China to inject $174B of liquidity on Monday as markets reopen

Why is that?

Are the native Beijingers to rich and fancy to run a shop?

Sounds like an opportunity for someone to open some bagel shops.

Here's the definition from Merriam Webster: "one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses."

But, even more importantly, words can have nuances! Here's a nuance: "a word or phrase that by association is held to embody something (such as a concept or quality)."

In both cases, the notion of identical meaning is absent. It would also completely vitiate its common usage. Synonym is best thought as simply a similarity in meaning.

But the mandate to wear masks in crowded public places is to protect others from the wearer. Note there have been few if any reported cases of transmission on long flights from China. This may have something to do with mask wearing by carriers of the disease.

1. Not infect others during the period while they feel fine but are actually spreading the virus

2. As a more effective means of preventing spread via coughing and sneezing.

agree people should not deceive themselves, however.

A regular surgical face mask doesn't protect.

A more specialized mask, known as an N95 respirator, can protect against the new coronavirus, also called 2019-nCoV. The respirator is thicker than a surgical mask

> We performed a systematic review of both clinical and surrogate exposure data comparing N95 respirators and surgical masks for the prevention of transmissible acute respiratory infections.

That it didn't find a difference between N95 and plain surgical masks isn't surprising:

> Participants in clinical studies were health care workers in a health care setting. We defined health care worker as any worker in a health care setting who might be exposed to a patient with an acute respiratory infection. [...] Acute respiratory infections may have been acquired during the study from community exposures rather than nosocomial exposure.

It's not obvious (and wasn't discussed) that such a broad definition of 'health care workers' identifies people who are exposed to categorically more respiratory infections than, say, elementary school teachers. Indeed, one of the studies was actually halted due to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009.

So... of the people in the study who did get sick, we don't know how many of them caught it from their kids at home or on the bus to work when they weren't wearing .

Interestingly, one of the two randomized studies they looked at, having by far with the largest number of participants (1669), concludes:

> Continuous use of N95 respirators was more efficacious against CRI than intermittent use of N95 or medical masks.

(The other study with 1441 participants concludes that N95 respirators are more effective in preventing multiple simultaneous infections.)

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23413265/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24472436

Due to the way China's government has lied in the past, I am hesitant to believe their numbers or their narrative until it can be confirmed by outside parties.

China does get credit for responding to the situation as they did after the central government got involved. However, we must remember that the situation would likely not have occurred in the first place if the people speaking out about it early on weren't punished, which wouldn't happen in most western countries as local governments have way less power and way less incentives to make that kind of thing happen. This situation is a good example of the problems of their authoritarian system, and a good reminder of why we value (or why we should value) the things we value in the West, like free speech.

In a centralized top-down system like China's, politicians advance their career by currying favor with their superiors by demonstrating plan fulfillment, and if they fail they'll try to fake the numbers to make it look like they succeeded. This affects mostly nationally visible metrics like GDP, poverty rate etc. I guess epidemics also fall into that category.

In a localized bottom-up system, politicians advance their career by currying favor with voters by distributing handouts, like farming subsidies, tax cuts or artificially low prices. The Flint water crisis was at least partially caused by politicians not wanting to improve the infrastructure, because the cost would have to be recouped by raising the water price, which would have been unpopular.

Let’s take the Australian bush fires. The response of the PM has been widely criticised and the fire chief and regional governments have taken the lead and been very effective, even heroic in their efforts.

In an authoritarian system it would be impossible for the most effective and organised arms if government to push in and get things done, even if I’n theory they lack the ultimate authority. Competence and public support matter. In an authoritarian system the only thing that matters is authority. Competence doesn’t even get you a seat at the table.

Flint was a local event. This is consuming all of China.

"x is not a new problem" - is not an argument - it's a whataboutism. Every single problem has existed before.

You would have a point if the debate was about the relative moral standing of China. It's not, as much as the Communist Party wants to call opponents racist or anti-Chinese which is pure deflection. From an objective point of view, Communist China's authoritarianism is putting the whole world at risk.

Unless most the infections occurred very recently which is pretty unlikely.

I think my 98% is probably a bit too optimistic, but your 53% is way beyond pessimistic.

I'm not trying to fearmonger and I realize this is potentially in the same league as screaming fire in a very crowded theater. But we all are aware of the numbers, and even ignoring the fact that they're underreported, the current correctly calculated mortality rate is grave.

Now, given that this is still unfolding, it's possible that only those with weakened immune systems are dying, as usual. But even then at this point dead/recovered is a severe indicator. Plus rumor is R0 1-4 and it is likely more contagious than SARS - hell, look at what we do know about China's response; far more comprehensive and restricted than outbreaks past.

It's early for panic, but not too early to prepare. As soon as the public heard catches wind of just how significant this is, I guarantee stores will empty overnight.

A black swan, like coronavirus shutting down China.

>Which industry has a fundamental imbalance?

Consumer debt and financial services.

How has our economic output been growing without much inflation or wage growth? How did we sell 17 million vehicles domestically last year when the average American has less than $1k in the bank? How are people buying phones for $600-700 every two years?

Debt. Lots of it. And what's going to happen when consumer prices get driven up? Are people going to make their payments?

I don't know, but it doesn't look great.

I'm sure China builds some unneeded infrastructure, but they build needed infrastructure that's now beyond the ability of Western governments. New York can't even finish the Second Avenue Subway after 50 years.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-08/powell-sa...

This has nothing to do with ghost cities (which can probably be blamed on bad central planning and an overheated property market in China).

So, "high-treason" must have included religious offenses, attempting to leave the USSR, independent journalism, cultural and literary nonconformism, activism of any almost any kind, and any other sort of activity deemed undesirable to the state. Is that right?

> And no, people did not learn through state-approved knowledge, we had conspiracy theories, we had friends, uncles and friends having friends working inside the government.

Conspiracy theories and rumors are not comparable to the robust freedom of expression we enjoy in the West -- a freedom that we take advantage of on this very forum, where we are free to share information and criticize our Western governments however we please, anonymously or not.

If you're interested in learning about the USSR's treatment of people who spoke against the state, the accounts of the dissidents themselves makes excellent reading. There are entire libraries dedicated to preserving the experience of people imprisoned and killed for crimes of expression in the USSR and its satellites, written in their own words.

I don't know if you really intended to compare the imprisonment and murder of people for crimes of expression, religion, or ethnicity under authoritarian states to the PC movement in the West, but if you are, I have to question whether you actually experienced the former.

US for almost all practical purpose for most of its existence is an extended Britain. And for the remaining part the best result of European colonialism. The US is basically Europe. There are now differences of course, but the bigger story is this.

By and large Russia and China are the result of revolutions, that were attained in the climate of what was then the dominant political and economic narrative of the time.

The fact that countries like China and Russia have done whatever they have done what it took Europe and its colonies centuries to do is in itself a huge proof of success, if you want to measure it that way.

"You're in a propaganda machine" is one hop from "Wake up sheeple". That's a cliché of internet fulmination and never works. Posting like this is pushing a button that generates angry responses. It's your responsibility not to push the button. (Not that that's always easy, since we usually do it inadvertently.)

The two had different rhetoric on guns, religion, and abortion, but very carefully preserved the detante on these social issues by not proposing any significant legislation affecting them. On energy policy, both supported fracking and coal. (Obama had some last minute 2015 environmental regulations, which were quickly rolled back by Trump, but they clearly aren’t a priority seeing as how he waited until the last year of his presidency to act.) On healthcare, both had significant measures to expand coverage. (Bush’s Medicare Part D was a $50 billion/year program, while ACA was estimated to be $95 billion/year.)

The underlying issue is that Obama was beholden to the exact same corporate influences as Bush. You don't rise through Chicago politics that fast without some deals in place. This isn't a condemnation of Obama, by the way, but recognition of the system's vulnerability.

Are you implying that globalization is in decline? If so, why do you think this?

In any case, the comparison to Chernobyl and 80s USSR is pretty off-base, wouldn't you agree?

That just sounds like a sensational headline lacking in context and details. For example, with Hurricane Harvey in Houston they had to weigh calling mass evacuation against the ability of the road system to handle that much traffic. It doesn't matter how many buses you have in a parking lot if they can't leave the city. I'm not saying that was the case in New Orleans, but I'm certainly not going to assume the worst from "parking lots full of empty school buses".

Honestly, is there even a known good example of how the response to Katrina should have been? Most people's complaints about it seem so shallow in their analysis as to appear a projection of their distaste for the Bush administration or the local politicians; nearly 15 years later.

Edit: Could you imagine an NTSB report on an airplane crash: "Air traffic control had three empty runways but said they had no way to land the plane! If they hadn't just whined and wrung their hands, perhaps everybody would have survived that flight.."

Rich cities in california were also a dysfunctional mess dealing with fires. It was only when the same problem happened in the same places in subsequent years that they had a reasonably solid plan together and working.

Credible sources, including FEMA, predicted that one years in advance.

Check out the October 2004 issue of National Geographic:

> The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

> Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

> When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

Very stable. Basically nothing besides something coming from withing the party itself can shake him, and he took down all of those threats to him from within the party. Not even Mao ever managed to cleanse all of his detractors from the party up until his death.

Saying this, you should not be confusing that "people are throwing looks into his back," and quiet whispers of dissatisfaction with genuine resistance.

> How would the party and the public respond if there were leaks about his private life and behavior? I wonder what his skeletons in the closet are...

If you can write Chinese, google those skeletons, they are up to everybody to see. Even taxi drivers here know of Xi's billionaire sister, but... taxi drivers and other general public can't do anything about that.

> I've also wondered how receptive the Chinese people would be to a series of documentaries or dramas that point out the inequality and unfairness in their system.

People can see that every day out of their windows, not TVs. They don't need to watch any documentaries to know that.

There is the reason people use name of Dong Zhuo as an euphemism for Xi. Take a look at this video, the scene from Chang An says it all about the current political atmosphere in CPC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj_VMvsG7G0

Commoners resent him for disturbing a relative peace of Hu's years that they were just getting taste of, by starting a new political upheaval. CPC elders do not only see him as a threat to Jiang, but they clearly think that they themselves are his next target. His unilateral ambitions on the international stage are no match for the discontent world. And yes, the rank and file ordinary officials can't be more freaked out now.

However... you also don't forget when Xi was thought to stand for reforms, it were the masses themselves who invited his ambitions to move on the supreme power. And that those who were benefiting from status quo were hit by that the most.

1. Not Very receptive, as it will be seen as someone ( Foreign Intervention )trying to attack them. Something which may be hard to comprehend for most people.

2. Vastly underestimated the power of CCP.

I think these sort of thoughts are precisely why the West has failed to understand China for decades.

Eventual Arab Spring was also in some way the society maxing out the amount of lies that can be told to each other and continue without bigger consequences. Some day things like hunger, illiteracy, jobs, living standards, economy all catch up you and your reality. And that's the day reality itself gives you a brutal appraisal of the situation.

Taubman noted that the disaster marked "a turning point for Gorbachev and the Soviet regime".[217] Several days after it occurred, he gave a televised report to the nation.[218] He cited the disaster as evidence for what he regarded as widespread problems in Soviet society, such as shoddy workmanship and workplace inertia.[219] Gorbachev later described the incident as one which made him appreciate the scale of incompetence and cover-ups in the Soviet Union.[217] From April to the end of the year, Gorbachev became increasingly open in his criticism of the Soviet system, including food production, state bureaucracy, the military draft, and the large size of the prison population.[220]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikhail_Gorbachev

Gorbachev might not have the man who messed it all up, but he was the last man to see through the end of this. Basically this kind of rot is long set in motion, and eventually leads to a black swan disaster event, then every one wakes up to the deep truth they knew all along, but chose bury and move on with their daily lives instead.

The job of leadership on the basic level is to give this brutal self appraisal to themselves, before these disaster big black swan events and do what it takes to fix them.

As an Indian reading this is scary enough as it is. India has been on this disastrous path for long now. Every now and then there is some respite from this. But deep down everyone knows the society is broken, there is mind boggling amount of corruption(Like you said "every man for himself"), and other standard set of problems have long plagued the country.

I hope there won't be a black swan disaster event. But given the history of the world and inevitability of these things, I wonder if one comes along, what could that be?

In many ways perhaps it is better to face the reckoning earlier rather then later as Japan, Korea and soon PRC will have to do

I'd like to see how a system where downvotes have reasons given works? Slashdot tries for upvotes.

Currently you might be downvoted for being offtopic, but you might just think it's because someone disagrees politically.

It would be an interesting overlay to create for HN

0: https://redditblog.com/2009/10/15/reddits-new-comment-sortin...

Imagine if things went the other way. Big announcements of a new virus, people panic and hoard food and supplies. Travel gets restricted and Wuhan gets quarantined. And not much happens. A few people get sick and quickly recover. I’m not sure if the guy will get praises for acting swiftly.

I’m not dismissing the initial attempt at cover up here and the Chinese government should seriously examine their priorities. I just think it’s a bit of an exaggeration to link this event to causing a “big disaster for whole human society”.

I mean, you can make the factual, scientific category; you may reason about it and build models that work to some extent; but reality is never clear cut, it's always hyper-complex in comparison of any short statement (hence why it's hard to meaningfully discuss such concepts in less than articles, ideally books). That's one my take-aways from a few years of sociology. Some things you just can't condense, even if it makes for a witty and intuitive proposition. Rigid values, as opposed to starting from relativity, really is the enemy of the thinker in a complex/chaotic environment such as those attemptedly described by the social sciences.

Just my 2cts. Claiming that "politicians are A, but the people are B!" is already a dubious proposition that lacks substance beneath its romantic appeal; but generalized to a massively distributed yet pyramidal political system of 1.5 billion people, it's sociologically nonsensical.

Well, you failed. Interest rates are historically low. We have seen a gigantic amount of liquidity injected over the last decades.

"The poor are much much more hurt by overly tight money."

What is the most expensive acquisition in their life for the majority of the people? Real Estate. Prices are through the roof thanks to the central banks. Young people are just getting priced out of the market.

Real helicopter money has not been tried yet.

It seems to me that the "various models" assume the non-existence of containment attempts. In that case, you have to be careful you're not drawing the wrong conclusions.

I'm sort of skeptical of such models because the quality of their output is entirely dependent on the data coming in. There were anecdotal accounts of hospitals in China running out of test kits. Limited test kits -> limited diagnosis -> underreported infection numbers -> misleading models. Garbage in, garbage out.

When you see the new daily infection rate drop to 10% or less then that's a pretty good signal that we're reaching the top of the S-curve and nearing containment.

The big question is if that will happen before healthcare and quarantine capacity is exceeded.

I don't think it's the right metric to focus either.

The survivability rate once infected is probably the most important.

I believe that medias business model (pay per click) force them to jump on and exaggerate any threat so as to get more views. It's not the first time and sadly not the last that we see such a thing.

I could be wrong but I don't think it's the end of the world ;-)

Noting the Chinese population doesn't believe their government and estimates the numbers of infected to be at least 10 times whatever is reported.

Also noting, Hong Kong was already in civil war right before the epidemic, remember it was being annexed by China. That's regular protests, transports/tubes/airports periodically closed and shops unable to resupply, so not everything is attributable to the virus.

Chinese people in China are not afraid of the cops. If you see how Chinese people interact with cops, I bet you would be surprised.

I regularly see people yelling and screaming at them, and the Chinese cops will still try to diffuse the situation.

You are bringing an outsider's view to this, and I'm telling you, it's not how the Chinese people feel, for the most part. I understand how that's confusing. One person was kind enough to indulge me in two hours of conversation on the topic, and it took that and shorter conversations with a number of people to realize that, Yes, the Chinese people have swallowed the blue pill offered by their government. Not that they're particularly unique in that respect, but, well, there it is. They do not live in fear in the way you think.

It's also important to realize that the Chinese government isn't quite so monolithic and in lockstep with itself as you might think. It's entirely possible that in one smaller region the local government was being open, while the wider message was the "nothing to see." That's speculation though, just mentioning it as a way they could have been both open on one level and misleading on another.