[The Epoch Times, April 21, 2022](The Epoch Times reporters Cheng Jing and Luo Ya reported) The recent severe epidemic in Shanghai has officially reported that more than 400,000 people have been infected and 17 people have died. Experts believe that the death rate in Shanghai is too low, and this figure “may be just the tip of the iceberg”. The official media said that “Europe and the United States lie flat”, which is the CCP’s extreme epidemic prevention platform. Analysts believe that this is to confuse the concept and join the tree.
Shanghai suddenly announced 17 experts who died of the epidemic: justify it
Since March this year, a new round of the epidemic in Shanghai has worsened, and the number of infected people has soared again and again. According to the website of the Shanghai Health and Construction Commission, more than 400,000 people have been infected so far. On April 18, 3 deaths were reported for the first time, 7 deaths were announced on the 19th, and 7 more deaths were announced on the 2nd, for a total of 17 deaths.
The BBC quoted the analysis of Jin Dongyan, a virologist and professor of the Department of Biochemistry of the Li Ka Shing School of Medicine of the University of Hong Kong, that the authorities chose to admit that there were deaths now, probably in order to “justify themselves”, because it was unreasonable that there were no deaths. But the numbers released so far “may just be the tip of the iceberg”.
Miracles happened as Shanghai struggled to contain a record COVID-19 outbreak through disruptive lockdown measures, VICE News said. More than 400,000 people were infected with the virus in Shanghai and only 17 died, which means the death rate as of Tuesday (April 19) was only about 4 in 100,000, a fraction of most countries.
Still, the figure is largely in line with the alarmingly low national death toll reported by China, which says fewer than 5,000 people have died from COVID-19 since the virus emerged in China, a country of 1.4 billion people, in late 2019.
The New York Times also reported that more than 400,000 people have been infected in the current round of the epidemic in Shanghai, and only 17 people have died. It is inevitable that people will question the accuracy and reliability of China’s (CCP) official data.
The living situation of Hong Kong residents is very similar to that of Shanghai, and there are as many middle-aged and elderly people and unvaccinated people as there are in Shanghai. After the surge in the current round of the epidemic in Hong Kong, the number of deaths quickly soared to 9,000; while in Shanghai, which has a population density three times higher than that of Hong Kong, after the epidemic soared a month later, there were only 17 deaths.
Reuters contacted the Shanghai government about the death count, but did not receive an immediate response.
Expert: The actual outbreak is more serious than the official report
Regarding the ultra-low death rate, VICE News quoted Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, who believed that “no (epidemic prevention) intervention can reduce the severity to such a low level”, when he talked about the outbreak in Shanghai “I think the current outbreak is worse than what has been reported,” he said.
Chinese health officials attribute the low death rate to the swift and draconian implementation of the “zero” policy. “Compared with overseas, the fatality rate of the new coronavirus in my country is lower because we have taken many measures to prevent or reduce deaths,” Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said at a news conference earlier this month. .”
But the Wall Street Journal found earlier this month that at least 20 patients had died in Shanghai’s largest nursing home in recent weeks, with 100 of them testing positive for nucleic acid. Chinese media, including Shanghai state media Sixth Tone and Caixin, reported other possible COVID-19-related deaths in nursing homes, but the articles were quickly deleted.
Earlier BBC investigations also showed that at least 27 elderly people died after contracting the new crown in a geriatric hospital in Shanghai alone, but their causes of death were classified as other underlying diseases.
In addition, VICE News said ventilator usage and hospital and intensive care facility occupancy rates are a better indicator of the severity of the situation, but Beijing did not release those figures. Authorities also widely censored articles and social media posts to control the flow of information about the pandemic.
China’s definition of coronavirus deaths is different from other countries
The report also said that as Beijing sought to use the low death toll to justify draconian lockdown measures, medical experts warned that the figures may not reflect the actual death toll from the outbreak in China.
The New York Times also said that officials in Beijing sometimes define the death toll from the epidemic more narrowly than in many other countries in order to highlight the effectiveness of epidemic prevention policies such as “dynamic clearing”, severe lockdowns, mass testing and isolation.
Jin Dong-yan, a molecular virologist at the University of Hong Kong, told VICE News, “The way they count infectious disease deaths is very different from what we do in other parts of the world.” For example, in Hong Kong, the United Kingdom and New Zealand, if The deceased tested positive for COVID-19 within the 28 days prior to death, and the death will be attributed to COVID-19 regardless of the immediate cause, such as a traffic accident or suicide.
Chen Zhengming, a professor of epidemiology at Oxford University, also said that China has not disclosed exactly how to count COVID-19 deaths, but its internal guidelines tend to use a narrow definition.
China requires that the direct cause of death of the deceased is pneumonia caused by the new crown to be counted as a death from the epidemic, and the rest are counted as deaths from underlying diseases. The New York Times said, “This results in China’s data may be good-looking, but not true and reliable.”
The price paid by Shanghai’s 26 million residents
More difficult to estimate, VICE News said, the prolonged lockdown and draconian epidemic control measures have affected the well-being of Shanghai’s 26 million residents.
Small-scale protests have erupted in several neighborhoods of the metropolis over the past few weeks as households in Shanghai ran out of food and supplies and the city-wide lockdown continued with no end in sight.
Some non-infected patients, who were denied hospital treatment and died, were potential victims of Shanghai’s response to the outbreak but would not be counted in any official statistics.
Some cancer patients have reported being turned away from emergency hospitals because they could not provide evidence of a negative COVID-19 test result. And with public transport suspended and cars banned from the streets, others struggled to get to medical facilities in the first place.
Even if they happen to call an ambulance, they cannot get on the car because they do not have a negative nucleic acid test certificate, or they cannot pass the checkpoint on the road, and they cannot even see a doctor at the hospital gate.
A 90-year-old man in Shanghai died of complications due to diabetes. “If at any point he could get treatment, he might still be alive,” the 32-year-old granddaughter, surnamed Tang, told The New York Times.
The official media said that the epidemic prevention in Europe and the United States was accused of deliberately misleading the public
Before Shanghai closed the city, the CCP media World Wide Web published an article on March 22 titled “How much will China cost after laying down?” It said that European and American countries were laying down for epidemic prevention and made a platform for the CCP to lock down the city. Overwhelming reprints by online media.
Based on the infection data in Europe and the United States and the death data in Hong Kong, the article infers that if Omicron is allowed to spread in China, the number of confirmed cases will reach 140 million, and the number of deaths will be 1.41 billion people in China, according to the 10% infection rate. According to the 30% infection rate: the number of confirmed cases will reach 406 million, and the number of deaths will reach 2.5172 million.
Lin Xiaoxu, a former U.S. Army microbiology researcher, told The Epoch Times that this article slandered other countries as a lie. In fact, the number of deaths in European and American countries is the number of deaths that are still unavoidable after trying their best to treat them. They don’t try their best to treat critically ill patients? Will the level of treatment be lower than China?
Regarding the open epidemic prevention in Europe and the United States, current affairs commentator Tang Jingyuan analyzed the Epoch Times. The purpose is to use the natural antibodies produced by infected people to be the optimal antibodies to resist larger and more ferocious mutant strains that may occur in the future. , all these measures are implemented in accordance with strict medical principles.
Tang Jingyuan believes, “This author gave the European and American anti-epidemic measures a political hat of lying flat, and is deliberately misleading the public, meaning that lying flat in European and American countries is irresponsible and does nothing. In fact, this is not the case at all. It’s confusing concepts, and it’s bridging the gaps.”
Tang Jingyuan said that Europe and the United States have made reasonable resource allocations for mild and severe cases of the epidemic. However, Shanghai has only been infected with more than 400,000 cases, and the entire medical resources have been completely broken down. This is a serious mistake made by Shanghai policy makers, and a large number of asymptomatic and mild symptoms have occupied valuable medical resources. A run occurs, which is a typical man-made disaster,
Judging from the official data, Tang Jingyuan said, “Shanghai’s mortality rate is the highest in the world. It does not mean that Omicron has obvious flu characteristics, and it can even be called a big flu.”
Tang Jingyuan also believes that “coexisting with the virus does not mean inaction, and closing the city does not necessarily mean doing something. The city closure has led to a large number of secondary disasters. The official death toll is not mentioned, and various departments such as medical care and community are lazy or lazy. Inaction, this is the institutionalized lay-flat, and it is a malicious lay-flat.”
Lin Xiaoxu also said that the author did not consider the additional death toll caused by the extreme zero-clearing policy. This is the number of people killed by extreme epidemic prevention policies in addition to the “excess mortality” brought about by the epidemic. “This specious article fully exposes the CCP’s fraud.”
Responsible editor: Lin Congwen#