China’s Coronavirus Situation

Last night, some results popped up which kind of makes me wonder about China’s zero-Covid policy. I was going to write about something else but instead I will write about what popped up last night.

The Surprise

All data comes from Wikipedia. See Source Data box at end of post.

So here’s the initial information that caught my eye:

Image 1: Table of top 10 countries by case counts in last 14 days

What astonished me last night was China popping up in the table for the first time since I’ve been tracking. First time ever (after the coronavirus first appeared in that country).

That surprised me and made me wonder what good is the zero-Covid policy is doing if they are starting to appear in this table. And why isn’t it working anymore?

Here’s an image of China’s case counts as well as a table. You can definitely see the surge.

Image 2: China’s Coronavirus Data

Cases by Continents

Now, when I pull back, I can see that Asia is the one hotspot in the world that is currently undergoing case count surges. In the image below, Asia is represented by the blue line and if you look on the right-hand side of the graph, you can see that line go up.

Europe is the reddish-purple line and if you look closely, you can see that the line is now moving sideways. I don’t know if Europe is about to see a surge.

Image 3: Cases by Continents

Top 10 in the world

Lastly, I just want to take a brief look at the top 10 countries in the world by moving average over the last 14 days. This graphic will give you which countries have been trending over the 14 days.

Image 4: Top 10 by moving average in the last 14 days

The top 2 countries are from Asia: Japan and South Korea. You can see their line going up. At the very bottom you can see China’s trend line in red-purplish color. You can see that line going up. So, that part of the world is seeing a lot of activity.

My question: why isn’t the zero-Covid policy working?

I can’t think of very many possible reasons other than maybe the people are getting tired of the draconian lockdowns and thus are no longer social distancing or masking. Those lockdowns can’t be good for the family’s economic conditions.

Or maybe there is a new variant – more contagious variant such that a lockdown isn’t working because it is implemented too late. The new variant has spread before the Chinese are aware of a new version or a new outbreak.

Or maybe their vaccine no longer works.

The curious thing is the news is very quiet; I haven’t read anything much about China’s coronavirus situation.