A youtube channel called “China Insights” (incites is more like it) is of dubious quality.  It makes many allegations, and while it shows video of many events, it never lists sources that can be checked.  (There are other bloggers and vloggers who have even less credibility, producing opinion and not news.)  It’s annoying because some of what is posted in their videos is verifiable, but not all.

For weeks, CI has been claiming massive lockdowns across China, of people starving and separated from their families, that the “zero COVID policy” is causing human rights abuses.  These items from Deutsche Welle and ABC (US) are the first credible news sources I’ve seen to report that the entirety of Shanghai is under lockdown.

Beijing “plans” the economy and society, dictating numbers that reality often fails to meet.  Some rumours (CI and others) say “zero COVID” is predicated on doing a certain number of tests, and not about reducing the actual number of infected people.  Witness the cases during the olympics.  It makes you wonder what the real counts are, both sick and dead.

Jilin province has one of the worst rates of infection, and that is the province which borders North Korea (once part of the Shilla Kingdom, 800 years ago).  How bad is the spread in that country?