BBC reported earlier last month that lock downs in the Chinese city of Zhengzhou would result in delays to shipment of Apple products
That raises an interesting question of at this point in the COVID evolution (basically three years) are lockdown’s the right strategy.
Below is the monthly totals for US COVID cases and fatalities. Monthly cases peaked in January 2022 at 20.4m. Monthly fatalities peaked in Jan 2021 at 100,000 deaths.
Now consider the experience in China. Lockdown’s early in the COVID tenure were effective at controlling the pandemic. Now we see almost all COVID cases were experienced in 2022. But note – in a country with more than 4x the population of the US, peak cases were almost 2 million (that’s one tenth of the US peak).
Also note – monthly fatalities in November 2022 for China were 1,800 – whereas the total for the US was almost 10,000.
Reuters notes that some Chinese cities have begun to ease COVID curbs.
Global approach to COVID continues to deliver surprises and insights.
JF Insights 