When the pandemic started, China wasn't that paranoid about new infections, what changed now?
They locked down Wuhan early on. Foreign travel was severely restricted. I don't think anything really changed, they always had the intent to contain it completely.
New mutation or not, it's not sensible to have such strict measures, when the rest of the Western world is easing measures.
I can't argue that it's sensible - most of the actions of the Chinese government don't make sense to me, and starving their citizens is definitely one of those things.
But the immunity levels are most likely very different between China and the West where almost everyone had some strain of COVID.
Certainly, they did have strict policies since the beginning, but I don't recall seeing such action taken against their citizens. They've literally locked them up, with no access to anywhere, while the government is distributing food that to me, doesn't look enough for a household.
Certainly, they didn't have as many infections as Europe and USA, but it looks incredibly cruel to see such practices.
Well countries surrounding China should be happy they are adopting the zero tolerance because if not, covid of any variant could spread once again. The Chinese are confident that way though, they are more cooperative to their government than trying to impress their neighbors that they can fight back the police or so. It may look like concentration camp but its for the best. People just have to follow what authorities are doing for it to be over.
Countries surrounding China will be happy for the Chinese government adopting zero-tolerance cause no one wants the previous spread of the virus that happened in Wuhan to repeat again but there's always a way to do something which all the country's citizens will obey the government order rather than locking people inside their homes and forcing them to take a daily test.
A new mutation could possibly be more transmitting, but it certainly won't be as deadly, no point in taking such measures. If this situation continues, we'll face serious logistic and supply chain issues. There aren't any advantages with this policy.