China’s about-face on how to tackle COVID has caused heads to spin at home and abroad. After nearly three years of relentless enforcement of General Secretary Xi Jinping’s signature policy of COVID eradication, the government issued new guidelines easing some of its strict zero-COVID policies in early December 2022. Official propaganda proclaiming that zero-COVID was a superior approach to foreign models, and essential to keep the Chinese people safe, gave way to a new message that, well, the virus wasn’t so threatening after all.
Epidemiologists warned that hundreds of thousands of people would die due to the sudden change in rules. Despite the risk, the Chinese government has forged ahead with a messy reopening that has jettisoned mass testing, quarantines, lockdowns of populated areas, and contact tracing. The National Health Commission has been selective with the details it shares on case counts and COVID-related deaths to avoid embarrassment and criticism of the new course of action. Medical workers have been discouraged from attributing an infected person’s demise to COVID when completing death certificates.
Officials advised that deaths would only be attributed to COVID if the virus directly caused respiratory failure, a narrow definition that would yield a substantially lower number of deaths. The single-digit death total announced nearly…
