Neil lives in Canada and writes about society and politics
Published: December 28, 2022
Scenery at Hong Kong's international airport on Sept. 27, 2022. As the world is spooked by the Chinese Communist Party’s reports of staggeringly high COVID positive test counts, an influx of travelers from the relaxation of the “Zero COVID” lockdown mandates through international airports has produced a tense situation. (Image: PETER PARKS/AFP via Getty Images)
As the rest of the world has mostly moved on from the
COVID-19 pandemic, global tensions are heating up as the Chinese Communist
Party’s total
abolishment of its disastrous
and draconian Zero COVID mandate regimen has led to reports of a flood
of COVID-positive travelers setting foot in international airports.
Reports involving headlines combining “COVID,” “China,” and
the topic of international travel were relatively prolific on Dec. 28 despite
most curiously encapsulating a story that was actually about how the People’s
Republic of China would begin to process passport applications starting Jan. 8.
One BBC article
on the topic noted that despite the date still being well over a week into the
future, “Travel sites have since reported a spike in traffic.”
SEE ALSO: Chinese Reject the Party Line as Pandemic Resurges Nationwide
The British public broadcaster stated that Washington
officials had “said in a statement quoted by news agencies” that, “There are
mounting concerns in the international community on the ongoing Covid-19 surges
in China and the lack of transparent data, including viral genomic sequence
data”
In the wake of the threat of a COVID renaissance, and one
that may actually affect more than the most vulnerable elderly and
immunocompromised populations, Japan and India made the call to require
travelers from China to present a negative COVID test on arrival or face a
mandatory 7-day quarantine.
Later in the day, the U.S. Biden administration announced it
would likewise begin requiring a negative COVID test for all travelers older
than 2 who originate from Hong Kong, Macau, or the mainland, but not until Jan.
5, CNBC reported.
When Trump tried to institute travel restrictions from China, Biden accused him of being a racist. pic.twitter.com/cS5P4tX3pa
— Catch Up (@CatchUpNetwork) December 28, 2022
“U.S. health officials said they have limited information on
what’s transpiring on the ground in China,” the article stated.
The situation in Japan, which BBC describes as “one of the
most popular destinations for Chinese travellers,” is reportedly already very
serious.
Omicron-a mild variant? Think again. Remember what happened in Hong Kong! And what’s happening in China & Japan!
— Vipin M. Vashishtha (@vipintukur) December 28, 2022
The curious case of Japan
➡️ Cases near all time high!
➡️ Deaths climbing fast!
➡️ Japan has one of the world's highest vaccination rates!
➡️ And 100% masking! 1/ pic.twitter.com/7ruG7fPiWb
Data from aggregator Our World in Data shows that the country is already
nearing its August COVID positive test count high of 225,000 people at slightly
less than 168,000 positive tests per day.
And while the 7-day rolling average of confirmed COVID
deaths currently stands at an all-time high for Japan, the figure is
nonetheless a very low 2.4 deaths per day.
Our World in Data disclaims the death count portion of their
dataset with the following caveat, “Due to varying protocols and challenges in
the attribution of the cause of death, the number of confirmed deaths may not
accurately represent the true number of deaths caused by COVID-19.”
Nonetheless, a Dec. 28 article by Bloomberg underscores the potential threat that scores
of travelers suddenly leaving the
epicenter of one of the most deadly viruses in history presents to the
world.
The article stated that among two flights to Milan from
Mainland China, almost half of all passengers tested positive for COVID.
Further reporting by the New York Post on the topic gave official stats as 35
of 92 passengers from one flight and 62 of 120 passengers from the other
testing positive.
Health officials were noted to be “sequencing the Milan
tests to see if there are new variants,” Bloomberg reported.
But sequencing for new and emerging variants takes time, a
factor that caused the world to pay the price when the now-dominant Omicron
variant of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, first
appeared among a party of fully vaccinated diplomats from an undisclosed
country visiting Botswana in November of 2021.
Official timelines released by the country’s health
authority stated, “This new virus was detected on four foreign nationals who
had entered Botswana on the 7th November 2021, on a diplomatic mission.”
Influenza prevalence in China suggests Cv was spreading in 2018 and maybe earlier. Coincidentaly a new coronavirus was identified in 2018 with a deadlier spike. Was Sars-CoV-2 a cover up to NL63? pic.twitter.com/bT2D5NEUtb
— Simon (@stevin2021) December 24, 2022
However, “The quartet tested positive for COVID-19 on the
11th November 2021 as they were preparing to return.”
And even as the diplomats roamed free inside Botswana as
contagious hosts for 4 days with a brand new and significantly mutated variant
of the virus, the sequencing process to discover Omicron had not been completed
until Nov. 22.
The Botswana government also did not alert the public until
Nov. 25.
Bloomberg noted of the Milan cases, “Most of those who
tested positive weren’t showing symptoms.”
However, the sheer number of infections being tallied across
China does not leave much room for optimism. Internal statistics leaked from
the PRC National Health Commission show that in the first 20 days of December
alone, around 250 million Chinese — almost 20 percent of the country’s 1.4
billion people — contracted COVID-19.
The outbreaks are concentrated on China’s large cities and
spreading outwards into the hinterland. Half the population of Beijing, China’s
21-million-strong capital, were infected, according to the Health Commission
figures.
On Dec. 26, Breitbart ran a piece zeroing in on the situation in
Zhejiang Province, adjacent to Shanghai on China’s eastern coast. The
provincial authorities had suddenly gone from reporting little to no COVID
cases to more than a million positive cases in a day on Christmas Eve.
Zhejiang has a population around 65 million, comparable to
France or the UK.
Putting the number into perspective, the largest daily
positive case counts in the entire United States, which has more than 330
million people, only ever exceeded one million per day three times, all in
January of 2022, peaking at 1.36 million.
Despite the staggering positive case count, Zhejiang
Communist Party officials still claim no deaths — typical of recent statistics
produced by authorities across the country even as Chinese mortuaries and crematoriums
are overloaded with corpses.
Additionally, Breitbart noted, “Even Zhejiang’s numbers were
a little suspicious, as the province claimed to have only 13,583 people
hospitalized from a population of 65.4 million, and a mere 242 of those
hospitalizations were classified as ‘severe’ or ‘critical.’”
https://www.visiontimes.com/2022/12/28/chinese-covid-positive-travelers-international-airports.html
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