Shanghai is a huge megalopolis of 26 million people and the economic heart of China. It is also on the verge of a social explosion after more than a week of extremely strict incarceration, where almost everything else has failed. But that’s no surprise after we’ve talked about the “#COVIDZero trap”.

the one who is surprised As Stephen McDonell explainsThe BBC’s correspondent in China acknowledged that the Shanghai Health Commission “only one person out of 130,000 official infections in the city in this epidemic is in serious condition”. Only one. I repeat: only one is in serious condition.

China’s largest epidemic, in context. In absolute numbers, all of China today (with a population of 1.4 billion) has less than half of the new cases Spain had on February 11, the day when masks are no longer mandatory outdoors. In fact, it was officially only in China until last week. two people died COVID in 2022: Our country registered 13,699 people in the same period.

Regardless of the accuracy of official Chinese figures, it is striking that with these epidemiological data such disproportionate restrictions continue to be maintained across the country, and authorities continue to demonstrate their “unwavering commitment” to the COVID Zero strategy.

A very expensive strategy. This is the question everyone is asking right now. The sense of lack of control is brutal, and the lack of food and medicine; to asymptomatic movements to quarantine zones; children separated from their parents by an asymptomatic covid, workers sleeping in their offices, and half built incarceration centers or with sleeping people on cardboard beds) need to add more than the obvious signs of social helplessness.

In recent days, reporters in China do not stop sharing videos showing screams, outbreaks of violence and even a wave of alleged suicides. Rising social anxiety, constant management mistakes, and tight pursuit of strategy seem to leave China in some sort of stalemate.

How long can the city last? Especially since the end, it’s still a long way off in cities like Shanghai. On the same day as the first looting in the city (in the northwest of the country), Jilin announced that after 33 days of strict quarantine, it had managed to end the epidemic that had affected it. That is, three weeks more than inside the city of Shanghai.

As we noted a few days ago, the widespread sense of calamity surrounding the Shanghai quarantine may have medium and long-term consequences. Not only because it highlights the limits of China’s scientific, health and logistics apparatus in one of its most precious jewels; however, as the Congress of the Communist Party of China will be held next November, and if the situation gets further out of control, the hitherto virtually untouchable President Xi Jinping will have to make urgent and (in many ways) exceptional decisions.

Image | AP