ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Covid anti-vax conspirators offer a thriving line in coffee and cookies on the east coast of Australia, running alternative cafes from Cairns to Nimbin and down the spine of the Great Dividing Range to Katoomba and points further south. Local customers complain about big government, big capital and (intriguingly) the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

A sign in the window of one anti-vaxxer hangout, across from Katoomba's railway station, reads "We stand united against government tyranny!!" Bill Gates smiles threateningly from a silk-screen print, vaccination needle in hand, alongside an advertisement for Chakra group-healing sessions. In this part of town, conspiracy theories and alternative healing are served with coffee and cake on what appears to be a sustainable anti-vax business model. [...]

There's no viable business model for superstitious belief in China, where science and rational planning carry the day and the apparently irrational desires of common people count for little.

But here's the thing. China is opening up again after three years of intermittent but severe Covid lockdowns. Over that period it managed to keep the virus in check but failed to prepare the country's people for a timely transition from epidemic lockdowns to a more flexible model of pandemic management. Why this neglect, if China's government is as rational, capable and forward thinking as it claims to be ? Why lift lockdowns heading into winter rather in the warmer months earlier this year when the virus was less active? As a result of this series of policy failures, China could be heading for a health crisis on a scale the world has not seen since the crisis that shook India in 2020.

Some analysts say the party erred in abandoning its long-held commitment to science by succumbing to an anti-vax syndrome of its own devising. 

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