From FT Alphaville:
Revolving lockdowns are likely to exact a heavy economic toll in 2022
Ajay Rajadhyaksha is global chair of research at Barclays.
Having seemingly successfully beaten back Covid — cases were below 100 last week, in a country of 1.4bn — China announced that it was open for business again. Can it last? Already, the signs are ominous.
Shanghai officials this week increased testing capacity and unveiled new lockdown measures, because they found just seven new Covid infections outside of government-mandated quarantine sites. Beijing officials have stated that the threshold for unwinding curbs is zero new community cases for seven consecutive days.These are incredibly exacting standards, far more stringent than the rest of the world.
The US saw a peak of nearly a million daily cases in early 2022. Even in May, US cases averaged over a hundred thousand, but there were no restrictions in the country. France’s 2022 peak was over half a million per day. The country is still seeing 20,000 cases, while also embracing a tourist boom. In the world’s major economies, restaurants are booked, cruise ships are filled up, and tourists are out and about. People and governments have thrown off Covid restrictions, even when cases spike. With one giant exception.
Why is China reacting so strongly to Covid cases, relative to everyone else?....
....MUCH MORE
Aye lad, that's the question of the last biennium.
The comments are interesting as well.
