Data out of Turkey, Brazil etc where Chinese vaccines were widely deployed with less lockdowns/restrictions do suggest lower efficacy at both reducing hospitalization and death. That said they are still fairly effective, just apparently not effective enough that China is willing to activate the floodgates. Also they have low vaccine penetration among the elderly which are hesitant to take vaccines in general
Could it also be the vaccines that were administered in China being less effective? If I recall people were hesitant to get the ones they developed and they at some point admitted that the initial ones had too low of an efficacy. So it'd make sense (for the gov) to fall back to lockdowns, maybe?
It has been stated by Peter Zeihan more than once that China has no effective Covid Vaccine, and that is why they have to resort to draconian lockdowns. I don't know if he's right or not, but it matches up with observed behavior over time.
If someone has evidence to the contrary, I'd like to hear it.
The Chinese government refuses to deploy non-Chinese vaccines. The concern has been that the Chinese vaccine is harmful or ineffective with the elders, so not having lockdowns causes a surge in the elderly being hospitalized or dying.
I mean, I think people believe that there would not be that many deaths because China has a heavily vaccinated population and a less strict lockdown could still be stricter than anything the US did, perhaps something closer to Australia.
On the first point, I think that the Chinese vaccine is much worse than the mRNA vaccines against Omicron, but I'm not sure what that would mean for death rates.
On the second point, well, I guess the Chinese government tried that to some degree, but didn't feel it was going well.
China also has much less naturally acquired immunity than everywhere else, and (mysteriously) refuses to make that up with vaccines—it’s not just an excuse, unlike in those authoritarian countries where immunity has already been built up so a lockdown would make a much smaller difference.
The "Chinese vaccine don't work" talking point is a bad faith myth created by western mainstream media, which misrepresented this study by comparing single- or two-dose Sinovac with 3-dose Pfizer. This sort of misrepresentation is unfortunately common practice in mainstream western media.
What is true however is that Chinese population has less immunity against omicron due to lower vaccination rates, especially among the elderly. For one, the Chinese don't see vaccination as really necessary because lockdowns work. Second, the Chinese worry a lot more about vaccine side effects. Here in the Netherlands, vaccines are sold as "100% safe, everyone should get it", whereas in China doctors would recommend against getting a vaccine if you have another medical problem such as heart problems. My other grandparents in law choose not to get vaccinated because they have many other health problems due to old age.
Finally, the Chinese public is by and large very supportive of lockdowns despite the Shanghai mess. Rather than "don't lock down" they now just believe "lock down earlier, don't turn into the next Shanghai".
Chinese vaccines do work. It's bad reporting that says it doesn't. In those countries they did not reach the percentage needed for herd immunity with less effective vaccines.
They were still hugely protective against severe disease. So they work.
I am not trying to make this about China in particular, but I'm biting: I would love to see some peer reviewed papers about vaccination efficiency of Chinese vs. European vs. American vs. Russian vs. Cuban vaccines (bonus points if it distinguishes about efficiency against different strains). Just like with infection numbers, which appear suspiciously low in some countries, there does not seem to be much good information on the vaccinations.
> The problem in mainland China (and in Hong Kong) is that many old people refuse to get vaccinated, for whatever reason
Geez, I wonder why especially old people - who lived through the CPC's chaos years with misguided policies at best and open human rights violations at worst - are reluctant to trust medical treatment that is strongly suggested by the CPC.
> In reality, life has been closer to normal in mainland China than in the US or Europe for most of the last 2 years.
And that I didn't contest. I am just saying that when an outbreak eventually will escape controllability, we will see a delayed mass dying.
> The current lockdown in Shanghai is the first major lockdown the city has had since early 2020.
I think you should also take into account that lockdown, China-style is a whole different beast from lockdown as understood by the rest of the world.
You’re asking the wrong question, vaccinations don’t stop the infections themselves. Why China still needs lockdowns, compared to the west? Because sinovac is basically useless.
> Against the original virus BioNTech was 95% effective compared to 50.7% for Sinovac.
The article's contents mean that China would have to quickly vaccinate the population of Shanghai, and could remove the lockdown shortly after. This is much a easier feat than keeping the entire city fed (besides, is the Chinese strict lockdown effective enough for omicron?).
A sizeable part of the Brazilian population got vaccinated with only Coronavac when omicron got here, but there wasn't enough difference on the death ratio to decide if it was less effective. So I imagine it isn't much worse than the Pfizer one on preventing death.
China has a 87% COVID vaccination rate, which is higher than the US (79%). However, the Chinese-made vaccines are not very effective, and many of the unvaccinated are elderly.
To my knowledge, organizations like the WHO and countries like Brazil reported weaker effectiveness of the Chinese jabs compared to the likes of Pfizer. I’m not familiar with even China claiming otherwise these past few years. Are you saying the CCP fell for the anti-CCP propaganda?
Most people in China have received a vaccine (2 doses). It will be one of the locally developed ones, which are significantly less effective than Western ones but they do provide some protection (not that much, though, it seems but they claim that it does help reduce worst outcomes significantly).
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