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Amid China’s sweeping freedom protests, celebrated doc warns world facing ‘most serious moment’ for COVID

November 30, 2022 | | Print Article

One of Australia’s most celebrated doctors has warned that the COVID pandemic has reached a critical stage because of China’s widely panned policies.

COVID is currently running rampant throughout China, the world’s most populous country, and instead of either encouraging natural immunity or convincing people to get vaccinated, President Xi Jinping has been locking everybody down.

Speaking this week on “Today,” an Australian show, former Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nick Coatsworth explained the seriousness of the situation and how it could ultimately pose a problem for the whole world.

“I’d almost say that this is the most serious moment for the globe in the pandemic. Obviously, China has had a particularly stringent COVID-zero policy but unfortunately, that hasn’t been accompanied by an ability to convince elderly Chinese to get vaccinated. So we have a situation now where, in a country of 1.4 billion people, only 40 percent of over 80s have received a third dose of COVID-19 vaccine,” he said.

“With the Omicron variant being so infectious, it will spread. The genie is out of the bottle. The Chinese Government won’t be able to hold back COVID now and it will spread,” Coatsworth added.

He further noted that coupled with Xi Jinping’s policies, pandemic fatigue is leading toward a clash.

“I think the point is if you are going to adopt such a stringent strategy of Covid-zero for so long and the most authoritarian government in the world will eventually find that their population rebels against it,” he said.

“We talk about pandemic fatigue in Australia. This is on a completely different scale obviously in China. If you are going to adopt that policy, you better make sure that you’re convincing your population to get vaccinated,” he added.

And unfortunately, he continued, the elderly will likely suffer the most.

“Whatever the reason, they have not been able to convince elderly Chinese to get vaccinated and of course, they are going to bear the brunt of this wave sweeping across China at the moment,” Coatsworth explained.

Coatsworth’s warning comes as China is currently awash in volatile, unprecedented protests precisely because of its leader’s policies.

“The protests erupted over the weekend across major cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, with China’s vast security apparatus moving swiftly to smother any further unrest,” according to news.com.au.

“But new clashes broke out in China’s southern city of Guangzhou on Tuesday night and into Wednesday, according to witnesses and social media footage,” the Australian news site reported early Wednesday morning.

China’s citizens are fed up with being locked down and literally left to die.

“Flames engulfed the upper floors of a high-rise apartment block in downtown Urumqi, Xinjiang’s capital, on Thursday evening, killing 10 people, including three children, and leaving nine hospitalized with smoke inhalation, officials said. According to an initial investigation, the blaze was caused by a power strip catching fire in a bedroom of one of the apartments,” The Washington Post reported last week.

“Videos shared on Chinese social media platforms showed firetrucks parked at a distance from the building and spraying water that fell short of the flames, leading some to question whether pandemic limitations on movement had prevented the trucks from getting closer or arriving fast enough,” the Post added.

According to additional reports, because of Xi Jinping’s strict lockdown policies, the deceased weren’t even able to leave their homes during the fire:

The ongoing current protests were reportedly inspired by a single man who, on Oct. 13th, draped two banners over a bridge in northwest Beijing.

“[We] don’t need Covid tests, we need to eat; we don’t need lockdowns, we need freedom; we don’t need lies, we need dignity; we don’t need Cultural Revolution, we need reform; we don’t need leaders, we need votes; we are not slaves, we are citizens,” one of the two banners read, according to The Telegraph.

The second one reportedly called for strikes and encouraged people to “take down dictator Xi Jinping.”

Watch:

“At the time, it seemed like an isolated and futile gesture of defiance. The man was immediately arrested, and all mention of the incident was immediately scrubbed from the Chinese internet,” The Telegraph notes.

But the man’s message quickly spread.

“[O]n Saturday his words reappeared all over the country – chanted by crowds of young women on the streets of Shanghai and daubed in red paint on Beijing University campus buildings,” according to The Telegraph.

 

Vivek Saxena
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