Source: Criticism of the Covid 0 policy in China for the accident…
Found on: 2022-09-19 03:58:49
It was 2:40 a.m. on Sunday when a bus with 47 people on board overturned on a highway in southwestern China’s Guizhou province while taking its occupants to a Covid-19 quarantine center. 27 people died in the accident, which is generating numerous criticisms of the Covid 0 policy because the victims were transferred from the outbreak that has forced the provincial capital, Guiyang, to be confined to an isolation camp in a mountainous area 250 kilometers away. away. To add insult to injury, the bus contravened traffic regulations in China, which prohibit long-distance passenger transport between two and five in the morning. In addition, and as is usual in these cases, his driver was equipped with a special protective suit and glasses, which undoubtedly made driving difficult.
While waiting to know the causes, the incident has raised a current of indignation on social networks that the authorities are trying to stop with the censorship of the most negative comments. “We all go on that bus”, a very popular comment on WeChat sympathized while other Internet users highlighted the cruel irony that “Covid has not killed these people, but their way to quarantine.” “What guarantees do you have that one night you will not be on a bus like that?” complained a user on Weibo, where the accident quickly became one of the most commented topics on Sunday until, in the afternoon, it disappeared. of the 50 most popular labels. “This is the greatest tragedy caused by the unscientific measures to control Covid,” sentenced another comment.
As confirmed by the official press, the bus was transporting “affected by the controls of the Covid-19 outbreak” in Guiyang, a city of six million inhabitants that has been closed since the beginning of the month and whose confinement is generating a barrage of criticism for the lack of food. Compared to the 154 positive cases on Friday, the province of Guizhou reported that on Saturday there were 712, 70 percent of all those registered in China, but the vast majority were asymptomatic according to the authorities. Arguing that the city of Guiyang has run out of room to isolate positive cases and their contacts, the local government is moving more than 10,000 people to other places. According to some comments on the internet that were later censored, the victims of the accident were not even infected patients, but contacts of positive or suspected of having been exposed to the virus, according to the newspaper «South China Morning Post». As seen in other lockdowns, entire buildings are evicted and their neighbors isolated in quarantine camps if a single case is discovered.
Coupled with fatigue from the restrictions still in place two and a half years after the outbreak of the pandemic in Wuhan, such drastic measures are making a large part of Chinese society lose patience. While the rest of the world returns to normal, in China confinements of entire cities continue to be imposed, which are causing numerous protests due to the lack of food and the poor conditions of the isolation camps, as happened in Shanghai in the spring and is currently happening in the region. Muslim from Xinjiang and Tibet.
Despite the enormous economic and social impact of the Covid 0 policy, China insists on it as the only tool to prevent the coronavirus from circulating freely and thus prevent mortality from skyrocketing. Faced with the bleeding that the pandemic has unleashed in the rest of the world, its control is one of the political arguments used by President Xi Jinping and no changes are expected. In mid-October the XX Congress of the Communist Party is held, in which Xi will break the tradition of retiring after two five-year terms, and the last thing the regime wants is for Covid to get out of control.
But in the meantime, he will have to deal with the protests that the lockdowns trigger and with tragedies like this accident. According to the “Guizhou Daily”, the local authorities promised to “learn the lesson, review the isolation and transfer of people involved in the epidemic and the dangers of trafficking, carrying out a rectification.” For the 27 dead and 20 injured on the bus, it’s too late.