Coronavirus Forces China to Postpone Beijing Marathonhttps://www.breitbart.com/asia/2021/10/25/coronavirus-forces-china-to-postpone-beijing-marathon/Government authorities in Beijing announced Sunday they would postpone the upcoming Beijing Marathon — originally scheduled for October 31 — until an unknown date in an effort to contain a new outbreak of the Chinese coronavirus in the national capital, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
The 2021 Beijing Marathon was expected to draw 30,000 participants to Beijing, a city of nearly 21 million people, by the end of October. The event’s organizers issued a statement on October 24 saying they decided to postpone the race “until further notice in order to prevent the risk of the epidemic spreading (and) effectively protect the health and safety of the majority of runners, staff, and residents.”
Chinese government health officials reported 39 new cases of coronavirus in China on October 25, 35 of them local. Communist Party authorities have blamed China’s latest resurgence of the virus — first reported on October 19 — on a Chinese tour group that allegedly contracted the coronavirus from foreign sources in Mongolia.
1. IMO, China's total shutdown strategy - the original national shutdown and subsequent regional shutdowns - was a huge mistake. Shutdowns slowed and slow the gradual build-up of natural immunity in the Chinese population. Which means the population of susceptible people in China is much higher than it would otherwise be.
2. Announcing the postponement a mere week before the event is going to create chaos for a lot of people, and possibly some lingering ill will.
3. The event itself, being outdoors and therefore low risk, could have been risk-managed/reduced via corraling and decent fluids-handling. All very doable, all basically things already commonly done. The sort of runners who would do a high-prestige event like the Beijing Marathon have already been through similar measures in recent weeks in Berlin, Chicago, and Boston.
Just an example of what a shutdown, China-style is like, a family friend works in a town outside of a major city. While working there it was discovered that a town resident had travelled to another major city, been infected, and on returning had moved about the town like normal, not knowing he was infected. Once he tested positive, the town was shut down, as in no one allowed to leave the town and everyone would get tested, for a period of at least two weeks. Our family friend literally woke up to police barricades at all streets the lead out of the town. How much the friend's movement about the town is restricted, I don't know.
