How Many COVID Deaths Will Chinese Protesters Accept?
Strict zero-COVID policies have kept disease from spreading, but at enormous social cost. How far should they be rolled back?
Anti-lockdown protests erupted across China following a deadly in Xinjiang last week. The country’s zero-COVID policy may have been to blame, as first responders were apparently restricted from accessing the scene. Heavy-handed quarantines and endless testing are causing many harms, including food shortages and widespread unemployment. But they’re also keeping China’s COVID death toll very, very low: A out in May from , led by Shanghai researchers, estimated that without these strict measures in place, a massive wave of
