North Korea confirms first official COVID cases as leader Kim Jong Un orders strict lockdown
The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) says test samples from Sunday from an unspecified number of people with fevers in the capital, Pyongyang, confirmed they were infected with the Omicron variant...
To keep the virus from entering its territory, North Korea had closed its border to nearly all trade and visitors for two years, which shocked an economy already damaged by crippling US-led sanctions over its nuclear weapons and missile programme.
It is not obvious why North Korea and China are still taking such severe measures to combat a virus which seems to have become globally endemic but not particularly dangerous. As if the leadership in both countries feel their power must always be seen and felt to be greater than the power of the virus. A strange kind of power struggle perhaps.
WHO chief slams China for its 'unsustainable' zero Covid policy... but Beijing CENSORS his comments amid warnings 1.6MILLION could die from 'tsunami' of infections
- In a rare rebuke of the Communist party, WHO chief urged China to move away from the Zero Covid strategy
- Most of 25m people living in Shanghai about to be hit with most severe restrictions in 7-week lockdown yet
- Officials will stop all commercial food deliveries and ban all non-emergency visits to hospital, reports say
7 comments:
I don't know how it works. If a country like North Korea or New Zealand keeps virtually closed borders and have no cases for a couple of years when the virulent strains are killing the elderly around the world, will they face the same virulence when they open up? Or have the virulent strains played out by then, and they will only get the weaker strains that now give the rest of us the sniffles?
Sam - it's a puzzle because they should only get the weaker strains unless they know something we don't.
Maybe the Chinese are still worried about the characteristics they intended the virus to have.
Remember the obviously staged 2020 Chinese pictures of people falling down in the streets? And the unbelievably low number of 'cases' until now? So, they have a few cases of the milder version and they're treating it as if it's still a killer - even more unbelievable.
They're playing another game now, which appears to be maximizing the disruption to supply chains of goods, mainly to the USA. World trade is being hit by multiple problems all at once, so it's an opportunity to 'put the boot in' to their enemy.
It's kind of hard to figure out what's going to be the outcome on the world stage with all these incompetent players. The lack of any real intellectual penetration on the part of leaders in the West over economics and society and the grandiosity and miscalculation of leaders in the East just presents the spectacle of lots of actors all over the world shooting themselves in the foot.
dearieme - yes and that seems to be plausible too. If so then I hope it suggests they won't try again.
Ed - yet disruption to supply chains could teach the rest of the world to look for alternatives. It doesn't feel entirely competent to me.
Tammly - yes that's what I see - a world stage crowded with incompetent players. There are sinister motives, but it seems to be mingled with incompetence.
It's their incompetence that will be the saving of us - eventually.
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