China's health authorities today announced the first three patient deaths due to complications of COVID-19 in Shanghai since a lockdown was imposed on the Chinese financial capital at the end of March.
The scenes that have been unfolding lately in China's major urban center are causing concern to the rest of the planet and fear that a generalized lockdown will "spread" again. China is sticking to the strategy it has followed since the beginning of the pandemic. The "zero covid" tactic creates the very harsh images of people penned up in quarantine centers and others being shaken with scraps to catch them.
Professor Galiatsatos to Shanghai: I hope they are not hiding something from us
Concerns about the extremely harsh lockdown and authoritarian measures in Shanghai were expressed today by Panagis Galiatsatos - a pulmonologist, intensivist professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Galiatsatos expressed hope that what is happening is a matter of culture, and not China harboring a new mutation of the coronavirus.
"I find it very strange what happened in Shanghai. We are two years into the pandemic now. And science, research have reached a moment when we know how to live with COVID and we know how to 'hold' it like a cold," the pulmonologist told SKY.
As the professor pointed out, "we have vaccines, drugs, masks... What we are seeing in Shanghai, many of my doctor friends say it's very strange... You do these things at the beginning when we were afraid, we didn't know what the virus was, what harm it would do to us. One assumption is that this is how their culture is they don't want new cases or a patient, we have seen this in China many times. The other hypothesis is: has something happened that they are not telling us about? Two years ago we saw this with COVID (with announcements) via doctors on the internet. Maybe there is a new mutation and they are not telling us. I hope it's the former, their culture, but it's very strange, we don't need that, we have the tools to live with COVID."
"Is it their culture or will something worse come out? I don't want to believe that they're hiding another secret from us again, for the second time in two years. This is what I hope," noted Mr. Galiatsatos.
Pavlakis' explanation for Shanghai
Speaking on the show "Society Hour MEGA", George Pavlakis, a doctor and researcher in the US, said that "in Greece as in China, a large percentage of unvaccinated people are elderlyi. The percentage is rising, because the pandemic that, before the holidays, "hit" the young, is now hitting the elderly.
"What happened in China is that they became victims of both their own success and their attitude in dealing with the virus, as they did not take any substantial measures. Now the virus is infecting people very quickly, trying to bypass the immune system." The Chinese saw what happened in Hong Kong, which is the "world champion of deaths," and then in the ranking is Greece. This is because they too are afraid of vaccines, don't vaccinate and have destroyed the health care system. And in Hong Kong they have an older population, like in Greece, they went and opened up everything with 85% vaccinated," he said.
"When you have 25 million locked up, it's hard to control them overnight. In China, if the pandemic gets out of hand they will have a lot of deaths. If China had a disaster like other countries, there would be a huge economic impact. If China and Taiwan go down, then there will be a much bigger global recession," he continued, talking about the coronavirus outbreak in China.
"We are not done with the pandemic. People have three main tasks: not to get infected because the virus is bad, to get vaccinated and also to get tested before going somewhere or if visiting the elderly and a lot of people," Pavlakis concluded.
The four important facts about Shanghai
Professor Triantaphyllides, speaking to OPEN, first mentioned the four facts we currently know about China: "Also, the Omicron 5 variant, which had appeared in South Africa, has also spread.""Unfortunately, from China there is no data on this variant. And it (5) is more contagious but has fewer symptoms."
Also, he said: "Vaccination in China has covered with two doses about 85 to 88% of the population, which is very important. But unfortunately, 3rd dose they do after six months. Still, about 40% of people over 80 years old have not been vaccinated. Chinese vaccines are less effective than mRNA. So, as no booster dose has been given and furthermore there are so many people over 80 years old, it is expected that there will be too many cases."
"It would be good for Greece to monitor Omicron 4 and Omicron 5, "which are new variants and have appeared in Africa and have already spread to Europe," he also commented. At the same time, the professor said that "when someone is found to be infected, the drugs they are given are the traditional ones of Chinese medicine. Unfortunately, that is, the treatment they use is not the most appropriate either."
The professor also underlined a point that impresses him, according to him: "I have always had doubts in the data they communicate to us. It has been established that they had not told the truth about when the virus appeared. I am surprised that they have only announced three deaths, when Reuters found that in one hospital alone there were over 20."
The 3 reasons behind Shanghai's extreme lockdown
Professor of Pulmonology at the University of Thessaly, Mr. Konstantinos Gourgoulianis spoke to onlarissa.gr and explained why in his opinion we are seeing all these scenes. "I don't imagine conspiracy scenarios. I will give you a few reasons why in my estimation all this is happening in Shanghai.
First the Chinese started with the logic of covid zero, i.e. to have no cases of coronavirus. China for a very long time had no infections. So they found themselves with a prescription they had and they can't go back. So all of a sudden with Omicron they have a lot of cases without having admissions and hospitalizations, as Omicron is a very contagious virus. So they have their script and it's hard to get out of it. But that's kind of the mentality of the Chinese in general. So their policy failed and it was bound to fail with a very contagious mutation.
Second they have a vaccine, the Chinese vaccine, which everyone has been vaccinated with but we don't know how effective it is.
Third they have a lot of people in old age, from 80 years old and above, unvaccinated. And because China has a lot of population, with densely populated areas, they are probably worried that a lot of old people will get sick and block their hospitals.
I think the first reason for the logic they have, which is covid zero, is the most important reason that all this is happening in Shanghai. We also see here in Greece that Omicron is highly contagious and easily infects each other, so their policy of no infections at all has failed. And because they are a sticky people in general and it's hard to get away from the tactics they adopt, that's where the problem has been identified, whereas here in Europe and in America we have decided that we will live through the coronavirus.
So of course I don't endorse any of this stuff about new mutations and new viruses.
I told you that for me the reasons are the eradication scenario which did not work, their vaccine which is questionable and that a lot of people over 80 years old are unvaccinated."
Source.gr
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