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In China, Confidence ‘Evaporates’
"We need to work together to defend people’s lives and health," Xi Jinping explained on Thursday,
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Puzzling why Chinese govt hasn’t been more effective at vaccinating its population.
Hubris possibly. Having beaten back the original wave, and several subsequent incursions, they perhaps felt they weren’t in danger of a variant penetrating their defenses the way the current variant has. And perhaps as well, assurances were being sent up the party chain of command confirming what the leaders wanted to hear, that they weren’t in any danger.
I think the problem lies within the ineffectiveness of the Sinovac vaccine. It is supposedly only 60% effective against earlier Covid variants and likely far less against Omicron.
The parties pride/hubris is probably preventing them from ordering some western RNA vaccines.
Is Xi following the advice of Ron DeSantis?
A more likely explanation is that face and national pride kept them hoping that the Sinovax shots would be more effective than they proved to be in practice.
From the March 23 NYT:
“Two doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine offered older people only a moderately high level of protection against severe disease and death from Covid-19, but a third dose significantly bolstered their defenses, according to a new study by scientists in Hong Kong.
The study, based on patients infected during the current devastating Omicron wave in Hong Kong, serves as a cautionary note for mainland China, where Sinovac is a pillar of the country’s vaccination program. Many older people there have yet to receive booster shots.
For people 60 and older, two Sinovac doses were 72 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid-19 and 77 percent effective against Covid-related death, the study found. Those levels of protection were lower than those provided by two Pfizer-BioNTech doses. The same study found they were 90 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid and 92 percent effective against death among Hong Kong residents of the same age group.
A Sinovac booster shot helped considerably, proving to be 98 percent effective against severe or fatal Covid among people at least 60 years old, the study found.”
My take is given Sinovac’s efficacy against severe disease and death (remember, the FDA would normally approve a vaccine with the efficacy levels two doses of Sinovac offered in this study, much less three) it does appear an unanswered question remains as to why the elderly population in China remains under-vaccinated. Especially given Xi ‘s statement at the top of this article:
“We need to work together to defend people’s lives and health.”
As far as vaccinating their elderly population goes, they haven’t lived up to this quote. For even though Sinvoac doesn’t appear to do much to prevent Omicron infection, it does offer significant protection against severe disease and death, which certainly counts as defending “people’s lives and health.”