Mass screams from the balconies of buildings, lack of food and medicine; asymptomatic displacement to quarantine zonesChildren separated from their parents for sheer positivity, workers sleeping in their offices, half built incarceration centers and sleeping patients in cardboard boxes); unrest; looting, protest attempts. What is happening in Shanghai and other parts of China is more than a quarantine.

More than a ‘normal’ prison. A trip back in time to March 2020. Maybe not in deaths (if we pay attention to the official data from Beijing), but in everything else. Shanghai, the largest city in China, has been under quarantine since April 5. In fact, parts of the city (where COVID cases started to emerge) took a week or two longer. The city’s 26 million residents have had to take up to six diagnostic tests these days and are barred from leaving their homes (even to buy food or medicine).

Many areas of the city survive thanks to home delivery services. Distributions that become less and less regular. First of all, because the distribution chain is broken: the municipal administration itself admits that it does not have a clear plan for how to hold out until the numbers improve. On the other hand, numbers that are not particularly dramatic (compared to what Western countries have suffered): we are talking about 130,000 infections and only one person in serious condition.

How did China get to this point? That’s the real question. The People’s Republic of China has enormous technical, scientific and organizational capacity. It’s not just the ‘know-how’ about the pandemic that the closure of Wuhan and its administration provided them; China has its own vaccines and sufficient by-industry to produce the tests and drugs needed to solve the problems of an epidemic of this size. In fact, Shanghai managed to circumvent the confinement for two years. What happened?

#COVIDZero’s failure. The strategy to follow for months was COVID Zero (prioritizing the containment and eradication of COVID). Countries like Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea or yes China are implementing massive quarantines to keep SARS-CoV-2 out of circulation. For example New Zealand. He’s come to shut down an entire city for a single case. In other words, they focused all their efforts on reducing cases of infection to zero, preventing the virus from circulating in their communities.

But as it became clear that the virus would not disappear (as SARS-CoV-1 did), the COVID Zero strategy turned into a trap. In the summer of 2021, thanks to the world is slowly opening the vaccine, covidzero countries[werehalasıkıkarantinayabaşvurmakzorundakaldıböyleceavrupa’nınmart2020’deyaşadığıdehşetiönlemekiçinmakulbirfiyatgibigörünenşeyhiçbiryerevarmamayarışınadönüş:virüsüngelişinigeciktirmeninacıvericibiryoluasyadevindegördüğümüzşeybthe[seguíanteniendoquerecurriralconfinamientoestrictoasíloqueparecíaunpreciorazonableporesquivarelhorrorquesevivióenmarzode2020eneuropaseconvirtióenunacarrerahacianingúnlado:enunaformaagónicaderetrasarlallegadadelvirusesloqueestamosviendoenelgiganteasiático[halasıkıkarantinayabaşvurmakzorundakaldıBöyleceAvrupa’nınMart2020’deyaşadığıdehşetiönlemekiçinmakulbirfiyatgibigörünenşeyhiçbiryerevarmamayarışınadönüştü:virüsüngelişinigeciktirmeninacıvericibiryoluAsyadevindegördüğümüzşeybu[seguíanteniendoquerecurriralconfinamientoestrictoAsíloqueparecíaunpreciorazonableporesquivarelhorrorquesevivióenmarzode2020enEuropaseconvirtióenunacarrerahacianingúnlado:enunaformaagónicaderetrasarlallegadadelvirusEsloqueestamosviendoenelgiganteasiático

vaccine issues. In the most difficult moments of the epidemic and with a clear geopolitical strategy, China has released its vaccines. Not only that: it has flooded the world with millions of vaccines.

The problem is, this allowed us to have independent reports on the actual performance of these injectables. And throughout 2021, these reports said, Chinese vaccines clearly outperformed Western vaccines. These were vaccines that were not very effective against contagion (we’re talking about 50% or less efficacy), although they did protect against serious illness and death.

But that’s not the most problematic. Apparently, acquired immunity decreases very quickly. This explains, at least in part, that even though more than 85% of its population is fully vaccinated, Beijing has closed parts of the country for months to stop the Omicron: tsunami’ epidemiological.

What awaits China? The Shanghai situation is a race against time. The runs are running; at a very high cost, but they work. The day the looting began in the city (in the northwest of the country), Jilin announced that she had managed to end the epidemic that had affected her. Jilin needed a strict 33-day jail sentence. No one is clear on what might happen in Shanghai at that time if the situation is not redirected.

However, this is only the most striking (and tragic) example of a problem that goes much further: when the Shanghai quarantine passes, there will be another and another. Without the epidemiological wall of the infected and vaccinated, the virus will continue to enter and leave the country incessantly. And even worse, without a clear strategy to stop doing it. It’s not that China lives in March 2020, it’s that it’s stuck in a maze that it doesn’t know how to get out of.

Image | DPA Germany/GTRES