#17,182
Although there are videos, and other reports of hospitals swamped with patients, and crematoriums running 24/7 with a huge backlog of bodies to process (see China's crematoriums struggle as Covid cases soar), officially only 7 people have died (all in Beijing) from COVID in China over the past 2 weeks.
These numbers - like the number of pigs lost in China to ASF, the number of human infections with avian flu (H5N6,H5N1, H3N8, etc.), when and where COVID first appeared, or China's true GDP - are treated as issues of national security in China, and are either heavily redacted or made up out of whole cloth by the CCP.Over the entire 3 year-span of COVID, China - with a population of 1.4 billion - only admits to 5242 deaths from COVID. Less than half of what the city of Hong Kong (pop. 7 million) has reported.
One of the reasons why I carry so little `official' information from Chinese officials in this blog is because by repeating it, I feel like I'm compounding a felony.
Overnight China's NHC (National Health Commission) held a press conference where they clarified their very narrow criteria for counting a `COVID death'. Essentially, only respiratory failure in a COVID positive patient will be counted.
COVID patients with `other' causes of death - like heart attack, sepsis, stroke, etc. - will be excluded, despite everything we know about the extrapulmonary impact of this disease.
The following excerpt from the NHC's transcript describes their new, official policy. I'll have a postscript after the break.
(Translated)
The press conference of the Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism of the State Council on December 20, 2022
[Wang Guiqiang, Director of the Department of Infectious Diseases, Peking University First Hospital]
Thank you for your question. With the significant decline in the pathogenicity of the Omicron strain and the widespread vaccination, the characteristics of death after infection with the new coronavirus have also changed greatly. Different from the outbreak in Wuhan at the beginning of 2020, when most patients died of respiratory failure due to new coronary pneumonia, now after infection with the Omicron strain, it mainly invades the upper respiratory tract, while the proportion of lower respiratory tract pneumonia is relatively low, and some patients also have pneumonia, but Rarely, respiratory failure has occurred.
It has also been seen from clinical practice that the main cause of death after infection with the Omicron virus is the underlying disease, and respiratory failure directly caused by the new coronavirus infection is rare.
In order to reflect the death situation caused by the new crown epidemic scientifically, objectively and realistically, the National Health and Health Commission recently organized experts to conduct demonstrations and issued a notice to clearly classify the relevant death cases scientifically.
There are mainly two aspects. Pneumonia and respiratory failure caused by the new coronavirus are the primary death diagnoses, which are classified as deaths caused by the new coronavirus infection; deaths caused by other diseases and basic diseases, such as cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, myocardial infarction, etc. , not classified as a death due to COVID-19.
In order to better standardize the determination of death caused by the new crown epidemic, it is currently required to adopt the method of consultation and discussion of death cases to finally determine whether the patient died of the new crown or other underlying diseases. Therefore, we neither avoid the dangers of the new crown, but also treat the harm of the new crown scientifically. thanks.
While accurate counts of COVID deaths are hard to come by, even in Western nations (see JAMA: Excess Deaths From COVID-19 and Other Causes, March-July 2020), China's highly selective policy is designed to cynically hide hundred of thousands - perhaps millions - of COVID deaths.
Clearly the intent here is to give the CCP a propaganda victory - and to suppress public concerns - but the bigger threat comes from out inability to see the trajectory and impact of the virus as it sweeps across China's massive, largely immunologically naive, population.
Should a new, more virulent COVID variant emerge in China, we probably won't learn about it until it escapes the mainland, and begins spreading globally. Sadly, China isn't the only country following this `don't test - don't tell' policy (see Flying Blind In The Viral Storm).
As always, contrary to the old adage, what we don't know can hurt us.
