This Poll Sheds Light on BJ's Covid Situation
Editor’s note: The results of the poll in this article shed a bit of light on how quickly Covid is spreading in the capital, but should not be mistaken for a scientifically accurate, demographics-based analysis of Beijing as a whole.
Chances are if you’re in Beijing now and still don’t know anyone who has caught Covid as of this week, you’re one of a lucky few.
Incidents of people getting sick with Covid in the capital and elsewhere in China have skyrocketed over the past two weeks following the loosening of epidemic control measures. But the exact number of cases is now hard to pinpoint with official numbers no longer being published (make of this what you will).
We took it upon ourselves to get a poll going in our Safe & Sane WeChat groups to see how many people had either (a) gotten Covid in the first 14 days of December 2022; (b) gotten it prior to December; or (c) not gotten it yet at all.
The numbers show that 3,007 of the approximately 8,000 people in our Safe & Sane groups, roughly 38 percent, took part in this poll. This is a massive response rate and is more than enough data to draw statistical conclusions about the group as a whole.
Nevertheless, these results can only reasonably be said to be a representation of the Safe & Sane population, for which no particular demographic profile is available. But when compared to Beijing as a whole, we can deduce that it is likely skewed in the following ways: (1) heavily skewed towards the foreign population; (2) heavily concentrated in Chaoyang/eastern Beijing; (3) concentrated on 25-55 year old individuals (relatively few children and elderly); (4) by nature is an English-speaking population.
58 percent (1,742 respondents) currently have Covid or contracted it after Dec 1, 2022
9 percent (264 respondents) had Covid prior to Dec 1, 2022
33 percent (1,001 respondents) currently do not have/never had Covid
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It took only two weeks for this wave of COVID-19 to infect significantly more than half of Safe & Sane group members.
Press reports indicate Omicron infections are often asymptomatic. This fact combined with a shortage of antigen test kits and a delay in results coming from public testing stations likely means the actual infection rate is higher than 58 percent.
This wave has infected 6.6 times more people than all previous waves combined.
One in three members remain unaffected as of today (Dec 15).
With the understanding that this poll can in no way be called a representative sample of the city of Beijing, it is nevertheless easy to conclude that the infection rate in Beijing could be approaching these numbers.
Playing around without using scientifically precise statistical theory and numbers, let’s say Beijing as a whole only has HALF the percentage of infected people contained in our Safe & Sane respondent sample – i.e. 29 percent vs. 58 percent. Multiply 29 percent by 20 million people or so and you have 5.8 million infections at this time.
That’s a lot, folks.
These results are also echoed in a similar poll released yesterday by a popular Beijing-centric WeChat account that garnered nearly 30,000 responses, indicating that 58 percent of respondents have had Covid. Their poll didn't differentiate responses by time as ours did, but it's still hauntingly similar.
The good news is that people are reporting that Omicron symptoms are often mild or moderate, hospitalizations are few and far between, and most people are able to recover at home without the need for specialized medicines other than basic pain and fever relievers.
If you'd like to keep up-to-date-with Covid in Beijing in light of recent changes, simply add TBJButler on WeChat (QR code below) and ask to be added to one of our Safe & Sane groups.
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