Rising COVID-19 cases in China and Beijing's zero-COVID policy through the eyes of a Russian

There are subjects that are very much taboo, all over the world. You start talking about them, and you enrage a lot of people (and gladden even more of them). The question is, exactly why is that subject taboo, and exactly what kind of people make it look so.

Almost everything about the coronavirus, that visited our world in 2020, is just such a case. Still, let’s look at, probably, the greatest of news this week – the long-expected ease of China’s zero-Covid rules. Or, in particular, at the way the Russian public has reacted to that. To put it short, there was a tired sign and muttering of something like “we knew they just had to do it”.

If you want any proof of the fact that Russia, as a State and as a society, is not China, you only have to look at the inspiring story of how Russia has defeated its proponents of the same lockdown-and-vaccination policy, that have ruined so many societies, China’s first of all.

At the very first, in the spring of 2020, the full range of psychological artillery has been used in Russia. “A case of social solidarity”, “other people’s health depends on your discipline”, “don’t even think of arguing” – all the things that plagued almost all the world have been used by our state authorities. One could not openly dispute their sacred ideas. I, for one, have been kicked out of the TV shows for quoting the world’s best virologists, who said that murdering societies, with their economy and public health, was a very strange way to fight a virus, that had not been even classified as a serious disease by many nation’s standards.

And then some lockdowns have been mandated, at least in several cities, together with mask mandates. Lockdowns did not last for more than a month, since at first about a half, and then, maybe, two-thirds of Russians boycotted all these measures in a non-aggressive, but very efficient way. I, who have read tons of medical literature on total uselessness of masks against viruses, never wore them anywhere, and have never been fined.

Finally, after a not very successful campaign for vaccination, the question of “Covid passports” sprang up. Society was at risk of being divided into those who had a relevant QR-code, and those who had not. Draft legislation had been introduced, the MPs fanned out to their districts, and then they came back. And the draft had been quietly dropped, as a result of their study. Mask mandates have been cancelled later when next to no one was taking them seriously. People thinking like me have won. And, speaking about the results, as in the spread and lethality of the virus, Russia has become like Sweden, proving the idea that the more you lock the people down, the worse is public health.

Now imagine our feelings when we keep on hearing about that scary efficiency of China in enforcing, on and on, their lockdowns, or when we see all these masked-up Chinese faces on our screens. The only thing you could say, especially in the TV shows where I had got back to, was: Chinese we are not. Thank all gods for belonging to a vastly different society, and thank all gods that China never imposes norms or rules on any of its friends.

But now, watching China slowly extricating itself from that self-inflicted disaster, we are most afraid. After all, China is not just a friend, but a mainstay of our foreign policy, since it has long been under the same attack of the West, that evolved into a very hot war by now. What if China crashes down right now, due to its past stubbornness in zero-Covid policy, which has brought it to an economic and social crisis? You loosen the strings, and everything crumbles down, that’s how it happens.

Of course, they do it in their own way, slowly, gradually. So, “quarantine for the groups will be cut to five days of quarantine at designated sites plus three days of home quarantine, from the previous seven-day quarantine at designated sites plus three-day health monitoring at home”. Or, another example, the categories of COVID-19 risk areas will be adjusted from “high”, “medium”, and “low” to “high” and “low” to minimize personnel under quarantine or health monitoring. That’s what they call easing.

Second, they use thousands of words like “optimization” so as not to let people think that anyone is admitting Beijing’s total failure, like in the harsher you fight that virus, the more cases you have all around. No, the move was made, says the same source – a People’s Daily article – “to adapt to the new situation of COVID-19 prevention and control and the new characteristics of the virus mutations to make the response more targeted and science-based, maximize the protection of people’s safety and health, and minimize the impact of the epidemic on economic and social development”.

Third, how about everyone in China already knowing, that the government is silently admitting its failure, with more easing of controls to follow, but still everyone does not want all the leadership to resign, since having no leaders is even worse.

And in the meantime, there are horror stories coming out of China, about thousands of protesters in the streets of Guangzhou, whose patience for lockdowns has snapped…

The gist of that story is simple. There are forces in that world, that are stronger than China, stronger than America and the rest, with few exceptions, like Russia. These forces are being called the global medical lobby, that is – if you look at the money circulating in that industry – bigger that the good old military and industrial complex, and bigger than global oil and gas lobby. The medical lobby, with its terrible ideology of obligatory collective health, managed to subdue governments and societies, using fear and coercion, and it failed. But it may strike again, and maybe China’s example will be a good lesson to the world.

The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views expressed are personal.

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