The coronavirus is raging as if it were three years ago, and the Chinese are anxiously waiting for life to finally return to normal

Medical staff at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital care for critically ill patients in the ICU during the outbreak. (27 December 2022)

WASHINGTON — The new coronavirus continues to break out rapidly in China, and the Chinese people who are about to enter 2023 have to cross the New Year under the shadow of infection, and a large number of elderly people or vulnerable people with underlying diseases are facing a particularly serious situation, and hospitals and funeral places across the country are overcrowded. Concerns are beginning to arise in China about whether new variants of the virus have developed and how effective the vaccine will be. Despite previous news from time to time, the Chinese government has not said that foreign vaccines have been introduced at present.

A few days before New Year’s Day 2023, the Chinese Internet presents a satirical scene: the 2022 retrospective short film “Tribute to Every Ordinary Person Who Carries Life” produced by NetEase News, after being widely resonated and frantically forwarded, was constantly deleted by major social platforms, reminiscent of the short film “April Siege” popular during the lockdown in Shanghai. China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency and People’s Daily also continued the tradition of pushing news reviews in 2022, but they were jokingly called by netizens as “glamorous and cheap goods” that sang praises for the government, forming a “parallel public opinion field” with NetEase short films.

On December 27, the front-page article in the Global Times, a Chinese party media newspaper, drew dissatisfaction among many netizens, leaving ironic comments on Weibo and other social platforms such as “China enters 2023 under a great situation” and “Chinese people laughing at the world amid high fever”.

Entering the end of 2022 Chinese mainland is currently struggling to cope with the raging new crown virus, and hospitals, funeral homes, and crematoriums in major cities are running continuously and overwhelmed.

Cathy, from Suihua City, Heilongjiang Province, who now lives in Beijing, recently shared her personal experience with an old classmate who was a doctor in her hometown with the media.

Cathy’s old classmate, who works as a neurologist in a hospital in Suihua City, has also recently contracted the new crown, and his condition is relatively serious, and he has developed lung infections. Cathy herself and her family of five, who live together in Beijing, were infected 10 days ago, but fortunately, they have recovered without severe symptoms.

“When I was sick, I told my classmates that you are fast and get ready. He thought it was the case, but he didn’t expect it to be so difficult,” Cathy told the media. “My classmates told me that their hospitals had collapsed. There are only two of them left in the department who are not sick. In the rest, it is better to live than to die at work, and it is better to live than to die if you are sick at home. I didn’t expect him to be so serious there. ”

Cathy believes that Beijing was the first in the country, and her hometown Suihua was about two weeks behind Beijing. “Northeast because of the cold, winter is very unfriendly to those elderly people with underlying diseases, every winter what bronchitis cerebral infarction is a pile, many old people can not carry it, now plus this wave of the new crown is not to mention, too terrible. Beijing’s medical conditions are relatively rich, and they are still like this, let alone in small places. ”

Cathy herself went to Beijing Weeping Willow Hospital yesterday for skin trauma, only to find that the hospital was crowded with patients seeking medical treatment because of the new crown. “Now the hospital is still in charge of internal medicine and surgery, my classmate said, the otolaryngology department is accepted, no way, there is no bed.” I went to the emergency room today, oh my God, that emergency hall I used to be in, and now it’s all full, and the aisle inside is so crowded that I can’t turn around. ”

The presence or absence of new variants is worth paying attention to and stating

Ziyad Al-Aly, director of the Center for Clinical Epidemiology at Washington University in St. Louis, said in a December 28 interview with the media that a large-scale explosion of cases will undoubtedly increase the likelihood of new mutations. “You know, the number of infections in China in such a short period of time increases the probability of a new variant emerging. We haven’t seen it yet (new strains), but the possibility is really increasing dramatically right now, just because the number of infected people is exploding rapidly in a very, very short period of time. ”

Mr. Zhou, from Yunnan, told the media that he could not understand why the virus had swept through almost every corner of the country in such a short period of time. Mr. Zhou’s hometown is in a particularly remote town on the border of Yunnan-Guichuan, but it is not spared. “I can’t describe the remoteness of that place, it has always been one of the poorest and most remote places in all of China. But my mother told me that about a week ago, no matter how old or young, none of them dodged, they all got the new crown. ”

Mr. Zhou’s hometown now has about six to seven hundred inhabitants, almost all of whom have been infected, and so far several elderly people and a young girl have died. “All the people I know, whether in Xishuangbanna, Dali, Shangri-La, Guangzhou, or Jiangxi, not a single one has been spared.”

Mr. Zhou was puzzled by the speed of the spread of the virus: “I don’t want conspiracy theories, but this thing is too weird.” Even if you come to sprinkle the plane, even if the wind and rain come to spread, it will not spread so quickly and evenly. And the time is almost the same, no matter in any remote place. ”

In 2021, Mr. Zhou, who lived abroad, returned to China and was regarded as a flood beast by the villagers. “When I returned to China last year when I returned to the village, no one in my family dared to come as a guest. They think that what is foreign to our country is the virus. This time I told my mother, now you know, you are not very scared to be infected. ”

Despite this, Mr. Zhou still believes that his family and friends in his hometown have more severe symptoms after infection than he has seen overseas, and he suspects that this has something to do with the protective efficacy of domestic vaccines. “The consensus around the world is that Omicron is much milder than Delta. But all of my relatives had symptoms that were much worse than when I had Delta. ”

“A few days ago, a group of our Chinese had dinner and discussion here, and the consensus was basically that foreign vaccines were still useful. People who have been infected on our side rarely have very few symptoms. I don’t understand why China does not introduce foreign vaccines, how can there be such stupid people. People know the United States and Germany give them nothing. It faces, you see China can’t hang on to face at all. ”

Another Mr. Xu, who lives in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province, told the media that his friends around him have been infected with the new crown in a “blowout” pattern. Mr. Xu’s family of four all suffered from a fever a week ago and are now slowly recovering. Mr. Xu, who works in a state-owned enterprise, is currently at least 80% positive or cured of the new crown. “Now the streets are empty, there are no people at all, and there are only a few people in the mall. Restaurants are no longer dine-in, relying on takeaways. ”

Mr. Xu’s unit has many employees, and the recent meeting has been divided into a “negative venue” and a “positive venue”: those who have a negative nucleic acid test or have recovered from the infection will enter the “negative venue” for the meeting; At present, those who have not turned negative for the new crown positive will enter the “positive venue” for a meeting.

Whether and when exactly Western vaccines will enter China

Jacky, a 35-year-old white-collar citizen living in Shanghai, has been in a three-month lockdown this spring. Jacky has not been spared the new crown recently, but he recovered very quickly, with a fever in one day and a negative turn in a week. He told the media that most of his friends around him are young, so despite the epidemic, there is no panic: “Everyone knows that this is a bad disease, but everyone knows that they will not die.” ”

Jacky’s eighty-year-old grandmother, who lives in Hebei, also tested positive for the new crown a few days ago, but her symptoms are not serious. “My grandmother just had a sore throat, but she was in good spirits. She received three shots of the vaccine, plus the flu vaccine, and the overall protection should be good. ”

Jacky himself received three doses of the domestically produced inactivated vaccine. He told the media that if there is a fourth shot in the country, he will definitely get it. “What exactly to fight depends on what options are available. If you can get a messenger RNA vaccine on the mainland, then I will take it, because I have been saying that if you give a different type of vaccine, the protection effect will be better. ”

Jacky said he didn’t know why China wasn’t importing vaccines at the moment, but even if it could, he thought the high requirements for foreign vaccine stockpiles might not be able to be widely vaccinated. “The mRNA vaccine is a vaccine with particularly high storage requirements, requiring advanced requirements such as low temperature, freezer, and cold chain. Many parts of China’s vast rural areas do not even have refrigerators. It’s certainly a good thing to bring it in, but how many people it can benefit is another matter. Including how many people are willing to fight, I don’t know. ”

Jacky admitted that he supported the lockdown in 2020 and felt that he had achieved the desired goal at that time. However, his views have since changed. “In ’21, ’22, from Delta to Omicron in the back, I honestly felt like I was a little hesitant or worried. I think if I let it go, I would definitely encounter the situation we have today. If your grandmother, grandmother, because of poor resistance, did not survive even if she was vaccinated, whose (responsibility) is it? But now, I feel that the cost of lockdown has far exceeded the benefits he can get. Because the spread of the virus is just uncontrollable. ”

Jacky believes that China is actually following the old path of the United States: after experiencing labor shortages and widespread infections, life will gradually return to normal. “Lockdown how many jobs you’re going to lose, how much GDP you’re going to lose. Thinking about it this way, I still tend to let go, because the cost of lockdown is too high. ”

He also feels that even if drugs are in good supply, they will not fundamentally change the status quo. “Fever reducers are things like this just make you feel better. It’s not that I’ve hoarded enough, 1.3 billion people in the country have one handful of ibuprofen each, and everyone can defeat the coronavirus. It’s just to make you feel better. ”

Wang Dan, director of Dialogue China, a US-based think tank, mentioned China’s reluctance to import vaccines in a December 23 interview with Voice of America’s “Current Affairs Talks,” which he believes is the main reason for “losing face.” “In the three years of fighting the epidemic, the CCP has always talked about how well it has performed on the epidemic, especially in the large-scale development of vaccines, which have been vaccinated by hundreds of millions of people. I’m still more inclined that they can’t lose face. ”

“The epidemic will pass sooner or later. I think what the CCP wants to establish this time is a discourse on the epidemic and how to prevent and control it. Because the previous white paper movement has already affected the effect of Xi Jinping’s ‘personal command and personal deployment’, the official discourse has been affected to a certain extent. If you add to this the flood of Western aid to mitigate the pandemic, it will be a huge shock to the narrative that the government has tried to establish for three years to protect the people. I think the government is very careful in re-establishing or consolidating its original narrative. ”