They were an option. China refused to approve Pfizer despite having distribution rights in HK/Macau/China, and manufacturing facilities to produce it in China. Instead opting for local vaccines.
You claim Singapore / Taiwan had extended lockdowns > This is false.
You claim China could never secure mRNA vaccines > This is false.
You claim Chinese are free to travel to HK (to get the vaccine) > This is false.
Singapore locked down from early April to June… 2 months. You don’t think that’s a lockdown? Did China have a lockdown last more than 2 months? I don’t think so. Shanghai was probably the longest and was roughly 2 months long (hard to tell because it started in suburbs only, unlike Singapore that was the whole city), or Wuhan itself in the beginning. So what are you talking about? Pretending that I’m making false statements. You invented this bullshit “extended lockdown” term then didn’t realise Singapore actually did do a longer lockdown than almost all Chinese cities. Good one. :D
Taiwan locked down very early in all cases taking spread to zero and then blocked anyone entering the country. Similar to New Zealand. You don’t call that a lockdown?
Show me where 6 billion doses of mRNA are being produced every 12 weeks? Then I’ll believe China could have procured them.
Chinese are free to travel to hk. There are exceptions of course. But the majority can visit (assuming they had the means) - but that wouldn’t change the fact that HK only had a few million doses so couldn’t possibly help on the mRNA front
> Singapore locked down from early April to June… 2 months.
Your point? Let's look at the difference.
In China when in lockdown, you cannot leave your apartment, period. There's no food delivery. You rely on the government to delivery food packages to you, if they aren't dumping it. You have daily covid testing, if you test positive you get taken away.
Singapore lockdown, leave home to buy food or see doctor, if you have elderly who are dependent on you, you may go visit them or take supplies to them. If you work in the food industry you can continue to work, including delivery drivers.
Taiwan lockdown, same as Singapore.
> Show me where 6 billion doses of mRNA are being produced every 12 weeks? Then I’ll believe China could have procured them.
I don't understand what part you do not get.
China > Refused > To > Allow > Western > Vaccines > From > Being > Used > In > China.
China had the facilities and rights to produce the Pfizer vaccine in China. It was not allowed to produced and used in China because China did not approve the vaccines for use.
They opted for their own home grown vaccine instead of a western one.
How hard is this to understand?
> Chinese are free to travel to hk.
No they were not allowed to freely travel to HK. There were exceptions for /some/ people to travel to HK.
And it doesn't matter if they go to HK and got an mRNA vaccine as China DID NOT RECOGNIZE IT and REQUIRED you to get THEIR vaccine. Even people in Singapore who needed to travel to China were required to get sinovac to go to China as their moderna / pfizer vaccine certs were not recognized.
You are describing lockdowns in “China” when you really mean Wuhans first lockdown, and Shanghai’s last lockdown. Guangzhou for instance was just like Singapores almost identical.
China does not require people to get the vaccine, that depends on local government policy not central government. Unless you are talking about international/returning people.
China invested in its own vaccine which was quicker and easier to keep and distribute (no cold requirement) it also turned out to be a failure. To re-pivot and set up manufacturing of mRNA that late would have been costly and still taken too long，leaving them with Covid0 as their only choice. I have seen no evidence they could have produced the required doses (initially 2 billion, and then ongoing 1 billion/quarter). If they had of tried purchasing it would likely significantly effect their economy… hard to know without understanding the pricing Pfizer were offering them.
lets Get into the real differences though:
Taiwan is an Island. Singapore is an island. The options available to you when you can effectively shutdown/control your borders lets you control people movement in a massively more effective way.
Let’s compare, somewhat comparable geographies:
- China
- Australia
- United States
Australia is a big island. So it could do a Taiwan and stop flights. But it still suffered an internal problem of people travelling between states. So what did they have to do? Super strict lockdowns.
United States also stopped flights (eventually). But its domestic and historic politics didn’t allow it to perform lockdowns nation wide, so instead it did localised ones, and spread was essentially uncontained. Lots of people died.
China suffered all the same things as the US, but could mandate lockdowns nationally. Bear in mind these lockdowns were implemented differently in every city. It saved millions of people, if the US lost 1 million with its half-assed lockdown, China would have lost more than 5 million people… insane that people are frowning at China here given their numbers were nothing close to that bad.
You claim Singapore / Taiwan had extended lockdowns > This is false.
You claim China could never secure mRNA vaccines > This is false.
You claim Chinese are free to travel to HK (to get the vaccine) > This is false.