Chinese President Xi Jinping has decided this week to entertain some measure of reality and do away with the CCP’s authoritarian approach to dealing with COVID-19 by curtailing China’s quixotic “Zero COVID” fantasy.
Last Friday, the Chinese government… authorities issued a set of measures to recalibrate their pandemic response, outlining a 20-point playbook aimed at reducing the economic and social impact of containing the virus. Among the tweaks, China cut the amount of time travelers and close contacts of virus cases must spend in quarantine, pulled back on testing, and ended a system that penalizes airlines for bringing cases into the country.
One of the more interesting aspects of China’s decision to tweak Covid Zero is that it’s happening at a time when cases are surging. New infections topped 23,000 on Wednesday, the highest since April…
Xi may just want a little more stability after a turbulent year that has seen rare flashes of social unrest in China. A series of lockdowns has led to physical clashes between residents and health officials. In recent days, hundreds of people could be seen marching in the streets and pushing over police barriers in Guangzhou’s Haizhu district, according to videos on social media.
MacDailyNews Take: Welcome to reality, Xi.
Obviously, this bodes well for companies like Apple who’re shackled to China and will be for some time to come.
As for COVID, from the very beginning, we’ve been quite clear all along:
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results.
The problem isn’t COVID. The problem is the illogical, unworkable, delusional, self-defeating authoritarian response to COVID.
The average age of a Foxconn worker is 23 (before the CCP drove them away with the threat of more quixotic lockdowns). A 23 year old who gets COVID might not even notice they have it. Protect those with co-morbidities who might be at risk of serious complications (don’t compel older retirees into a closed factory setting, CCP Cuomo impersonators).
Letting COVID simply wash through a population of healthy twenty-three-year-olds (many of whom have already acquired natural immunity) is the rational decision. — MacDailyNews, November 16, 2022
There’s no such thing as zero-COVID, but this year is the Chinese Communist Party’s 20th party congress, so the farce will continue until the politics no longer dictate tilting at windmills. Then COVID will be allowed to wash through China, as it already has around much of the world. – MacDailyNews, May 9, 2022
Clearly, Apple under Tim Cook had, has, and, for the foreseeable future, seems like it will continue to have far too much exposure to China and the CCP’s overbearing and often irrational whims.
Memo to China: There’s no such thing as zero-COVID. Duh.
As we’ve said for years now, for better and worse, Apple is wedded to China. It will take many years to even begin to extricate itself from this relationship, at least the the point where the company has some meaningful leverage that the CCP understands. – MacDailyNews, April 8, 2022
In general, human-transmissible coronaviruses do not disappear. There is no such thing as zero-COVID. Duh.
COVID-19 is here to stay. It will very likely become endemic, yet pose less danger over time. People will acquire immunity via vaccines (effectiveness TDB) and naturally as they contract and recover from variants like omicron since the partially-effective vaccines permit not only transmissibility, but also breakthrough infections. Influenza and the four human coronaviruses that cause common colds (OC43, 229E, NL63 and HKU1) are, of course, also endemic, but a combination of annual flu vaccines and acquired immunity means that sane societies tolerate the unavoidable seasonal deaths and illnesses they bring without requiring lockdowns, masks, social distancing, indefinite return-to-work delays, etc.
At which point, if ever, will some people decide that wasting away their short lives in abject fear of a bad flu, very likely engineered by China and partially funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health, is a hysterical self-defeating overreaction? – MacDailyNews, December 16, 2021
The COVID-19 data is clear: Stop the panic and end the total isolation… A severe economic disruption will very likely provoke the immeasurable costs of widespread unemployment, social isolation, and increased mental health issues, suicide rates, bankruptcies, civil unrest, crime, and war. – MacDailyNews, April 23, 2020
There are any number of countries where, prior to this ongoing COVID-19 collective behavior experiment, we could have imagined a compliant population capitulating to the random, illogical, and ever-changing whims of so-called “experts” and ignoramus politicians – actually allowing themselves to be quarantined, locked-down, restricted, put out of business, deprived of family and friends, tagged and tracked, digitally and otherwise, but not America. Obviously, we were wrong.
“The land of the free and the home of the brave?” Pfft. Seemingly just empty words today.
Yes, COVID-19 is real. Yes, COVID-19 is a contagious disease. Yes, COVID-19 can kill, especially those with underlying conditions who should be protected as best as possible. However, the reaction to COVID-19 has clearly been blown out of all proportion and the ramifications of such overreaction will be long-lasting and difficult, if not impossible, to overcome.
Those who have lived through this period (in other words, the vast majority of people) and who are still capable of rational thought, will understand implicitly how easily fear and bad data, especially as amplified, massaged, and repeated ad nauseam via mass and social media, can be used to control even so-called “free” people who, it seems, will cede their freedoms en masse with nary a bleat. – MacDailyNews, December 28, 2020
And you thought sheep were herdable animals. – MacDailyNews, March 9, 2020
The real virus is the panic. – MacDailyNews, March 9, 2020
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