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Comment by csee | Hacker News Reader

Only because HK's elderly are not widely vaccinated, and also because Sinovac makes up about half of their vaccinations and this vaccine is not as good at preventing mortality. A very similar situation to Mainland China, actually.

So the question still hasn't been answered. Why is Mainland China insisting on pursuing this inferior strategy? The hard-lockdown zero-Covid low-vaccination approach has been shown to be inferior to the alternative approach of ensuring 99% of the elderly are vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna, and then allowing society to open up once this is achieved. My understanding is their vaccination rates haven't gone up much since this outbreak started, which signals that they are not intent on changing course.

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The imcumbent cabinet and politburo are going out of term later this year and a new list of names needs to be appointed and rubber stamped by the upcoming 20th CCP National Congress. The government essentially operate in caretaker mode for several months before the congress and any major policy reversal would be taboo as it could disrupt the political horse trading happening in the background. This is just not the time for course change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20th_National_Congress_of_the_...

Ironically, a very similar situation played out in Wuhan . By mid December 2019 it was very clear that a deadly respiratory disease is in the community but the politicians were too preoccupied with the ongoing provincial party congress. Nobody in power was willing to take a bullet for announcing a pandemic until their posts are confirmed and secure. The rest is history.

It says that the congress is in the second half of 2022. That's still months into the future. With Omicron it could be some "interesting times" in those months. Until when does the situation need to appear under control? When could they announce a change of course?

>Until when does the situation need to appear under control?

Barring major catastrophe, thing will continue to drift in the current direction until the Congress is "concluded in triumph" and the new government sworn in. So probably no sooner than October/November.

Why can't they just clandestinely ramp up their elderly vaccination efforts? No face will be lost.

They are already doing that and it will take some time. However no vaccine is 100% effective against mortality. Bear in mind that China had almost no covid deaths post-2020. Any covid death now is considered a failure as it would have been "preventable" under a strictly zero covid policy.

This is why the figures out of China is looking too good to be true right now with 150K+ recent cases, very low intensive care admission and only 2 deaths so far(both had very serious underlying conditions including end stage renal failure and cerebral infarction). One might argue that the officials have an incentive to hide the true figures to save face, but keeping the numbers low does not necessarily make them look any better as the lockdown appears overly harsh and disproportionate to the risks. The only options is to try and return to the zero covid days, no plan B allowed.

> They are already doing that and it will take some time.

Really? The data I've seen (googling and on social media) suggest that there is no change in the vaccination rate.

MoH data is a bit sparse on detail but still mentions 300K+ doses of vaccine administered daily.

http://www.nhc.gov.cn/xcs/yqjzqk/list_gzbd.shtml

The economist has some aged grouped vaccination data from the end of March that actually shows pretty good vaccine coverage for the 60-79 age group. I couldn't find a source but the numbers are consistent with a prior press release.

https://www.economist.com/china/2022/04/02/why-so-many-elder...

http://news.china.com.cn/2022-03/25/content_78130625.html

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