China’s great wall of public-health distrust

Open deliberations about the vaccines can counter the negative impact on public trust.

China’s urban populations have been enduring some of the most intense infection-prevention measures of the Covid-19 pandemic. For 60 straight days, Shanghai’s 27 million residents were forced into a strict lockdown —and they were not alone. During the peak of the Omicron BA.2 wave in April and May, 45 cities with a total of 373 million people were under some sort of lockdown. That is more than the combined populations of the United States (329.5 million) and Canada (38 million), and 83 percent of the population of the European Union (447 million).