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Eric Feigl-Ding Profile picture
Eric Feigl-Ding
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7h • 27 tweets • 14 min read
⚠️THERMONUCLEAR BAD—Hospitals completely overwhelmed in China ever since restrictions dropped. Epidemiologist estimate >60% of 🇨🇳 & 10% of Earth’s population likely infected over next 90 days. Deaths likely in the millions—plural. This is just the start—🧵
2) Summary of #CCP's current #COVID goal: “Let whoever needs to be infected infected, let whoever needs to die die. Early infections, early deaths, early peak, early resumption of production.” @jenniferzeng97

Dead bodies piled up in NE China in 1 night—
3) Doubling time in China may not be days anymore. Doubling time now possibly “hours” says some experts — let that sink in. R is hard to calculate if doubling is <1 day because it’s hard to PCR test that fast. The point is 🇨🇳 & the 🌎 is in deep trouble.
COVID spreading faster than ever in China. 800 million could be infected this winter

Scientists predict China will see the largest COVID surge of the pandemic this winter, with hundreds of millions of people infected. But some experts say that it could have been even worse.
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsod...navirus-outbrea
4) The deaths in mainland China is being hugely underreported outside of 🇨🇳. Through a survey of hospitals, funeral parlors & related funeral industry chains in Beijing—there is a recent explosion in funeral services caused by the sharp increase in deaths.
rfi.fr/tw/%E4%B8%AD%E… Image

港媒罕揭中國疫情飆升疫死增多 僅“北京染疫在家身亡就有2700多”
中國政府急轉彎放寬防疫後疫情飆升，染疫人數激增，從搶藥搶疫苗醫療擠兌不幸演變成喪葬擠兌，北京殯儀館24小時不停轉焚燒，網友批評盲目開放造成悲劇。香港明報透過調查當前疫情重災區北京的多間醫院、殯儀館及相關喪葬產業鏈，發現近期已出現涉染疫死亡個案急增所引發的喪葬服務爆表情況。
https://www.rfi.fr/tw/%E4%B8%AD%E5%9C%8B...892700%E5%A4%9A

5) Example—cremation in Beijing nonstop. Morgues are overloaded. Refrigerated containers needed. 24/7 funerals. 2000 bodies backlogged for cremations. Sound familiar? It is spring 2020 all over again— but this time for China, emulating more Western-mass infection approach. 🤦🏻‍♂️ Image

6) Westerns think there is a fever and antibiotic shortage now? ➡️Wait until China’s production is diverted from exports! Here—people rushed to a pharmaceutical factory to buy ibuprofen because it is completely sold out elsewhere! Dec 18, in #Zhuhai City.

7) Yes I care because I was born in China — but also because I’m an epidemiologist (my D degree is in it), & I’ve seen this shit show before. What happens in China doesn’t stay in 🇨🇳— Wuhan was our lesson 3 years ago. The global fallout of this 2022-2023 wave will not be small.👇

8) I’m going to pause for a moment—am I saying this will be the start of another “Thermonuclear bad” #COVID wave worldwide? Not necessarily via virus directly— but the global economic fallout from China’s new mega tsunami wave will be ugly. You can ignore my words at own peril.⬇️

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9) 1-2 million deaths in China is a very common number lately—I’ve seen the models— it’s certainly possible. It could be higher if govt doesn’t do anything, lower if govt curbs virus with heavy mitigations again. ➡️But anti-China-zero-COVID folks should accept their hand in this.

10) We need more collective empathy in this world. Just because something happens in a faraway city somewhere that you’ve never heard of—doesn’t mean it won’t affect you. Chances are— in this world—it will affect you. And it may affect / harm our children… may they forgive us.

11) Schools are closed in Shanghai for the next month, and in many other outbreak cities. This comes just weeks after restrictions on COVID were lifted. Protecting kids is also protecting their parents / caretakers and preventing them from being orphaned by a pandemic.

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https://twitter.com/drericding/status/1604294573580521472

12) so what is going on with China’s vaccination situation? There is a lot of vaccine resistance in the elderly. Additionally, the newer #Omicron sub variants, 2 shots not enough - and 3 shots of China’s main CoronaVac may not be enough again for bad evasive new variants. Image

13) A deeper problem lies in the weaker CoronaVac (by SinoVac) & Sinopharm vaccines. Notice how even with 3 shots of main CoronaVac shot, neutralization performance against newer recent #omicron variants is poor—this is bad. China isn’t using bivalent yet.

biorxiv.org/content/10.110… Image
Imprinted SARS-CoV-2 humoral immunity induces convergent Omicron RBD evolution

Continuous evolution of Omicron has led to a rapid and simultaneous emergence of numerous variants that display growth advantages over BA. 5. Despite their divergent evolutionary courses, mutations on…

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.09.15.507787v4

14) That said, even with recent #Ba5 infection or a recent BA5 bivalent booster, while neutralization is improved, it’s only slightly better. But modest against some of the really troublesome variants China is facing. It’s not the same old Wuhan strain anymore.

HT @yunlong_cao Image
15) This is real—In case you need video proof of the cremations—Staff at Beijing's largest Babaoshan funeral house confirmed that all of its incinerators were working but were still unable to meet demand, resulting in a 20-day backlog...

HT @gchahal

16) BBC’s China reporter @StephenMcDonell tells me… “In Beijing Covid has gone crazy, must be millions infected really quickly. I’m sure other cities will be next.”

Watch this BBC report — “China is overloaded and in for a rough few months”…

17) Among those overloaded are home delivery (food) drivers… not enough of them to keep up. Many have #COVID themselves. Food delivery orders piling up unable to be delivered. It’s a shit show. (Screenshot from BBC video above h. ImageImage

18) That said, China has very recent approved an aerosolized (inhaled) vaccine delivered via a nebulized form—it produced a greater antibody response than intramuscular—& also raised antibodies over 9-fold, and at lower dose. Mucosal vaccines could be key.

Safety and immunogenicity of heterologous boost immunisation with an orally administered aerosolised Ad5-nCoV after two-dose priming with an inactivated SARS-CoV-2 vaccine in Chinese adults: a randomised, open-label, single-centre trial - PubMed

National Natural Science Foundation of China and Jiangsu Provincial Key Research and Development Program.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35605625/

19) More importantly, inhaled vaccines also have the potential to induce a broader ‘mucosal immunity’, which could better defend against breakthrough infection, not just severe disease. This is why we need a mucosal vaccine trial funded soon. science.org/doi/10.1126/sc… Image

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/scii...947#body-ref-R3
20) Key—aerosolized nebulizer inhaled mucosal vaccine booster also performed better against newer #SARSCoV2 variants than muscle injected vaccines. This is key.

Again, this research is from 🇨🇳. US has funded zero randomized trials on mucosal vaccines!
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....51.2022.2132881

21) While we know China’s old CoronaVac vaccine is weak, China’s newest aerosolized nebulizer-inhaled mucosal vaccine is likely more powerful — 14.5x stronger in eliciting antibodies versus CoronaVac. The US needs to invest in these next gen stuff.

Aerosolized Ad5-nCoV booster vaccination elicited potent immune response against the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant after inactivated COVID-19 vaccine priming
The SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant has become the dominant SARS-CoV-2 variant around the world and exhibits immune escape to current COVID-19 vaccines to some extent due to its numerous spike mutations. H…
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/...3.08.22271816v1
22) And yes, China has emergency approved their inhaled vaccine (by CanSino) already for rollout. But most vaccines being administered in China is still the CoronaVac shot. My hope is the new miracle aerosolized inhaled vaccines will make a difference. 🙏

China approves world's first inhaled Covid vaccine for emergency use | CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/06/china/chi...-hnk/index.html

23) In case anyone wondering— yes, US has one in development too—Washington University developed one — and currently licensed to Ocugen. Yale has developed a nasal one too. But the problem is that there are no US funding for any trials! Warp speed 2.0???

WashU COVID-19 nasal vaccine technology licensed to Ocugen - The Source - Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University has licensed the rights to develop, manufacture and commercialize its proprietary COVID-19 nasal vaccine in the United States, Europe and Japan to Ocugen Inc., a U.S.-based biote…

https://source.wustl.edu/2022/10/washu-c...nsed-to-ocugen/

24) Back to China crisis—folks, I’m not exaggerating on the up to 2 million dead from #COVID in China in the coming months. Research teams have modeled it. It’s possible if no intervention. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Image

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/...with-infections

25) So how much did China’s COVID mitigation rules change? Actually 🇨🇳 lifted only some of the most severe—but still left A LOT OF MITIGATIONS—China did not throw rip up everything and reopen like UK or US did ([cough] @CDCDirector fail)—hence #COVID just that evasive. See 🧵
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26) You don’t have to believe me. Many people didn’t in Jan 2020 when I tried to warn the “novel coronavirus” was a pandemic that the world hasn’t seen since 1918. And I’m saying that #CovidIsNotOver. I’m just an epidemiologist trying to warn…

Why Did an Expert Who Warned About COVID-19 Have So Much Trouble Being Heard?
Though we often feel that we live in a sea of panic, it may be that the general din prevents us from hearing most important warning cries.
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/...oronavirus.html

27) I’m going to take a short break. China situation is fast moving. If you want more of my research and data aggregation— subscribe ✍️ below. I’ll post this thread 🧵 there shortly. Stay safe everyone 🙏
Dr. Eric Ding’s Journal
Public health need-to-know concerns, health policy, health politics, and info to protect your family. Special health bulletins from an epidemiologist, health economist, and nutrition scientist. Also d…
https://drericding.substack.com/subscribe

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Go to the link for all of the graphics.

I don't know what to think of this. I'm taking it with a big