China’s rushed exit from zero-Covid may have cost hundreds of thousands of lives
IndependentNov 26, 2022
The Facts
A study from Seattle's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center suggests that the sudden end of China's stringent zero-COVID policies may have led to nearly 2M excess deaths, in research published Thursday in JAMA Network Open.
The researchers estimate that there were 1.87M excess deaths among all causes in people 30 and over between December 2022 and January and were observed in every mainland Chinese province except Tibet. This number is higher than the 60K COVID deaths reported by China during that period.
The Spin
Anti-China narrative
China, the epicenter of the COVID pandemic, has not been transparent with the global community. The PRC's official death numbers were nonsensical from the get-go, and the downplaying of the death toll put other countries at risk. These numbers recognize the unacknowledged victims of China's authoritarian handling of the COVID pandemic and the zero-COVID rollback which caused untold suffering.
Pro-China narrative
This study is anti-PRC slander, with a US-funded research institute making wild speculations about excess mortality. The truth is that China led the world in fighting COVID, and unlike Western nations did not deny its existence or resort to xenophobic conspiracies about its origin. China instituted stringent guidelines to keep the population safe — in spite of what this unfounded speculation might insinuate.
