China’s steampunk covid response - The Economist
Early on Australia, New Zealand and Singapore also followed covid-elimination policies, but with a difference. Those countries used their zero-covid policies to buy time until they were ready to live with the virus, with the help of effective vaccines and potent new antiviral drugs. China did not use its policy to buy time.
Instead, once the virus breached China’s defences and many areas saw outbreaks, the country switched to a second phase, dubbed “dynamic zero-covid”. China built nationwide systems to find each infected person and isolate them within hours, before tracing and isolating hundreds or even thousands of their close contacts. The “dynamic” bit nods to the impossibility of avoiding cases altogether. The ambition, rather, is to crush waves rapidly.
中国处理新冠的失败：思维还停留在 19 世纪，没有疫苗的年代，把大量的资源消耗在找到感染者和隔离上，却没有提高民众疫苗接种率，特别是老年人的疫苗接种率，目前老年人的三针疫苗接种率是 68%，如果要放开，最好打四针。
Three main explanations for these changes suggest themselves. The first, call it Plan a, is that Chinese leaders are trying to make the zero-covid policy more sustainable. Plan b is that an organised exit from the policy is quietly under way, despite those official denials. Plan c is no plan at all; it posits that China has lost control and is crashing towards opening.
除了看政府说了什么，更重要的是看政府做了什么，显然，政府并没有为大规模放开提前做好准备，疫苗接种率没有提高，也没有引进 M-RNA 疫苗的意向；目前感染的病人还是会被送去隔离。现在病毒传播速度变得越来越快，地方财政没有办法支撑高昂的核酸检测和医疗费用，这一模式肯定是 unsustainble 。所以，actually, China has no plan at all.
Update:
一夜之间放开，如木遥所说：
充分说明我们这些小布尔乔亚知识分子的软弱和愚蠢。替领导操了半天心：要怎么下台阶，要怎么铺垫，要怎么解释，要怎么把话圆回来。
领导：什么台阶？什么铺垫？什么解释？你在说什么？