COVID Rages On In China Along With The Protestors. And There’s No Way Out.

We’ve written extensively about the idiotic Zero Covid policy of Chairman Xi in Communist China. If a single case of COVID appears, the infected individual and those around him are quarantined. If several cases are detected, an entire building or neighborhood can be shut down. If cases are more widespread, entire cities are shut down.

This happened to Shanghai (population 26 million) and Beijing (population 22 million) earlier this year and has happened repeatedly in cities all over China. The lockdown status means those with COVID are either shut into their homes (sometimes forcibly by welding doors shut) or moved to COVID concentration camps on the outskirts of the city.

All transportation into or out of the city can be curtailed. Those on the streets have to carry negative test results not more than two days old. There are testing tents set up on city streets every few blocks. Masks are mandatory indoors and out. Government thugs in white hazmat suits (referred to as #BigWhite on social media) roam the streets enforcing these rules.

The effect on the Chinese economy, and by extension, the global economy, has been devastating. These policies have been going on for three years, but today the techniques have been perfected, and the enforcement rigorous, sometimes violent.

I wondered how long the Chinese people would put up with this. Now we know.

As reported in this article, protests have broken out all over China. Some of the protests have turned violent as protestors rip down testing centers, break down barricades and confront security forces in the street. If the protests don’t stop soon, a brutal suppression effort by police and troops can be expected. It will be like Tiananmen Square (1989) on steroids.

The Zero Covid policy never made sense. COVID is caused by a respiratory virus called SARS-CoV-2. The virus goes where it wants by air. Masks don’t work, and lockdowns don’t work and make things worse by keeping people indoors, which acts like a virus incubator.

The vaccines are not true vaccines; they’re experimental gene modification therapies that cause deadly side effects. The Chinese vaccines don’t even have the modest symptom mitigation effects of U.S. vaccines, and the Chinese won’t allow the U.S. vaccines anyway.

COVID cases are setting new highs despite the Zero Covid policies. This leaves China with no good choices. If they end Zero Covid, the virus will rip through a country of 1.4 billion people and possibly kill millions before herd immunity is reached. If they continue Zero Covid, the protests may grow, and so will the repression.

If the Communist government caves to the protestors, more protests can be expected. Either China’s international reputation (not good to begin with) will be destroyed, or its economy will be destroyed, or both.

Investors who have not already gotten out of Chinese stocks and ETFs should do so immediately. This new fiasco is just getting started.

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