Commentary
China’s dam against COVID-19 has broken. Beijing canceled lockdowns precipitously, and the resulting tidal wave of infections is inundating the country.
Hundreds of millions of Chinese are now estimated to have COVID. China’s biggest cities, including Beijing, are the hardest hit. Half of Shanghai could already be infected. Modeling predicts as many as 1 to 2 million deaths in China will result from the current wave.
Omicron has been less deadly elsewhere due to mature vaccination campaigns, exposure to prior variants, better medical technologies, and developed hospital infrastructure, including the multiplication of fully-equipped intensive care units.
The regime in Beijing, however, prioritized lockdowns and neglected the rest. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rejected the best medicines from the West, including mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer, Moderna, and BioNTech. The CCP also neglected monoclonal antibody medicines, such as Paxlovid and Evusheld, to prevent COVID and treat mild and moderate cases….