China was able to sustain some pretty strict zero-COVID policies much longer - all the way to late 2022.
Pain tolerance might be the wrong term. Pain tolerance implies speaks to something intrinsic about a population, while really what we're looking at is how much discomfort a population can endure before it really agitates for policy/political change, and so it's much about how a population feels, as the tools available to the government to control, manage, deflect and address the pain/discomfort.
Pain tolerance might be the wrong term. Pain tolerance implies speaks to something intrinsic about a population, while really what we're looking at is how much discomfort a population can endure before it really agitates for policy/political change, and so it's much about how a population feels, as the tools available to the government to control, manage, deflect and address the pain/discomfort.