📝 ‘Grandpa refused a Covid vaccine. A month later, I was loading his body into a hearse of corpses’

The Telegraph

Funeral homes have been overwhelmed all over China | CREDIT: Reuters

Misinformation and mistrust is taking a heavy toll on China’s elderly, with many paying the ultimate price for vaccine hesitancy

By Shen Yang

“On December 7, after the government abandoned the zero-Covid policy, we tried to convince Grandpa to get vaccinated, but like many other times, he refused. On December 20, we held a small party for his 90th birthday in a local restaurant. Two days later he had a high fever and we sent him straight to the hospital. One week later, as we all thought he had fully recovered, he caught a cold, which quickly worsened, affected his breathing, and he died on January 2.

“My father and my aunt were so devastated at that moment that I was the only person in the condition to handle Grandpa's sudden passing. When the undertaker came, I had to help him carry Grandpa's body to the hearse. That was the very first time I ever touched a corpse, I was so scared I didn't even dare to look at Grandpa's face, and my whole body was shaking.

“When we finally reached the hearse, I saw the bodies of three people already lying there, zipped inside grey plastic bags. Grandpa's body was too heavy to be lifted on top of them, so we were forced to move the corpses of those total strangers until we finally managed to fit his body in the vehicle. As I stood there watching the hearse taking Grandpa away, tears were streaming down my cheeks… Five long days later, as they were finally cremating his body, I was lying in bed coughing my lungs out.”

When my 24-year-old nephew shared this tragic story with me, my very first reaction was the same as many other people's: Why did his grandpa stubbornly refuse vaccination again and again? Why didn't they just force him to get the vaccine?

The thing is, his grandpa just had a heart bypass surgery last year, coupled with high blood pressure. He was worried that the vaccine would further worsen his condition, and sadly he wasn't alone.

In China, the first who got vaccinated were the people between 18-60 years old working in healthcare, public transportation, delivery services, the cold-chain industry, and any other group that was considered to be more likely to spread the virus around. 

On the contrary, when it came to the elderly, the government was initially very cautious: it was not until March 3, 2021, that they launched mass vaccinations for people above 60 years old. And yet, by June 1, 2022, after a three months long mass vaccination campaign for the elderly, there were still over 33 million people above 60 who didn’t get any vaccine at all, and a whopping 95 million who didn't take the third booster shot.

One of the main reasons for the slower rates of vaccination was misinformation. Misinterpreted data about the effectiveness of the vaccine, combined with a few rare cases of deaths in elderly patients with underlying conditions, led the public opinion to believe the vaccine wasn't trustworthy (China's past scandals in the food and medical industry didn't help at all).

Doctors ‘sceptical’ of vaccines

Surprisingly, the government neither forced the vaccine upon its citizens nor put effort to convince its people of the quality of its vaccine. They did however try to incentivise vaccination by gifting commodities: my mother for instance received shampoo and toothpaste as a reward for getting her second dose, while other friends received items like sesame oil, cookies, yogurt, coupons, and sometimes even cash, but the mistrust between the government and the public was just so big that even physicians weren't fully convinced.

When elderly people with underlying conditions asked their doctors about whether they should take the shots or not, it was often the doctors themselves advising them against it, and this didn't just happen to the elderly. My elder sister was also initially advised by her doctor to avoid the vaccine due to her spondylitis medications, and she is only 40 years old. In the end, after doing her own research, she ignored her doctor's advice and got two doses and a booster shot later on, all without major side effects. 

Mistrust aside, I think one of the reasons for the physicians' caution is that if anything happened, doctors would have been the first ones to be blamed, and of course, no one dared to take responsibility for someone else's life.

Vaccination campaigns were also overshadowed by the zero-Covid policy. While it is true that the policy achieved a lower death rate compared to the West, it did take a huge toll on younger people's lives, who had to face isolation, adapt to remote work, and face layoffs and unemployment due to the nationwide slowing down of the economy. At its best, this policy lulled everyone into a false sense of security, especially the elderly, who believed that daily testing, localised lockdowns, or simply staying at home could keep them safe from the virus indefinitely.

This was the case for my uncle in Nanyang, Henan province, who rarely ventured out of his home. He was the only member of his family who did not get vaccinated. In June 2022 I went to visit him and one evening, a group of village leaders together with medical staff from the local hospital, barged into our house unannounced.  

They claimed they had to come in person to confirm whether my uncle was bedridden, in which case he would have been allowed to skip vaccination. They went straight into the bedroom and proceeded to take photos of my uncle, an 83-year-old man in his pajamas who had just come back from the hospital after a month’s struggle with coronary heart disease and cholecystitis, who was lying in bed, still in a vulnerable condition.

“He is now officially exempted from taking the vaccine, we'll take these photos as proof to the local authority,” one guy said in a reassuring voice as he was showing his phone to my cousin.

The whole thing happened so fast that by the time they left, I couldn’t help but laugh out loud in the yard: “What the hell just happened? How can they barge in like this? There is a person in pain right in front of them, they just take photos, finish their assignment, and leave without even checking his health condition. So much for caring about the elderly! Everything is just a formality!” 

It seems to me that if you happen to have underlying conditions or other serious diseases, you are responsible for your own fate. Nobody forces you to vaccinate, so by the time Covid finds you, no one is responsible for your health.

‘Hundreds of bodies’ wait for cremation

When the virus swept through the whole country after the government scrapped the zero-Covid Policy in December 2022, my cousin sent my uncle to the hospital immediately. This way, if anything happened, he would have received good care from the doctors and nurses right away. Luckily, after one week, when the whole family recovered from Covid, they took him back home safe and sound. Uncle had been fighting with many medical conditions for the past eight years and was frequently in hospital. Yet, every time we worried he couldn’t make it, he proved us wrong with his incredible resilience: he got dismissed from the hospital every single time.

I wish all the others who are fighting against Covid could be as lucky as my uncle, but the reality is grim. There’s been a rapid surge of deaths among the Chinese elderly, and hospitals and crematoria have been overwhelmed in the past month. Posts mourning the death of friends’ relatives kept popping out in WeChat moments, and obituaries of celebrities were published on social media day after day, along with those of people you knew from your hometown. In the meantime, doctors and nurses faced enormous pressure, not only they had to take care of hundreds of patients, but they themselves got sick at the same time.

“I’m starting to doubt the meaning of everything. I used to be proud of helping others and saving lives, but I’m also just a normal human being who wants to have a normal job, I don’t have big ambitions, I just want to earn a decent salary and support my family. But ever since the pandemic, I’ve been overworking almost every day. Physical pain was nothing compared with this endless mental torment. Moaning from the patients and crying from people who lost their loved ones kept rising, from every corner of the hospital. The whole atmosphere is just too depressing. 

“You know, there are waiting lists not only to get a bed in the hospital but also to be cremated! With hundreds of bodies waiting for cremation, many families are forced to carry their deceased ones to other cities, while those with connections can get them cremated the very next day. It's like we're back straight to the first wave of Covid in Wuhan! I really don’t know how much more of this I can take…”

When my nurse friend told me about her current situation, I empathised with her but didn’t know how to comfort her. I just felt relieved that I was able to escape: after my three years roller coaster experience with Covid in China, I went back to Italy at the beginning of December, right before China scrapped the zero-Covid policy. I guess the main lesson I learned from the two months of lockdown in Shanghai was: if you can't change the context, then switch to a different one as soon as possible.

While I’m having a normal life in Italy, my relatives and friends in China are all suffering from Covid, and are forced to relive the same situations we all experienced during lockdowns. A neighbour in Shanghai sent me photos of empty supermarket shelves and medicine counters, while other relatives told me they had no way to get a bed in hospitals. Luckily, the shortages didn't last long, but it is still very difficult to access proper medical care, and there have been countless cases of people getting treated in hospital corridors because of the lack of space and beds. 

“For the past three years, they have been spending loads of money to build quarantine camps and testing booths, and now they don't have a cent to spend on healthcare? They should at least transform the quarantine camps into temporary hospitals!” 

I couldn't agree more with my nurse friend's frustration. The whole situation is just absurd: why didn't the government fully prepare before abandoning the zero-Covid policy? And why didn't they use their propaganda mastery to convince people to take their shots? It seems the light at the end of the tunnel was actually the headlight of an oncoming train.

Vaccinations do seem to be slowly catching up at least: on December 13, the country officially approved the roll-out of a fourth booster dose for people above 60 or with serious underlying conditions. And yet, when I asked my mother in Jining, my friends in Shanghai, and other relatives in Beijing they all heard nothing about it.