China Shrugs, Declares Its Half-Effective COVID Vaccine 'Good Enough'

Here’s another reminder that you can’t trust anything China’s communist dictators say.

In late 2020, China declared it had a COVID vaccine ready to roll and as a “public good” would make it available internationally. China boasted that its vaccine is about 80% effective, basing this on its own testing.

No detailed efficacy data of the vaccine has been publicly released but its developer, Beijing Biological Products Institute, a unit of Sinopharm subsidiary China National Biotec Group (CNBG), said on Wednesday its vaccine was 79.34% effective in preventing people from developing the disease based on interim data.

If it was 80% effective, the Chinese vaccine would still trail the U.S. vaccines, which are said to be around 94-95% effective, and Russia’s, which are reported to be around 91% effective.

Several countries stepped up to accept the Chinese vaccine, including Brazil.

Brazil’s Butantan Institute subjected the Chinese vaccine to trials, and found that even the 80% reported effectiveness is nowhere near actual.

China’s COVID vaccine is just 50.4% effective, according to Brazil. That level just barely meets the threshold of regulatory approval in Brazil.

At this point, someone in a position of authority — say, the WHO — should ask China what they knew about this and when they knew it. Did China knowingly peddle a vaccine that’s nowhere near as effective as it claimed, either to make money, to give the world a false sense of inoculation, or for some other reason?

China covered up key facts about the coronavirus in the earliest days when the world could have mounted a far more effective response.

China reportedly continued allowing flights out of Wuhan to points around the globe while it cut off domestic travel, unleashing the virus on everyone.

Only today, more than a year into the pandemic and its devastating toll on the world, has the World Health Organization entered Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus. That’s after the communists erected bureaucratic hurdles keeping investigators out.

A cynic might read those hurdles as time-buying moves to give China time to destroy evidence.

The investigation commences following months of discussions and further bureaucratic hurdles when China announced that some members of the team hadn’t received valid visas.

(edit)

Beijing has long resisted demands for an international investigation, instead pushing fringe theories that the virus entered China from abroad.

Remember when China tried to blame the U.S. Army for bring coronavirus to Wuhan?

China’s response to the vaccine news is typical of that regime. In the state-owned Global Times, the communists declare the half-effective vaccine is “good enough.”

Sinovac’s COVID-19 vaccine is 100 percent effective in preventing severe and moderate infections, 77.96 percent effective in preventing mild cases, and has an overall efficacy of 50.4 percent in Brazil’s final-stage trials.

Experts say the result is good enough considering almost all participants in Brazil are high-risk medical workers, and the 77.96 efficacy for mild-case protection means the vaccine can reduce 78 percent of people from needing hospitalization.

“The vaccine was able to 100 percent prevent severe illness in such a high-risk population, and effectively control the morbidity, and protect at least 50% of people from infection, which is good enough,” Wang Guiqiang, director of the Infectious Disease Department at Peking University First Hospital, told the Global Times.

Is it, though, when you reported it to be 80% effective?

Brazil apparently intends to move forward and use the Sinopac vaccine.

We shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that China claimed its vaccine 80% effective when testing outside China shows that it’s not. They probably knew that before shipping it around the world. When caught, China shrugs and essentially tells the customer that the big dent they see in the car they’re selling will buff out like a paint scratch.

Narrator voice: It won’t.