WaPo journalist Taylor Lorenz defends China’s ‘zero COVID’ lockdowns, criticizes U.S. approach

Over the weekend, Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz has hit out at her own paper by criticizing their reporting of China’s “zero-COVID” policy.

The Washington Post on Saturday tweeted an article about COVID-19 cases spiking in China, leading to the highest number of cases since March 2020.

“‘A coronavirus outbreak on the verge of being China’s biggest of the pandemic has exposed a critical flaw in Beijing’s ‘zero Covid’ strategy: a vast population without natural immunity,’” the tweet said, according to Fox News.

Lorenz took to Twitter to praise China’s stance on COVID lockdowns before going onto accuse the United States of killing “millions of vulnerable people” by reopening the country too early.

“There is no lasting ‘natural immunity’ to COVID. You can get covid over and over and over again bc there are so many endlessly evolving strains and antibodies wane. Also, choosing not to kill off millions of vulnerable people (as the US is doing) isn’t a ‘critical flaw’,” Lorenz tweeted.

Lorenz also issued a follow-up tweet defending her stance, saying that the article contained “a lot more nuance btw.”

“The original article linked is mostly about vaccines and gets into a lot more nuance btw, but I wanted to clear things up for people who may simply skim a tweet. Stay safe out there,” Lorenz said in a Nov. 26 tweet.

“And btw agreeing with forecast, large scale permanent disabilities ≠ blanket agreement with anyone’s policies. So please stop saying I’ve endorsed policies I’ve absolutely never spoken about much less endorsed!”

In October, Lorenz retweeted a clip of a Chinese business consultant praising China’s COVID policies, by saying that the West will be destroyed in 10 years when long-COVID takes all their workers out of service.

“Tbh he’s right,” Lorenz replied to the clip.

“Millions of ppl in the western world are becoming permanently disabled/chronically ill w/ an incurable condition that destroys ur ability to live a normal life and our leaders and majority of the media are simply ignoring it and misleading ppl abt the risk,” she added.