How exactly is "zero-COVID" supposed to end? It seems like China are committed to extreme measures like this in perpetuity any time there is a future outbreak, which will happen.
Of course there is also a limit to what the people will take in terms of lockdowns and that hurts the government's credibility too. But the government is still betting they can persist with the current policy.
Flippant tone aside, I think those are your only options. My 2c.
Most countries using the Chinese vaccines had the "benefit" of having a ton of natural immunity as well. China obviously does not have this. They might seriously have to consider importing Western vaccines as boosters, especially for their under-vaccinated elderly population.
https://fortune.com/2022/03/22/china-covid-vaccine-data-reop...
And it doesn't make a lot of sense that the different vaccines would be substantially different against different variants or would wane quicker once the same level of vaccination was reached. Once you've got the T-cells and B-cells they're permanent and they aren't going to remember what kind of vaccine they came from. The differences in the vaccines should just be in overall effectiveness.
Mostly they just need to get their elderly population vaccinated, doesn't matter much how. It is really weird to watch China treat them with kid gloves.
Not quite. Subunit (Novavax) or inactivated virus vaccines (like the Chinese ones) do not cause synthesis of viral proteins, so they do not stimulate killer T cell immunity [1]. That's a whole arm of the immune system which is not getting primed.
[1] Except to a limited extent via cross-presentation, i know
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2021.7662...
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/resp.14191
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X2...
The dendritic cells which take up the inactivated virus vaccine will chop up the structural and spike proteins and display that on host MHC for T-cells and B-cells in germinal centers. The T-cells don't know if the protein fragments come from foreign particles or cell synthesis. The happens in both mRNA vaccines and inactivated virus vaccines and both require cross-presentation by the dendritic cells.
The answer here is simple: the government do not enforce anybody to get vaccinated. No one. If you missed a corona test at 7am you might be grounded for the rest of week, but if you don't get any vaccine nobody cares. I got two shots of Pfizer not recorded in China, and no one comes to my place like when they want to test you.
Plus there are sporadic side symptoms getting a shot, like arm sore and allergy, some even last to now. Plus plus, for most of people they don't see virus around. So the incentive is zero.
You probably don't have to right to travel freely, but you have the right to not get an injection in China. FWIW.
It sounds like you're either Chinese, or have close ties there.
For context, I live in the Southern US. I've not been vaccinated due to a medical concern that's shared with my doctor. My normal doctor is aggressively anti-COVID-vaccine, so I got a second opinion just in case, and concluded that while it probably wouldn't hurt me significantly... there is a chance of side effects that is within an order of magnitude of the chance that I will eventually develop a very severe case of COVID. I've already had COVID once - almost certainly the Delta variant - so the chances of my developing a severe case are very low anyhow.
I'm able to travel freely, and until very recently no one around me has any idea whether or not I've been vaccinated. The only change to that is that I'm taking a trip across the country for work in the next couple of months, and I had to get a doctor's note for my employer to release them of liability should I catch COVID and die as a result of that trip.
In short, I don't see this as a choice between being able to travel freely or being forced to take the vaccine. It's more nuanced than that.
In the chemical industry it's pretty bad. Some stuff I know shops in China refuse to synthesize anymore because it's like they tool up and then they can't sell it anymore to anyone because some US agency bans its import.
Of course if they also stop making phones everyone gets mad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_campaign With no sparrows to eat them, locust populations ballooned, swarming the country and compounding the ecological problems already caused by the Great Leap Forward, including widespread deforestation and misuse of poisons and pesticides.[9] Ecological imbalance is credited with exacerbating the Great Chinese Famine.[12][13] The Chinese government eventually resorted to importing 250,000 sparrows from the Soviet Union to replenish their population.[14]