China Turns Covid Victory Into Defeat

The lockdowns can never end if the Communist Party can’t admit its people will be infected

By Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. Excerpts:

"Daily reports indicate upward of 95% of cases discovered in relentless mass testing have been asymptomatic. Of the 130,000 or so cases reported in Shanghai since March 1, 5,000 were said to have been serious enough to require medical treatment. Two people were reported to have died. Government officials say the ratio applies nation-wide."

"Though 90% of citizens have been vaccinated, 40% of 80-year-olds have yet to receive a shot—27 million of the most vulnerable people."

"Shanghai healthcare is already strained by a government requirement that anyone testing positive and their close contacts be hospitalized or, more recently, placed in a special quarantine facility staffed with doctors and nurses. Exhausted medics are standing guard over tens of thousands of healthy patients who have nothing to do but share their aggravation on social media."

"the regime has caused its zero-Covid ideology to morph into something insane. If transmission must be suppressed and anything else is a defeat, then the Communist Party has set a game for itself in which no victory is possible."