FROM J C

The New York Times ran an overwrought story about covid in China yesterday, headlined, “From Zero Covid to No Plan: Behind China’s Pandemic U-Turn.” The Times’ sub-headline bitterly complained, “After micromanaging the coronavirus strategy for nearly three years, the country’s leader, Xi Jinping, has suddenly left the populace to improvise.”

They didn’t avoid covid, but you’ve got to hand China’s dictatorial government one thing: They avoided mRNA shots.

Anyway, the Times explained that a couple weeks ago, China finally abandoned its draconian “Covid Zero” approach to the pandemic, which the Times feels left poor Chinese “officials scrambling to manage the disarray and uncertainty.” The Times gloomily reported that “[w]arnings about the dangers of the coronavirus have swiftly disappeared, replaced by official claims that the Omicron variant is generally mild.”

“Official claims” that Omicron is generally mild. “Claims.” The Times isn’t too sure. Who knows? It’s not like we’re a year past Omicron here in the U.S. or anything.

The Times also dusted off its early pandemic playbook, and hauled out its old chestnut, the “overwhelmed hospitals” meme — proving the problem not by using statistics or anything, but just by quoting random anonymous doctors and nurses. It soberly reported that “A doctor in a city hospital said on social media that primary care has exploded with Covid patients, and more than half the doctors and nurses in the respiratory disease section were infected.”

A doctor “on social media.” It was just a post on WeChat or something! They didn’t even interview the doctor. What are journalists for? We can read social media posts for ourselves. Why do we need the Times?

Anyway, in other words, to the Times, human freedom brings “disarray and uncertainty,” which explains a lot about how we got here, if you think about it. But the better question is why exactly at this point in the pandemic is the Times so obviously upset about China abandoning Covid-zero?

I’m beginning to suspect the answer is that a lot of liberals were secretly rooting for China to succeed and somehow wipe out covid, because if the communist nation could finally show how successful Covid-zero was, that would silence pandemic response critics. In other words, if Covid-zero worked, we should’ve ALL done it, and that’s what we should do NEXT TIME. It would’ve shown the greatness of the communist system.

Oh well. Too bad, New York Times. I don’t feel sorry for you