China’s ‘Giant Wave’

“Official COVID case counts have been rendered meaningless.”

So declared Bloomberg on Monday, in an article documenting the “rapid,” unchecked spread of the virus across the world’s most populous nation following the abrupt relaxation of containment measures last week.

I have some potentially distressing news: China’s official COVID case counts were always “meaningless.”

You won’t get a concession on that point from any media outlets keen to preserve access to the Mainland, though. And to be fair, Bloomberg does have a lot of personnel in Hong Kong. For now, the anchors on “Bloomberg Markets: China Open” aren’t required to wear Mao suits (or poodle skirts) on air, but if Mike keeps letting his journalists document “long lines” at Beijing hospitals, “people struggling to find medicine” and overburdened delivery services suffering “interrupt[ions] as couriers become sick,” the Hong Kong desk might need to be restaffed with “patriots.”

I’m just joking. Sort of.

There’s nothing funny about the situation on the ground, though. City officials in Beijing warned that a “stable transition” won’t be easy to achieve. Although not all accounts I perused on Sunday and Monday suggested the situation is dire, most did. There are queues at pharmacies, staff shortages at hospitals and lines at “fever clinics.”

Caixin, in a cover story, described “chaos” at China’s hospitals, where workloads are increasing amid “the first shock of a giant wave of infections.” Apparently, some hospitals are now requiring patients to sign waivers which state that admission carries the risk of being infected. (“Yes, I’m here because I think I may have COVID.” “Ok, sign here to acknowledge that you might catch COVID during treatment.”)

“Following a rush last week to buy cold and flu medicine in many major Chinese cities, pharmacies in Hong Kong have reported a run on such medications by customers supplying relatives in Mainland China,” the AP reported, citing Lam Wai-man, chairman of a trade association in the city. “Everyone on the Mainland wants to buy some pills to have in reserve at home,” Lam said.

“Try as much as you can not to go out,” management at a condominium complex in Beijing told residents over the weekend, according to a WeChat message quoted by Reuters. Most of the condo’s staff were infected, apparently. “Such messages have hit home for some who say they are reluctant to visit crowded places or dine at restaurants,” the same linked article noted.

China is desperate to reinvigorate domestic demand amid an ongoing economic downturn. Retail sales data due later this week is fake and you shouldn’t pay any attention to it, but to the extent you’re inclined to parse the numbers, they’ll likely show consumption remained moribund in November.

This was always going to be problematic. Protests against Xi’s strict curbs made it clear that many Chinese were done with “COVID zero,” but three years of indoctrination by state media (which mercilessly derided the rest of the world, and particularly the West, for putting economic concerns ahead of public health) created a level of anxiety among the populace which, while appropriate at the onset of the pandemic, may no longer be proportionate to the biological threat, or at least not for relatively young, otherwise healthy Chinese.

Of course, not everyone in China is relatively young and healthy, which means a lot of people are about to die. But, as noted here last week, the only people who’ll know the actual body count will be the Standing Committee. At the end of the day, when China’s “giant wave” is over, there are only seven people on Earth likely to be fully apprised when it comes to the scope of the associated fatalities. Well, seven people plus the people who told them — I wouldn’t want to be one of those loose ends. In fact, you might suggest that the fear of being a loose end may mean the Standing Committee doesn’t learn the scope of the tragedy. Would you want to give bad news to a dictator?

The Party on Monday deactivated a phone app that tracked people’s movements between cities, but kept another designed to prevent the infected from traveling. I doubt seriously that the government will abandon the use of pandemic apps entirely. They’re now part of Xi’s surveillance state. He’s not just going to switch them off forever.

In the same linked article cited here at the outset, Bloomberg wrote that, “As yet it’s unclear if the government is willing to disclose the true picture of its outbreak: Officially, China hasn’t reported any COVID fatalities since the pivot began, and critical cases, which the National Health Commission reports every day, were at the low level of 141 for Sunday.” Plainly, that figure is inaccurate. It’s probably better described as wholly fictitious.

Officially, just 5,235 people have died in China from COVID. Ever. That figure for the US was almost 1.1 million as of Monday.