Update: This Poll Sheds Light on Covid in BJ
Editor’s note: The results of the poll in this article sheds 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.
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 22 days of December 2022; (b) gotten it prior to December; or (c) not gotten it yet at all.
The numbers show that roughly 2000 of the approximately 8,000 people in our Safe & Sane groups, 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.
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We have since updated the poll, running it a second time since Dec 15 along with another poll conducted on the Beijinger WeChat account asking about severity of symptoms. The results of both of these polls can be found below.
75 percent (1,742 respondents) currently have Covid or contracted it after Dec 1, 2022
7 percent (264 respondents) had Covid prior to Dec 1, 2022
18 percent (1,001 respondents) currently do not have/never had Covid
We also got some light shed on symptoms people are experiencing:
39 percent (568 respondents) have had moderate symptoms
23 percent (329 respondents) have had light/mild symptoms
10 percent (13 respondents) have had severe symtoms
1 percent (19 respondents) listed the severity of their symptoms as unbearable
2 percent (27 respondents) are asymptomatic
The good news is that people are reporting 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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This Safe & Sane Group Poll Provides Some Insight Into Covid Right Now
Images: The Beijingers, Unsplash
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