Hong Kong and Shenzhen

I was asked by the NYTimes to comment on the lockdown of Shenzhen. This is what I said:

Shenzhen is China’s Silicon Valley so shutting it down will raise the cost of exporting electronics. Why would China shut down a vital export region? Next door is Hong Kong with currently the highest daily death rates from COVID ever reported. China’s population is highly vaccinated but with what may be less effective domestic vaccines and there are still millions of elderly people who are unvaccinated. China remains in a precarious position.

You can see why China is worried in these two pictures of daily deaths (left) and cumulative deaths (right) per million people in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is likely to exceed Canada’s death rate per capita before this is over, despite having had much lower rates for the previous two years. China is more vaccinated than Hong Kong. By some reports only 37% of the over-80s were vaccinated in Hong Kong while the rate is over 50% in China but still that leaves many very elderly unvaccinated. By the way, I have been somewhat skeptical about the three C’s story for Japan’s success but Japan has now gotten 95% of their over-80s vaccinated so Japan is in good shape regardless.

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