The Zero Covid Fantasy is Over in Oceania and East Asia
Omicron Completely Destroyed Whatever Remained of This Fantasy (Expect in China...)
During the two years of the pandemic one part of the world has been consistently praised for their response to the pandemic. The nations of East Asia such as South Korea and Japan, along with the nations of Oceania, such as Australia and New Zealand had minimal Covid waves during the initial outbreak in March 2020. As countries across Europe and the Americas and across the globe grappled with ongoing Covid outbreaks, in East Asia and Oceania Covid had all but disappeared.
Well it might be time to take another look around the world on Covid. Have you seen what's happening in Oceania and East Asia lately?
For the first time since March 2020, North America has the fewest Covid cases per capita and Oceania has the most when comparing per capita case rate by continent.
On an individual county level, New Zealand is currently reporting nearly twice as many daily cases as the US peak this winter:
The same was true in Australia and instead of dropping like cases have in the US, they have leveled off in Australia at a fairly high level:
They aren't alone. You can add Brunei, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, and Vietnam to the list of countries in East Asia/Oceania that had seemingly evaded the pandemic only to see huge case spikes this winter.
You can essentially break down the experience of this region of the world into three stages.
Pre-Delta: (March 2020 thru June 2021)
Up until Delta not a single country from this region of the world say a significant spike in cases of the levels scene in Europe or the Americas:
Post-Delta: (June 2021 thru December 2021)
A number of the countries started to see spikes comparable to the rest of the world, notably Malaysia, Brunei, and Singapore.
Post-Omicron: (December 2021 thru the Present)
Nearly every country in this region of the world is now seeing Covid case spikes that meet or exceed the levels scene in European and American countries:
It's clear that Omicron completely destroyed whatever remained of the Zero Covid fantasy.
The question is why? and more specifically why now?
Many will point to Omicron's increased transmissibility, but recall in studies from Denmark and the UK Omicron had only a marginally higher secondary attack rate than Delta. The major distinction for Omicron was evasion of prior immunity, both from prior infection and from vaccination.
We also know a lack of vaccination is not an issue, nearly every country in this region of the world has a higher vaccination rate than Europe or the US:
Again, high population vaccination rate doesn't seem to mean much with Omicron and it might actually be a detriment.
We know this region of the world also had a very low prior infection rate. But that also assumes all infections would have occurred after March 2020. Is that a safe assumption? The longer this pandemic has gone on, the more information has come out revealing that the outbreak in Wuhan may have started earlier than at first believed. It possibly began in the summer of 2019, or potentially even earlier.
Could it be that Oceania and East Asia were hit with an earlier wave of the pandemic?, Could this have temporarily protected the region from subsequent waves that hit the US and Europe?
We know what we can't attribute the success to: Masks/Lockdowns etc. These NPI’s didn't work in developed countries of Europe, North America or South America, do we really think they could have worked in similarly developed countries like Australia or South Korea much less the slums of Brunei or the Philippines?
(Correction: Note that this tweet should read “positive every week” not every day. Still an exceptionally how infection rate.)
If it wasn't NPI's, if it's not a lack of vaccination, about the only thing we have left is breakthrough of prior immunity.
One potential piece of evidence for this is that even as this region of the world sees record cases at levels the US has never seen the region still shows very low death rates, exactly what one would expect with partial breakthroughs of immunity.
It might sound strange and hard to fathom but as Sherlock Holmes would say, "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
And in this case I believe the facts point to a natural explanation for the Covid experience in Oceania, caused by either early Covid exposure or some other form of cross-immunity from other viruses, evidenced by high case rates brought on by Omicron with very low death rates. The entire region has shown a much lower Case Fatality Rate (adjusted for testing rate) than Europe or the Americas.
CFR’s in East Asia/Oceania are 1/2 to 1/5 what Europe and the Americas are experiencing, which cannot simply be explained by slightly higher vaccination rates. Well over half of the deaths in America Europe are already occurring in the vaccinated, implying even 100% vaccination rate wouldn’t drop our CFR to their levels.
The one exception is Hong Kong which is seeing a major death rate which I do not have an explanation for, but if we are talking about Hong Kong, it might be worth talking about the one place where Zero Covid might still be a thing, China:
Amazing isn't it?!
Anyway 0 and 2…
Do note that in your linked tweet Woke Zombie, he's misread his own posted chart: the chart shows cases per million per WEEK, and he's read it as per DAY.
Having said that, it's interesting watching omicron blow through my country of NZ. I came down with symptoms 10 days ago and tested positive, and had been nowhere except the supermarket for weeks. Now it's all up in my Grandfather's care home, and we're waiting to see what happens there - though from the stats I remember reading, centenarians actually tend to survive better than those ~80 years old.