The Beijing Olympics has focused attention on China and its COVID policy. China has been following a zero-COVID policy that takes extreme measures but in some respects has been incredibly successful resulting in only 140,000 COVID cases and fewer than 6,000 deaths. At 1.5 billion people they have four times the population of the U.S. but the U.S. has had 901,000 deaths and 76,400,000 cases still climbing by about 2,000 a day. The Chinese vaccines, however, are not providing adequate protective immunity. Given this, the pursuit of the zero-COVID policy could be a huge mistake made worse by the highly transmissible Omicron variant against which the Chinese vaccines are even less effective.
The Omicron variant makes China a potential tinderbox for COVID. It is so infectious that it is likely to be impossible to control especially with the also limited medical facilities in China. The Chinese lockdown policy will fail since many Omicron spreaders will be asymptomatic. An Omicron disaster seems inevitable, one that is very large and will have serious impact on the economy of China.
It seems like China might be forced to very rapidly move move toward a treatment like Aviptadil (or Zyesami) which is very effective and can be supplied relatively inexpensively. I hope Relief and NRX are pursuing this possibility. Given the population of China they could bring down the cost considerably and still make a tremendous amount of money while helping to avert an enormous tragedy which would also have negative worldwide economic impact.
