Omicron: Blessing in disguise that will eventually undermine the Chinese Communist Party completely.
The extremely transmissible, yet virtually nonlethal strain of COVID-19 called Omicron, which has completely rendered all other variants history, is spreading fast across China, prompting the CCP to lock down multiple cities now.
In addition to Shanghai, Xi'an, a prefecture level city which had barely emerged from it's own month-long lockdown in February, is being locked down once again. Also being locked down are the cities of Guangzhou and the technology hub Zhengzhou.
To every observer across the world now, one thing is apparent: You CANNOT stop the spread of Omicron. 99% of the infected never even get sick. Eventually, most likely within this year, Omicron will be ENDEMIC across even "zero-COVID" China.
This leaves the CCP with two options:
1. Continue to double down on the failed and highly unpopular lockdown approach which is already escalating anti-government sentiment across the country and possibly ignite a full scale violent revolt and campaign of revenge as various groups with long standing historic hatred of the CCP and victims of the lockdowns who lost family members due to disruption of medical care all unite with a single goal in mind, to incinerate the CCP.
OR:
2. Admit failure and let Omicron spread while trying to encourage interprovincial and national commerce to grow back to pre-pandemic levels. Before Xi'an in the January of 2022, this WAS an option and possibly would have allowed the CCP to save face and maintain power as most of the public forgives them for the "Wuhan fluke". However NOW, after the clusterfuck in both Xi'an and Shanghai, and starting up in other cities as well, this is not an option anymore. Trust in the government has reached an all time low. Millions of citizens are getting their news from viral social media posts instead of government media sources. Social media bloggers are also inventing creative ways to get latest updates about the crisis in Shanghai past the autonomous firewall settings, by using state-encouraged anti-US hashtags in their posts to circumvent robotic censors. If the CCP chooses option 2 right now, it will only further exacerbate mistrust and hatred of them across the country. It is too late. The damage has been done. People have died. Beloved pet dogs and cats have been killed. Economies and livelihoods ruined. And revenge is most likely now on the minds of many individuals.
It is OVER for them at this point.
Zhengzhou lockdown:
The Chinese city of Zhengzhou locked down some areas near Foxconn Technology Group’s main iPhone manufacturing base, with state media reporting operations remain normal amid concern of further trouble for Apple Inc.’s supply chain.
www.bloomberg.com
Necessity is the mother of innovation: Chinese social media bloggers use state approved anti-American hashtags and title headers to get posts about Shanghai updates and sensitive breaking news past Great Firewall censorship software. This is how so many videos and articles about the Shanghai situation had been shared worldwide using this clever "Trojan Horse" manuever. It is a move that the Chinese censors have so far been utterly unable to counter, because if they blocked these anti-US hashtags from getting through, they will block 99.9% of their own propaganda and shut their own media machine down along with the opposition.
www.newshub.co.nz