“We modeled the epidemic dynamics of the Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 in China from Nov. to Dec. 2022, during a period when China moved from having strict COVID-19 policies (‘zero-COVID’), to little-to-no intervention efforts. We found that after full exit from zero-COVID, the Omicron variant spread at a very high rate of 0.42/day, with a doubling time of 1.6 days, during early and mid-Dec. before the incidence peaked around Dec. 23. Our point estimate is that 97% of the population (1.4 billion people) was infected during December, with a lower 95% credibility interval of 95% of the population (1.33 billion) and a lower limit in the sensitivity analyses of 90% (1.26 billion). With an infection fatality ratio between 0.1 and 0.2% for the Omicron variant19, we would expect between 1.3 and 2.6 million COVID-19 deaths in China during Dec. 2022 as well as Jan. 2023 (because of the delay from infection to death).” Of course, the United States has a smaller population, so Biden killed more people proportionately, but still Xi did pretty well!

Swift and extensive Omicron outbreak in China after sudden exit from ‘zero-COVID’ policy

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39638-4