From the South China Morning Post — 9:52pm, 15 Jan, 2022
“The Chinese capital reported its first community case of the Omicron coronavirus variant on Saturday, with local and imported infections of the strain now detected in about half of the country’s provinces and municipalities.”
If true, containment, quarantine, lockdowns and isolation are hopeless. The quote implies that they’ve already failed.
I find this very worrisome for reasons listed in a post 12 December 2021, a copy of which is below.
The short answer is that the mainland Chinese are immunologic virgins to exposure to the variants of the pandemic virus. Hopefully their vaccines will work better against omicron than those of the west, but there is no reason to think they will.
Is China following a Smokey the Bear policy on the pandemic?
China is following a prevent pandemic virus infection policy, just as Smokey the Bear followed a prevent forrest fires policy. The latter didn’t work out well, as although fires were prevented for a while. However, when fires did occur, they were much much worse than the smaller ones Smokey prevented. There was much more tinder and stuff to burn.
Actually Smokey has changed his tune slightly.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smokey_Bear SmokeyBear.com’s current site has a section on “Benefits of Fire” that includes this information: “Fire managers can reintroduce fire into fire-dependent ecosystems with prescribed fire. Under specific, controlled conditions, the beneficial effects of natural fire can be recreated, fuel buildup can be reduced, and we can prevent the catastrophic losses of uncontrolled, unwanted wildfire.”
Revision 14 December 2021 — China’s policy of prevention has resulted in a Chinese population which has been vaccinated using two killed virus vaccines (Sinopharm, Coronavac). They have not had any natural infections with the virus (aside from the original cases) as far as we know given what China has allowed out.
Infection with the virus itself exposes you to all its proteins, with your immune system responding to all of them. Western vaccines are just to the spike protein.
It tends to be forgotten that moist cases of pandemic viral infection are asymptomatic.
Given 800K deaths from COVID19 in the USA, how can I possibly say this is good. Here’s how :>
If you had an infection with the virus, you develop antibodies. Nowadays, everyone who is vaccinated has antibodies so there is no point in testing for them, but what were things like in the days before vaccines?
The following is from a post July/2020.
New York State randomly tested 3,000 people at grocery stores and shopping locations across 19 counties in 40 localities to see if they had the antibodies to fight the coronavirus, indicating they have had the virus and recovered from it. With more than 19.4 million people residents, according to U.S. Census data, the preliminary results imply that at least 2.7 million New Yorkers have been infected with Covid-19.They weren’t all hospitalized.
Here’s some work the same month from Queens — https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/nyregion/nyc-coronavirus-antibodies.html
At a clinic in Corona, a working-class neighborhood in Queens, more than 68 percent of people tested positive for antibodies to the new coronavirus. At another clinic in Jackson Heights, Queens, that number was 56 percent. But at a clinic in Cobble Hill, a mostly white and wealthy neighborhood in Brooklyn, only 13 percent of people tested positive for antibodies.
So the disease has already to spread to half the population in some neighborhoods in Queens. If even 10% of them were sick that would have been 140,000 hospitalizations. They didn’t happen.
OK, so a lot more people were infected than got sick. Why is this good?
Enter the omicron variant of the pandemic virus. It can evade the antibodies produced by all the current vaccines (in the West — protection against the Chinese killed viral vaccines CoronaVac and Sinopharm isn’t known yet). Yet omicron doesn’t appear to produce severe disease. Thus far…
The CDC in the past week said of the 40+ omicron cases it knows about (there certainly are more out there, and more to come), there was one hospitalization (for two days) and no deaths.
Here is Dr. Fauci 12 December 2021 — “We’re getting anecdotal information … not necessarily confirmed yet, that the level of severity appears to be maybe a bit less than in the Delta. But there are a lot of confounding issues that it may be due to the underlying protection in the community due to prior infections,”
Source — https://nypost.com/2021/12/12/omicron-appears-to-evade-some-protection-from-covid-vaccines/
So the Chinese population may be sitting ducks for omicron having been given vaccines (Sinopharm, Coronavac) of unknown potency against omicron. If their statistics are true there has been little or no natural infection with the pandemic virus in the Chinese population (which Fauci has just implicated is protective),. Given that I have a son, daughter in law and two grandkids living in Hong Kong, I find this extremely disconcerting.
Chemiotics II 
Comments
I haven’t read in Chinese media that Omicron has been detected in half of the provinces. And “municipalities” in China is hard to define. If this is true, half of the country would be in strict lockdown, which isn’t the case. Do I believe Omicron is already “all over China”: not really based on the action the government has been taken. Do I trust the “made in China” vaccine? Absolutely not. And the Chinese government knew this as well, hence the ” absolute Zero case” policy in major cities.
Li Lee: The South China Morning Post counts as Chinese media (to me at least) — just follow this link — https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3163525/china-braces-omicron-variant-extends-its-reach-and-lunar-new-
Since omicron is localize in upper respiratory track washing nose with salty water and gargling throat with water with soda should reduce / prevent severity of infection
Lewis: It is increasingly difficult to access reliable information about China. The SCMP is one of the better ones. I have learned to read between the actions, rather than the lines. For example, when Wuhan was locked down in Jan 2021, the positive cases were around 900. There was no way CPP would do so with only 900 positive cases ( I did my undergraduate in Wuhan).It is the same this time around: China would be in a national lockdown again if half provinces have detected Omicron. I do agree with you that the bigger ( if not the biggest) danger is the lack of effective vaccines. The CPP has not “approved” Biontech vaccine yet!
Li Lee
Agree you have to read between the lines, even the mainstream press in the USA. One of the most disturbing things about SCMP is their incessant reporting about military items. Are they preparing the nation for war?
The idea that omicron can be spread by letter is bizarre, and if true rather dumb to print, as it would tell the enemies of China a simple way to bring the country to its knees.
I doubt that China can contain omicron. SCMP usually has pictures of Chinese waiting to get vaccinated and/or tested, standing shoulder to shoulder row on row. I doubt that the lines move quickly and we do know that the best way to spread the virus is by aerosol.
Lewis:
I see why you have such a question. No, the CCP isn’t preparing the nation for war. This is the rising of nationalism talking, primarily. We see lots of reports on military strength last year or so, but this is a tactics the CCP has always applied. Two topics the CCP would always throw out when domestic tension rises: Taiwan and US-Sino relationship; both has heavy military elements. This tactics never fails!
Omicron through international letters is a laughing matter among the oversea Chinese now ( I live in Canada now). This is not the first time, and doubtfully will be the last time we hear something so bizarre ( I’d say stupid) on “why we have COVID virus again”: Norway Salmon, imported pork from US and now letters from Canada.