China wasn’t ready for its Covid dam to burst

Plus: Kevin McCarthy's terrible day. [Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a party scene of Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [China’s Covid situation]( went from [zero to 100 real quick](. - [McCarthy’s House]( is an active fire hazard. - [Financial transparency]( is hot, [land hungry tyrants]( are not. - Everyone and their mother is [moving South](. China’s Covid Explosion Have you ever gone three years without seeing your family? Shuli Ren knows the feeling. The last time she visited her hometown of Shanghai and hugged her mom and dad, they were 73 years old. Now they’re 76. In late November, she finally flew from Hong Kong for a reunion with her parents. While she was with them, China gutted its Covid Zero policy. The orderly streets of Shanghai turned into a party scene, with nary a mask, health app or PCR test in sight. Eight days later, Shuli’s dad, who has early-stage diabetes, tested positive. Her mom, a cancer survivor, got sick two days after that. Both had nasty infections, with fevers, nausea and bad coughs. “I was stunned. [I did not expect the virus to arrive so soon](,” she writes. It’s a common feeling in China these days. At one point, around 37 million people were getting infected per day, equivalent to the entire population of Canada. By Christmas, almost no member of Shuli’s family had been spared from omicron. Making matters worse, the government’s inadequate response to the flood of cases it unleashed is “a joke,” she writes. Clara Ferreira Marques calls this “[a health emergency we can’t even gauge](,” because Beijing has stopped counting. Crematoriums are overloaded with bodies, and the horrors don’t stop there. One family was forced to share a home with [the decomposing corpse of a relative for five days]( before a hearse arrived. China’s “Covid Zero” strategy may have saved lives in the beginning, but isolating entire cities became untenable and left the country better at managing people than managing disease, Clara writes. The result is a triple emergency of a struggling economy, an endangered population and growing distrust in Xi Jinping’s government. Another Round, On the House If you asked me last week, “What are the odds this sentence will be in the lede of a Bloomberg Opinion column,” I’d say, “0.0000000000000000001%.” And yet here it is, right at the top of Joshua Green’s [latest](:“Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a voice of reason.” Amazing how unpredictable life can be. But let’s back up. How can a far-right QAnon conspiracy theorist who thinks [space lasers]( cause forest fires be considered reasonable? Mainly, Josh writes, the Georgia congresswoman is rightly criticizing the small group of Republican “destructionists,” in her apt phrasing, keeping Kevin McCarthy from becoming speaker of the House. All day, we’ve watched a CNN chyron with the same words, just flipping the ordinal number [as the situation worsened](: “MCCARTHY APPEARS TO SUFFER DEFEAT ON [FIRST, SECOND, THIRD] SPEAKER BALLOT.” And the Freedom Caucus is inflicting this torture on McCarthy for no other reason than because it can, Josh writes: “McCarthy’s enemies aren’t driven by a desire for aggressive conservative policy reforms. They want to blow things up. They want McCarthy’s scalp.” On a day when most House Republicans would have probably preferred to be celebrating their takeover, they’re looking in the mirror at a massive black eye administered by their own teammates. Let’s just hope nobody gives them access to the space lasers. Read the [whole thing](. Additional House-on-Fire Reading: The next speaker should [ditch the “Hastert rule”]( and adopt the “Pelosi principle.” — Matthew Yglesias In-N-Out In honor of the [time-honored tradition]( of creating [in/out lists]( for [the new year](, I took the liberty of making one for [Bloomberg Opinion](, based on a handful of columns by our writers[1](#footnote-1). Please enjoy: Telltale Charts Millions of older homeowners in major metro areas waited a decade to stake a “For Sale” sign in their front yard. The pandemic presented the perfect opportunity for sellers and unlocked pent-up demand from people itching to move to Texas and Florida. But the great southern migration didn’t slow in 2022. Conor Sen investigates why [millennials are following baby boomers South](. Although Qatar and the US never faced off during the most recent World Cup, the two countries are neck-and-neck in a race to be the world’s top exporter of liquefied natural gas. For the US, this is “a dramatic leap for a country that was long a net importer,” Clara Ferreira Marques writes in Elements, [our energy and commodities newsletter](. Thanks to tech advancements, we now know heart rate variability (HRV) is [the single most useful metric]( for understanding your health, Tim Culpan writes. The coolest part? Anyone can access the data at home with a chest strap or a [smartphone](. Further Reading Leaving Afghan refugees in legal limbo isn’t just cruel; [it’s a national security nightmare](. — Bloomberg’s editorial board Southwest Airlines used to be the “fun airline” people enjoyed working for. [Not anymore](. — Beth Kowitt Nepotism’s origins can be traced back to [popes electing their illegitimate children]( to the College of Cardinals. — Adrian Wooldridge The Social Security income tax cap might be nice for the likes of Tim Cook, but [it's bad for the bottom 95% of earners](. — Teresa Ghilarducci Long-awaited fantasies of [a working cancer vaccine]( are taking shape. — Lisa Jarvis Crypto is all [fun and games]( until [somebody goes to jail](. — Matt Levine ICYMI [Meetings are lame](, according to Shopify. fell out of the [$2 trillion club](. [Sam Bankman-Fried says]( he didn't do it. Kickers Penguin House paid $20 million for Prince Harry’s memoir. [Will it make a profit?]( Area man sleeps on [fiberglass-filled mattress]( for 8 months. There were [zero bank robberies]( in Denmark last year. AOC chats with the House Republican [who previously posted anime of him killing her](: Notes:  Please send in/out lists and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Instagram](, [TikTok](, [Twitter]( and [Facebook](. [1] In/out table is based on the following columns: - [Navigating 2023 With Seven Charts and a Cat](: Marcus Ashworth and Mark Gilbert - [Hindsight Capital II: Weed and Truss Went Up in Smoke](: John Authers - [In Every Modern War, Ukraine Has Been the Big Prize](: Hal Brands - [Zombie Companies Hook Up to Survive the Startup Winter](: Chris Bryant - [What Could Go Wrong for the Federal Reserve in 2023](: Bill Dudley - [Trump’s Tax Returns Are Only Part of the Picture](: Timothy L. O’Brien - [Big Tech Is in Crisis. That’s Exactly What It Needed](: Parmy Olson - [Expect the Unexpected in 2023: Cyberattacks and the Next Covid](: James Stavridis Like getting this newsletter? [Subscribe to Bloomberg.com]( for unlimited access to trusted, data-driven journalism and subscriber-only insights. 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