I mean, yeah- if you believe the numbers being put out by an authoritarian government whose big motivation is making the rest of the world think they have super low covid numbers.

Xi put a ton of effort into zero covid and massively inconvenienced hundreds of millions of people for years. If he has to change course because of protests then that is incredibly humiliating and makes him look weak. ...which is the last thing the CCP wants.

Yep, the weakest most dishonorable people are always the ones obsessively concerned with saving face.