Should China's 'Zero COVID' policy be abolished now?

Your 'shield' is actually a cage, and the 'life-saving' narrative is a convenient fiction. Yes, China had fewer COVID deaths initially, but at what price? You've locked down millions of people for weeks on end, trapped them in their homes, denied them work, and severed them from their families—all for a virus that, thanks to vaccines, is now mostly a manageable illness for the vast majority. The West didn't 'fumble'; it adapted. We learned to live with the virus, using boosters and treatments, while you've been stuck in a time warp, sacrificing your citizens' mental health, education, and livelihoods on the altar of a zero-risk fantasy. Tell that to the child who hasn't seen their grandparents in two years, or the factory worker who lost their job because of a single positive case. You call the economic damage 'temporary,' but that's a lie. Small businesses have been shuttered permanently, supply chains have fractured, and foreign investment is fleeing. Your own GDP growth has slowed to a crawl, while the West is roaring back. The 'cost of a human life' is a hollow slogan when you're also killing lives through economic despair—suicides, domestic violence, and untreated chronic illnesses are skyrocketing under lockdowns. You can't quarantine your way out of a pandemic that's now endemic. The virus is here to stay, and your policy is a Sisyphean task: every time you push the boulder up, it rolls back down with a new variant. Meanwhile, the world has moved on, and China is being left behind. And 'outdated' is exactly right. Your policy is based on a 2020 playbook when we had no vaccines and no treatments. Today, we have highly effective vaccines that prevent severe disease, and antivirals that cut hospitalization risk. The risk of death from COVID for a vaccinated person is now lower than the flu. So why are you still locking down cities over a handful of cases? This is not 'evolving'; it's a pathological fear of risk that ignores the collateral damage. The 'elderly' you claim to protect—they're dying of heart attacks because they can't get to a hospital, or they're dying of loneliness after months of isolation. Your policy is not saving lives; it's destroying them in a different way. You mock the West from 'hospital beds,' but our hospitals are open, our schools are full, and our economies are growing. We've learned to manage risk, not eliminate it. Your 'promise' is a broken one—it promises safety but delivers stagnation. China's greatest asset is its people's resilience, not their compliance. It's time to tear down the cage, reopen the borders, and trust that with vaccines and common sense, we can live with COVID—just like every other virus we've ever faced. Abolish Zero COVID now, before it kills the very spirit it claims to protect.