> I don't believe they can keep it up. People have been saying this for a year, with every new variant, yet China has been perfectly capable of keeping CoVID-1

> I don't believe they can keep it up. People have been saying this for a year, with every new variant, yet China has been perfectly capable of keeping CoVID-19 under control and 98% or more of the country open. Contact tracing, mass testing and the other measures China uses work. > And more importantly, why? Because the risks of letting CoVID-19 spread in China are poorly known but potentially massive. Looking outside China, the US is currently going through its 2nd most lethal CoVID-19 wave. There are more deaths per day now than there were at the height of the Delta wave. It's prudent to wait and continue to assess the situation, rather than gambling with public health, as most countries are doing. China is able to do so. > If very few people get seriously ill, why are economically destructive policies justified. I've felt that way from the beginning of the pandemic. Well, first of all, China has had better economic performance than any other major country during the pandemic. One of the reasons is that it has spent far less time under lockdown or with restrictive social distancing measures than most countries. That's because it quickly eliminated the virus. International travel is affected, but factories can run normally, people can go to work in person, public venues are open, etc. Second of all, if China had responded the same way as Europe and the US, it is likely that around 4 million people would have died in China. That's not "very few people."