which the Chinese government handles data, in addition to the arbitrariness with which it obtains it. For example, only deaths from Covid are counted if the patient suffered from pneumonia, an unprecedented event in the international community. Uncertainty is the root cause of the new controls at airports. Data hiding closes borders. It is logical.
Of even greater concern is the possibility that the intense spread of the virus in a country of 1.4 billion people will produce new variants or subvariants of Omicron. Mutations occur every time the virus replicates itself in a human cell, and as more people are infected, there is a greater chance that some of these mutations will significantly change the behavior of the infectious agent. They can make it even more contagious, or make it better at escaping the human immune system, or even more deadly.
Fortunately, given everything we know about the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 and many other infectious agents, the latter is unlikely. Viruses that kill a lot die along with their victims, killing their own future. Those who kill little have everything to gain, because infected people continue to lead normal lives and infect other people. The substitution of one viral variant for another does not happen because the virus becomes more deadly, but because it becomes more contagious and replaces the previous version. law of virology.
In any case, it is important that vulnerable people, such as the elderly and the immunocompromised, boost their immunity with the new scheduled vaccine doses. In Spain, half of those over 60 have not received their fourth dose, although it is possible. It’s a bad time to get sick of glitches. Even if you don’t feel like it, get vaccinated. Already.
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