Lockdowns by another name continue in parts of several cities as daily cases are approaching the level of the Shanghai disaster earlier this year. Right now it feels like we are seeing a repeat of Shanghai in late March, when local officials tried targeted and precise measures, before realizing that Omicron overwhelms all those efforts, leaving officials with the choice between letting it start to rip or instituting suffocating lockdowns. Near term I think they will have to choose the latter as they are not where they need to be with vaccinations and hospital capacity. But even then they have a massive problem with virgin immunity, so until they are willing to tolerate larger numbers of serious illness and death, or have better therapeutics, I do not think there is a specific end date. I know it is popular now to say March, pegged to the "two meetings", but I am not sure why that is really an end date. They really seem stuck.
#China Covid Curated
