The end of ‘zero-COVID’ in China has led to a wave of misinformation: NPR
Residents walk past a security guard in protective gear who checks his phone at the main entrance gate of a Beijing neighborhood on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.
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Residents walk past a security guard in protective gear who checks his phone at the main entrance gate of a Beijing neighborhood on Thursday, Dec. 1, 2022.
Andy Wong/AP
After nearly three years of strict “zero-COVID” policies, in recent days Chinese authorities have rolled back most of them following rare protests across the country. Mass testing and mass quarantine are now a thing of the past.
Just as dramatic as the policy shifts is the shift in messaging from public health experts the Chinese government has relied on since the virus was first identified in China in late 2019, jeopardizing their credibility before which is likely to be a giant wave of infections.
Two months ago, Dr Liang Wannian, the architect of the zero COVID policy, said China “cannot tolerate” a wave of massive infections. This month, he said, “the virus is much milder now.”
While Liang was focusing on less stringent protocols, another prominent public health expert, Dr. Zhong Nanshan, a pulmonologist who made a name for himself battling the SARS outbreak, made some downright misleading claims about the virus. He went from touting China’s mass quarantine strategy in May to telling state media that he hasn’t seen any cases of COVID-19 causing obvious long-term organ damage.
Numerous studies have shown that COVID can cause chronic health problems, including heart problems and brain damage.
Zhong also said that 78% of patients infected with the Omnicron variant will not be reinfected for quite some time. Studies suggest that protection against reinfection decreases significantly over time and that most people will be reinfected every one to two years.
“Did Omicron mutate, or did the experts?”
The about-face has not gone unnoticed on the Chinese internet. Posts juxtaposing TV appearances by several pundits before and after the change in state policy — including Zhong and Liang — garnered more than 100,000 views.
“Did Omicron mutate, or did the experts?” a poster wrote.
Not all public health and medical experts have changed their minds. Zhang Wenhong, director of a Shanghai hospital affiliated with Fudan University, said the zero COVID policy should be relaxed even before an outbreak in Shanghai shuts down the city for weeks. This stance initially drew attacks online, but now he is being praised for speaking truth to power.
Wu Fan, a member of Shanghai’s epidemic containment expert commission famous for insisting that Shanghai could not shut down, is now receiving an apology online.
Aside from the whiplash, much of the online discussion has shifted to how to deal with the consequences of the policy change, including preventative measures and available treatments.
Untested Remedies Provided
Untested remedies to fight COVID have blossomed again in recent days. An internal medicine doctor from the prestigious Chinese Academy of Engineering recommended the unproven method of rinsing your mouth daily with ice-cold salt water. Online commenters were baffled. “Wasn’t the salt water rinse demystified two years ago? Does an ice cold version make a difference?” one wrote in a blog post.
A local government in southwest China has suggested making tea from orange peel and monk fruit – two common ingredients in traditional Chinese medicine – to prevent infection. Dr. Zhong said weeks ago that he had found no effective medicine to prevent COVID infection.
The chaos and uncertainty right now remind Chen Wenhong, associate professor of media studies and sociology at the University of Texas, of the atmosphere of early 2020 when COVID first spread. “It’s a bit like flying in the dark.”
People line up to see health workers at a temporary fever clinic set up by a hospital to treat potential COVID-19 patients at a sports center on December 18, 2022 in Beijing. COVID cases have increased since the government scaled back its “zero-COVID” policies.
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People line up to see health workers at a temporary fever clinic set up by a hospital to treat potential COVID-19 patients at a sports center on December 18, 2022 in Beijing. COVID cases have increased since the government scaled back its “zero-COVID” policies.
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
Lack of information
For most people in China, state media and medical professionals are the most trusted sources of information about COVID-19, according to surveys conducted in 2020. And with global internet access cut off for the most part, there are few alternatives to state media. and its constellation of aligned social media accounts, says Huang Yanzhong, senior researcher in global health at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York.
Private outlets could provide better information although they don’t have the same reach, he says.
Moreover, non-state media are vulnerable to government repression. Ding Xiangyuan was a well-read online health news outlet who debunked health myths and criticized the government’s promotion of traditional Chinese medicine as well as the zero COVID policy before it was suspended from platforms. of popular social media in August. His accounts on the popular Chinese social media site, Weibo, remain silent today.
Another challenge is that Chinese media often translate COVID misinformation from English-speaking sources and share it with their audiences. “No matter if [the sources] are reputable or not,” says Huang. “They find whatever they thought would be useful to them, they start translating it into Chinese and spreading it, and it goes viral.
A recent example is how the Communist Party-controlled newspaper, The Global Times, cited a misleading report in the British tabloid Daily Mail, which suggested without evidence that vaccine maker Moderna had manufactured the virus. The Global Times widely cited the cover, using it to attack other unsubstantiated theories about the origin of the virus, including one that suggested it leaked from a government research lab in Wuhan. Other smaller social media accounts made videos of the report, putting “British Media” in the headlines.
Information from overseas comes not only from newspapers, but also from millions of Chinese nationals living overseas.
“The Chinese diaspora has played a very helpful role here in sharing with people back in China their personal experience of COVID,” Chen says, “knowing that in most cases it won’t be that bad.”
She points out that while researchers and journalists often pay attention to social media discourse, many rural residents, often elderly, rely on television and family members in big cities to stay informed. Many are vulnerable to disease, live in places where health resources are scarce, and are not adept at finding information on social media.
With the disease spreading rapidly from major cities to towns and villages, the Chinese government must act quickly to deliver medically valid public health messages to the most vulnerable people, Chen said.
So far, Chen and Huang say it’s too early to tell what effect the health message boost will have.
Implications for the Next Pandemic
Abrupt changes in public health messaging are not a new or uniquely Chinese challenge. At various stages of the pandemic, many countries have changed course on what health messages to send. At first, there was a lot of back-and-forth about whether masks and face coverings would reduce the spread of the virus, including in the United States.
As NPR reported, public health authorities don’t base their messages to the public entirely on science — many considerations are also pragmatic and cultural.
Chen says scientists have some soul-searching to do in the next two years. “If we know that politics is going to play a role in public health and also in science, how do we conduct ourselves? [are] our ethics?
“When the next pandemic comes, what would be the best message?”
Michaeleen Doucleff and John Ruwitch contributed reporting.
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