Why Didn’t China Prepare Better for Covid Chaos?
The country’s Communist system excels at mobilizing resources to fulfill the leadership’s top priority. But it’s not so good at multi-tasking.
Should have started sooner.
Photographer: STR/AFP/Getty Images
China ended its Covid Zero policy only weeks ago, after nationwide anti-lockdown protests. But President Xi Jinping’s government may already be losing its grip on the virus. Hospitals are filling up with Covid patients and an alarming number of medical staff have been infected. Pharmacies are running out of fever medication. In Beijing, deaths attributed to Covid-19 appear to have jumped, according to anecdotal reports from city crematoriums.
If the initial chaos following China’s abandonment of Covid Zero looks bad, a far worse calamity may be looming as a tsunami of infections spreads to the Chinese countryside. Modeling by experts forecasts as many as 1.5 million deaths in the coming months.