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© 2022 AFPAsian Games postponed indefinitely as China battles COVID
By Matthew WALSH BEIJING©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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© 2022 AFP
19 Comments
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Seigi
Postpone it forever...
stickman1760
The Chinese have only themselves to blame for starting covid then totally mismanaging it
daito_hak
Enough with this warrior-like rhetoric BS. They are not battling anything. This is just nonsense, a grotesque situation entirety made up by the government of this dictatorship country.
virusrex
The postponement seems to indicate the control is not as successful as the Chinese government has tried to present, after all none of the cities are supposed to have important outbreaks, so the games would not have an impact on the control.
The problem is that other countries have successfully replaced the zero covid policy with much more rational approaches that actually prioritize human lives by not disrupting unnecessarily health services and protecting the livehood of people by accepting a number of cases is inevitable so there is no point in destroying the economy to avoid them, betting towards quick and efficient treatment and widespread vaccination of the population to avoid excessive deaths.
Coulda been
No reason? Hmmm.
noriahojanen
Does it mean that the Games will be postponed not until but from September? They should think about relocating the venue outside China. Xi wants China free from covid, which is now impossible.
englisc aspyrgend
Postpone to allow time to relocate to an existing venue or venues out side of China. Just because the CCP are totally mismanaging Wuhan virus is not a reason that everyone else should be inconvenienced. China isn’t the only country involved in the games.
WA4TKG
Like anyone would go there
factchecker
Let's all permanently postpone China. No one wants a Putin collaborating pandemic causing nation involved in any global events hence forth.
painkiller
The Asian Games due to take place in Hangzhou in September have been postponed indefinitely, organizers said Friday, as China battles a resurgence of COVID cases.
Smart move by China, seeing that most countries in the world have abandoned their measures to try and control Covid infections in those individual countries.
That is a strange conclusion to draw, seeing that the reason for the suspension is to allow China's elimination strategy to play out as opposed to allowing in people from countries that have abandoned policies to limit Covid infections.
Tokyo postponed the Olympics for a year, Australia and New Zealand cancelled their open golf tournaments.
China prioritizes saving human lives versus other countries' approaches of abandoning any policy to limit Covid infections.
This is why China has the lowest rate of Covid infections and related deaths in the world, according to the source you provided.
virusrex
If that were the case they would have cancelled the Beijing Olympics in the first place, that they are postponing the games clearly indicates that the situation they are trying to present as completely under control is nothing of the sort, none of the areas involved are supposed to be under isolation, nor having outbreaks, but since they are now indirectly recognized as risky that would mean there are actually things happening that they are not being open about, which for the CCP is business as usual.
The problem is that this is not true, China is prioritizing having absolute control of the population with the excuse of COVID, if other countries like Australia have lower deaths without making a mess of public health (that causes deaths by itself) and destroying the economy (more deaths) as China does, this means prioritizing lives would require China to follow that model of dealing with the disease.
Both things are false, China have much worse infection rates even than the US, and according to you other countries have lower death rates compared with China, by definition this means China can't have the lowest.
And this is not even considering that if the way of counting deaths is equalized to the Chinese way many other countries end up having better numbers, China is doing worse than all of them.
kurisupisu
The last time I looked, buildings and bridges and stadiums do not produce sustenance.
That’s why the CCP are keeping people locked in their homes without access to food?
What a caring society…
painkiller
Because you say so? Do you have a source? Of course not.
Read again and see how you are mistaken and misinformed
The government has touted the strategy as proof that it values human life above material concerns and can avert the public health crises seen in many Western countries.
China has stubbornly stuck to a zero-COVID policy, imposing strict lockdowns, quarantines and mass testing programs even while other countries start to reopen as the threat of the pandemic recedes.
Because this policy has the greatest success in keeping covid infection rates and related deaths the lowest in the world.
virusrex
Argue against if you want, but the reality is that the priority is not human lives, that would require a change of policy to follow those countries with better results. This is just the usual priority that the CCP has demonstrated in every other aspect of their government style.
That the government says one things while doing the opposite do not prove saying so mistaken. For that it would be necessary to prove they are actually preventing more deaths (from COVID and from their measures) which is something you have not done.
You have repeated this before, and then proved yourself wrong with sources that prove other countries have better rates for both infections and deaths (as in lower than China), why make such an appeal to self contradiction?
painkiller
As medical experts have stated, the elimination strategy used by China has proven to be most effective to reduce health and economic damage in the mid- and long-term.
And most importantly, this strategy has produced the lowest infection and related deaths rate in the world.
New Zealand and Australia also had success copying China's zero covid strategy, but those two countries experience their highest infection and death rates after easing restrictions.
China experienced positive economic growth throughout the last 2 years while New Zealand, by comparion, experienced a recession.
It's not my argument; it's the policy used by China, and since it results in the lowest number of infections and the lowest rate of covid related deaths, it is obvious that the result the saving of human lives. To think otherwise is warping the realms of logic beyond rational thought.
virusrex
That is false, once the variants appeared the approach became unsustainable and counterproductive, which is why you have never brought any medical experts that currently recommend the strategy followed by China above what is used for example in Australia and New Zealand.
You keep making the mistake of attributing something that happened half a year before the elevation of cases, in reality the increase (that happened about the same time as in China) is because of the Omicron strain. Since China also had the same problem, is your argument that China abandoned the zero covid policy?
If that is your position you are implicitly accepting the Chinese authorities can be lying and you don't argue against it. If their actual purpose was to save lives they would be using the approach that is currently much better, like the one used in Australia and New Zealand, but they are not and instead have put in function censorship and repression to silence the widespread discontent of the population as described in multiple articles, there is nothing illogical in consider repression and censorship a way to control their population.