CCP Media Removes Expert’s View to Meet Zero-COVID Policy Needs

Required analysis concentrating on severity of the variant

Aerial view of people queuing up for COVID-19 PCR testing in Tianjin, China, on Jan. 20, 2022. VCG/VCG via Getty Images

While the new COVID-19 variants are widely recognized to cause mild symptoms, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) media has to say otherwise.

An analysis of the BA.5 Omicron subvariant done by a Chinese expert and published by CCTV on July 11 a CCP state media agency was removed and replaced with a different analysis that concentrated on the severity of the variant.

Overseas analysts explained that the article it was replaced with rationalized the strict lockdown measures behind the zero-COVID policy, despite projections that the economy will reach zero growth, as suggested in a recent official data release.

The Cost of Lockdowns

While the regime insists on its zero-COVID policy and the containment measures of lockdown, China’s economic growth suffered the worst impact ever.

The lockdowns could cost China at least $46 billion a month, according to a Bloomberg report earlier this year.

A July 15 report by China’s National Bureau of Statistics showed China’s economic growth increased 0.4 percent from a year earlier in the second quarter.

Judging from the latest data, the outlook of China’s official GDP could be “closer to zero growth across the year as a whole,” according to Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, reported by Barron’s.

A worker in a protective suit walks on a closed bridge during lockdown in Shanghai, China, May 18, 2022. Aly Song/File Photo/Reuters

Ditch the Scientific Analysis

The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants of Omicron were believed to cause fewer hospitalizations and deaths than previous Omicron variants.

On July 11, virologist Zhan-qiu Yang at the School of Medicine, Wuhan University, explained the mild flu-like symptoms of the variant’s localized infection of the throat and upper respiratory tract, to the state media, CCTV.

Earlier on June 18, China CDC Weekly published an article (pdf) by a 19-member research team of Wenhong Zhang, professor of Huashan Hospital, Fudan University School of Medicine, Shanghai, indicating in the Shanghai Omicron wave, the risk of developing severe illness was very low (0.065%, 22/33,816) in initially non-severe patients without unstable conditions.

However, both CCTV and the China CDC Weekly deleted the reports of the non-threatening nature of the variant shortly after they were published.

Instead, the state mouthpiece publicized a different viral expert’s analysis.

On July 19, China’s CDC virologist Xiaoping Dong, said that BA.4 and BA.5 resulted in roughly the same symptoms as other subvariants in China.

He said, “China’s current antivirus measures are effective in fending off those new variants,” China’s Party tabloid newspaper Global Times reported.

Politics Lead the Way

Microbiologist Xiaoxu Sean Lin told the Chinese language edition of The Epoch Times that Zhang’s research paper served as a denial of the extreme measures of the regime’s zero-COVID policy.

According to the research, the authors gave evidence for refining China’s public health strategies to minimize the risk of overwhelming regional medical resources, such as through mass PCR testing.

Lin also mentioned that while there were also other research papers on the variants from Fudan University researchers, the majority of them were very much “endorsing” the effectiveness of lockdown and mass PCR testing in containing the virus in China.

Economist Zheng Xuguang believed the paper that was removed was, in effect, blaming the extreme lockdown policy, which has caused all the huge and unnecessary economic losses and an untold number of tragic deaths.

Commentator Li Linyi explained why recognizing the mild symptoms of the subvariant would not fit the needs of the leadership.

“Xi Jinping’s dynamic clearing policy will lose its rationality, which will affect Xi’s re-election at the upcoming national political meeting,” Li added.

Haizhong Ning contributed to this report.