China’s chief epidemiologist Wu Zunyou flat-out rejected the growing campaign in many Western countries to reclassify COVID as a mere flu-like epidemic that is going to be with us forever, until herd immunity somehow kicks in. Instead, he reaffirmed China’s commitment to a “dynamic zero-COVID policy,” which has proved the world’s most successful approach.
The campaign to assert that COVID is an epidemic just like the flu and to stop reporting COVID deaths as a separate category, is being led by the Malthusian Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, currently on Biden’s COVID Task Force and a notorious promoter of Nazi medical policies such as denying advanced care to persons over 65 years of age.
In an exclusive interview with the Global Times, Wu responded to a question whether vaccinating 70 percent of the global population could end the acute phase of the pandemic. He stated that China will not adjust its dynamic zero-tolerance policy for now, because relying on only vaccines cannot contain COVID-19. Global Times reported: “Ahead of the fourth wave of the pandemic, many countries in Europe have already reached 70% total vaccination, and some countries like Germany, France and the U.K. have vaccination rates above 70%, but the occurrence of Omicron with breakthrough cases challenges the concept of herd immunity.
“This means if you want to end the epidemic through building up the herd immunity but mutated strains can evade immunity, this concept will no longer apply, Wu noted. `China has already reached a 70% vaccination rate, but as long as the virus can evade herd immunity, people can still get infected, like the recent outbreak in Tianjin, where many infected people were vaccinated, although the symptoms were milder,’ he said.
