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Comment by Barrin92 | Hacker News Reader

Kind of crazy how sentimental and emotional the response is with barely any actual discussion going on about the merits of this on a grand scale. Yes, stories about people's dogs and temporary economic depression are awful. The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

It's weird to me that someone ends up in China and is surprised by collectivist policies.

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> The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

I think it's a little disingenious to use the word "stopped" in that way. It would be far more accurate to have said "delayed".

Maybe we should all refresh ourselves on what the most common causes of death are by age group. For the US, the data is here:

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

the second link is apparently the latest dataset available, for 2018.

Am I the only one who thinks it's going to be interesting to see where exactly Covid ranks once we get round to having data for 2020 onwards?

Agreed, Omicron is almost as infectious as measles, and everyone will likely be exposed to it. Combine this with the negative externalities of GDP decline and other effects, and the picture is pretty straightforward.

China may arguably have done a better job at the collective response to the virus than the west at the start of the pandemic (though with measures that probably wouldn't been seen as acceptable in liberal countries). So there they might have had reason to brag that their authoritarian system works "better", for some definition of better.

But now their zero covid policy seem to be largely symbolic and to save face - you (probably?) can't lock down Omicron. Should have spent the time they won with their good initial response to increase immunity levels in the population.

Sadly that logic doesn’t work here, though it’s tempting. There’s a portion of the population that refused vaccines, due to a combination of factors including misinformation. Omicron going wild would put millions of elderly people into the hospitals, jamming up the healthcare system and leading to millions more excess deaths.

So what is the endgame here? Covid is not going away. Does that mean that China will become an isolated island with waves of lockdowns for the next decades?

That’s the question a lot of people seem to have, but think about it: they’ve already bought themselves 2 extra years of vaccine + therapeutics development, and beefing up of medical infrastructure. There’s no way they can do lockdowns forever, and they’re open about that in all the media. But there’s a point in those other trends at which opening up becomes millions of times less dangerous, and we’re just not there yet.

Force elders to vax. Build up antiviral stockpile. Maybe wait for milder strain. Roll out phased living with covid experiments by region. Take a few extra years to spare millions of deaths.

If that’s what suits the party best, probably. Communist dictatorships aren’t known for very rational policies when they need to save face on something.

Could be - and that may be a better outcome than the waves of infections that the rest of us will suffer for the next decades.

China reports almost as high a vaccination rate as Singapore which has vaccinated 97% of its eligible population.

I forgot which numbers I saw, but yeah their overall rate is high. The problem is that so many of the remaining unvaccinated are elderly, so if they start getting sick they’ll get it bad and overload the system.

Another problem is that the efficacy rate of Sinovac is far lower than that of the mRNA vaccines in preventing illness, although it still drastically reduces severe disease.

Yes, but mostly with CoronaVac and Sinopharm vaccines which apparently are not very effective against Omicron.

It's wild to me that they're able to enforce heavy lockdowns like these but aren't able to persuade everyone (or a large enough % of "everyone") to take a vaccination.

Zero covid seems to be working in Jilin an Shenyang lockdowns - about 15m after a month. SH fucked up by thinking they could pull of dynamic zero. Too many financial interests and tier1 entitlement thinking not to tempt it. Not mandating vaxxing among elderly was a mistake. CCP not authoritarian when it should be.

It seems like they are experimenting with a change in policy starting with Hong Kong. Probably not quite satisfied with the results.

The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths

Stopped or just delayed deaths? At some point they are going to have to stop the lockdowns, and Covid will still be there, ready to continue spreading.

Everyone dies eventually, so all deaths are only delayed.

Which is why it’s ridiculous when people claim that a 70-year-old dying is just as bad as a 30-year-old. These people are simply not capable of thinking quantitatively.

It is likely lockdowns achieve very little, only delaying the inevitable surge of cases and deaths for a later date.

Also, they lie about their numbers. Locked down population with restructed internet access and no independent media can lose 50% to an epidemy and we'll know nothing.

Lockdowns achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve: they stop the spread of disease.

This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surges and collapse of the healthcare system and is effective for that.

However, indeed, this must be 'step 1' and combined with a broader strategy of vaccination and controlled exposure to the virus otherwise you only end up with an infinite cycle of lockdowns.

One issue in China is that although their vaccines do help they are much less effective at preventing infections than, say, Pfizer and Moderna, or AZ.

With such high vaccination rates in many places why didn’t we see a corresponding reduction in Covid infections? Why are vaccinated people getting infected?

The vaccines do not prevent infection but reduce the ultimate harm of the infection.

This position leads to inevitable follow up question: if vaccination reduces only personal risks, and does not prevent infection spread, why forcing it on anyone? If a person is unwilling to vaccinate and accepts the higher risk of a negative outcome, let him decide for himself, no?

The vaccines do reduce transmission, even if they don't prevent it.

You have to pretty much be willfully ignoring this fact to not understand it at this point.

The majority of western countries did this. Optional vaccines, restricted from public gatherings if you choose to not get it.

vaccines do not only reduce personal risks. Can you please form a better argument?

Before I form 'a better argument' for you, can you please make an argument yourself about the effects of the vaccines besides reducing personal risks?

To note: I'm personally vaccinated, but people who think it is OK to restrict personal freedoms of other people based on very fluid and agenda-driven narrative about the current state of the 'scientific consensus' do not get much respect from me. Maybe it is because I'm from a country where personal freedoms are routinely abused and I value them much more than people who take these freedoms for grated.

You’re asking the wrong question, vaccinations don’t stop the infections themselves. Why China still needs lockdowns, compared to the west? Because sinovac is basically useless.

> Against the original virus BioNTech was 95% effective compared to 50.7% for Sinovac.

https://www.otandp.com/blog/covid-19-vaccine-comparison-whic...

> Lockdowns achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve: they stop the spread of disease. This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surge and collapse of the health care system

That may be true, but you can apparently stop the spread of disease [and] collapse of the health care system without lockdowns.

Look at Sweden. Anders Tegnell was relentlessly vilified by the mainstream media since 2020, yet the non-lockdown strategy appears to have led to an "average" outcome over the long term.

Lockdowns only achieve keeping people in their homes and that's the only meaningful result that can be discerned from them. The claim that they stop disease is 1) not proven 2)not the only way 3) not the best way

Well, it is proven. Look no further than all the lockdowns that occurred during this pandemic. Lockdowns do prevent transmission of disease.

The question is more whether it is a net benefit if infections surge again as soon as the lockdown is lifted. And the answer is of course that it's not black and white.

The emotional response of the people living in China is very relevant to the effectiveness of the collectivist policies. If they continue down the path of CovidZero in the face of evidence that it is not going to work and will only cause economic and emotional pain to the population, it highlights one of the major downsides to collectivist policies. They cannot adapt because they have a culture that looks down on any contrarian thoughts.

Where is the evidence that it didn’t work?

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/shanghai-official-says-h...

Things don't get better from here.

Sounds like they’re only advocating incremental improvements to the current policy?

Compare China death rates over the pandemic to basically anywhere else. If saving 5-10 million lives (estimated based on % of US population lost to Covid) doesn’t count as working, what would?

Of course nobody wants to die before their time and perhaps after one month in ICU but a country the size of China has about 10 million deaths every year (1% of 1 billion.) I wasn't happy to be locked down for 2 months in a much milder way than the people in Shanghai. I'd really change country if my country had a Chinese approach to virus containment because it's going to be a really bad decade. Until China needs their people to work all the time no matter what, then covid will be banned and forgotten.

> I'd really change country if my country had a Chinese approach to virus containment

No you wouldn't. You'd be locked down in your apartment. Also, your social rating would not permit you to use means of transportation.

We should be able to weight the cost of saving those lives vs the harm caused to those who would otherwise be fine. If we don’t have those numbers I don’t think we can define what worked and what didn’t.

Just looking at raw lives saved (especially when most of those lives are older than average age of death) is too simplistic.

So your point is that things cannot improve when they are bad because no one can voice a contrarian view, but your evidence that things are bad is Shanghai's vice-mayor advocating contrarian views?

My point is that the only way for China to contain Omicron is to increase lockdown measures to the point that many people are dying due to lack of food and healthcare. The alternative is to abandon CovidZero policies completely and go the path of heard immunity. And in China you are not allowed to express those facts, because it means the leaders were wrong to promote CovidZero.

I mean, it certainly seems like China could just figure out some way to get the last 5 meters of food delivery solved.

China also likely lies about their numbers so it's not likely we'd know the real death count. According to their stats, they had covid 4 covid deaths in all of 2021. This puts them at the number 2 best results spot.

The issue here being that all the top stats spots for least deaths are from island countries, which china is not.

China is on Earth, not in some other solar system. If their excess deaths per capita were a fraction of the numbers in the West, there would be no way to hide it.

The easiest way to hide it is to report death was caused for another reason. If someone like yourself is going to take their numbers at face value they have already hidden it.

Ok, so conspiracy theory logic.

The CCP hiding deaths is not new at all. Covid is one of many at this point.

That's not how excess death calculations work. They would have to not report the deaths entirely, not just misattribute them.

Can you explain in detail what would be stopping them? I'm not seeing it.

Whether out of malice or just the difficulty of testing corpses with inadequate supplies s, I thought it was widely assumed all countries were underreporting in at least 2020 and probably further. Therefore, everyone serious looked at excess deaths.

Hong Kong have 1.1 million reported cases while the whole China have only 160K. Yes it is totally believable

2020: missing / human trafficking in China is ~1million per year https://www.rfa.org/cantonese/news/human-trafficking-0209202...

2000: ~ 40million unregistered woman in china https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830941/

People are still arguing how many people died in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959-1961. Some say as low as 15 million others as high as 50 million. It's easy to hide millions of deaths in authoritarian regimes.

> If their excess deaths per capita were a fraction of the numbers in the West, there would be no way to hide it.

Why not? Taiwan only had 854 covid deaths, or 0.00335%. Hiding that from official statistics doesn't seem too hard.

Maybe this site needs an 'Are you a Robot' captcha because you sound like one.

Geez. How cold do you have to be to not understand that being imprisoned or not being able to feed your children might make you 'emotional?'

May not have read the article fully.

Agreed. Also, he gives no evidence of claims. Lockdowns don't work [1].

[1] https://weartv.com/news/local/study-from-johns-hopkins-univ-...

Christ, this misrepresentation once again. All y’all need to get caught up: that is not a John Hopkins University study, the researchers are not epidemiologists they’re g.d. economists, the thing is not peer-reviewed, and it does not support your claim. Quit being a sucker propaganda that encourages you to get sick.

Call me when you get some evidence

There are definitely suicides in lockdown, old people dying because of being refused entry to hospitals, starving etc. If you’re taking in account of weak fatality of Omicron I’m not sure which decision would have caused more deaths.

> weak fatality of Omicron

In the US at least, Omicron has killed significantly more people than Delta.

A somewhat lower mortality rate has been more than compensated for by a high infection rate.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/omicron-wav...

And you can’t delay it forever. An outbreak with come sooner or later unless you plan to lockdown till 2030.

But you should try to control its spread, such that it doesn’t overburden the healthcare system. Otherwise you end up with not only the inevitable covid casualties, but also those who were unable to get timely healthcare: lots of cancer victims, accident victims, people suffering an organ failure, disabled or dead because covid crashed the system.

It's true in terms of organisation and discipline I never believed they would be as successful as they were, but they did it. My wife's home town was locked down for a while due to having I think 8 cases of Delta, but after about 2 months the city was open again.

The problem is they have bet the whole farm on that strategy, and Omicron is infectious enough that lockdowns even of the kind China has used so far may not be enough. They tried locking down Shanghai in a rolling manner but gave up after only a few days and locked down the whole city. A few days isn't long enough to evaluate the effect of a strategy, it takes weeks for the data on new cases to come in. This suggests that the rolling strategy wasn't viable given the data they already had.

One issue is that the Chinese vaccine Sinovac seems to be only about 50% to 78% effective, and even the higher value simply isn't good enough to achieve herd immunity even with high uptake. The problem there is that the Chinese media, which means the authorities, spent a lot of time throwing shade on western vaccines and bigging up side effects. This has had the effect that a lot of Chinese people don't trust Covid vaccines, including Sinovac. As a result uptake has been abysmal.

So when other countries like here in the UK are almost completely back to normal thanks to mass vaccination, China is still stuck relying on the same lockdown strategy they started with, and have no clear way out of it. Meanwhile Omicron is leaking through their lockdowns.

They're still in with a chance, omicron has been around for 9 months and they've managed it so far, but they're taking an awful risk. Long term unless they do something about vaccination, their best hope is that a very infectious but also very mild variant comes along and immunises their population for them. How that's compatible with strict lockdowns though is unclear to me.

> their best hope is that a very infectious but also very mild variant comes along and immunises their population for them

Is that not Omicron?

Omicron is still dangerous enough to be a serious risk for an unvaccinated population of a billion people. The Chinese health system is pretty weak at the best of times. Vast numbers of sick people, even if they could survive with decent care, could overwhelm it.

Hopefully it won’t come to that. Even if lockdowns dont stop it spreading, they might slow it down enough to keep the outbreak manageable. They’re taking an awful risk though, and it’s just unnecessary. Failing to institute an effective vaccination strategy by now is incredibly irresponsible.

>This has had the effect that a lot of Chinese people don't trust Covid vaccines, including Sinovac. As a result uptake has been abysmal.

This does not seem to be supported by the data. China's vaccination rate is 88.95%, the 7th highest in the world.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/international

That’s true, I was looking at rates in the elderly, only about half of over 80s are fully vaccinated, and very few people have had booster jabs. Combined with the low effectiveness of Sinovac and the reluctance of the authorities to use foreign vaccines, and there are still significant risks.

Yes well that’s the issue with utilitarianism and any other calculated ethical system. You can always justify some horrible things by saying “but we saved X more lives.”

In the end China will fail at its zero Covid strategy (just as many other Asian countries did - like Vietnam). It’s already spread to other cities and Shanghai will never hit zero cases again. But, due to ego and national pride will do immense economic and social harm to its population that is likely disproportion to the harm it would have gotten from Covid (its population is already vaccinated and Sinovax is still pretty effective despite not being as effective as mRNA).

What will be interesting is the political upheaval this will cause. The CCP will have to admit defeat at some point but will do it’s best to spin it as a win. There will be scapegoats and some political careers will end.

Longevity is not the only thing that matters in life. I and I think most other people would rather live in a liberal country even if it means my life expectancy is slightly decreased.

“Millions of deaths” sounds like a lot because the world (and Chinese) population is high, but the per-person life expectancy impact of an unchecked Covid pandemic is quite modest.

It has already shaved two years of life expectancy off America’s citizens… and that’s with halfway decent actions being taken to immunize and isolate. An unchecked Covid pandemic would be a helluva lot worse.

> Longevity is not the only thing that matters in life

Yeah, long COVID is a big impact, potentially bigger in terms of QALY or DALY than COVID-induced mortality.

The lockdown policy was successful in these aspects before, but it’s very unclear if it can still work with omicron.

Indeed, and success/failure may give us an indication of how much more inherently contagious Omicron actually is, versus how much of our spread has been due to vaccine evasion and restriction relaxation.

> The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

Alright, so if we go by Shanghai's own reporting (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61043346), there's been 130k infections of which one person is in "severe condition" and no deaths. Even assuming that severe condition becomes a death, you are looking at a 1 in 100k death rate, which puts a ceiling of ~230 deaths in Shanghai and 13k across the entire country - a fraction of what you are claiming is possible. It's possible Shanghai is falsifying their data to look better, but such falsification actually just makes the lockdown look even dumber from an ROI standpoint.

Meanwhile, the lockdown itself is clearly causing deaths directly (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/shanghai-hospital-pa...). Even ignoring that, ~2,300 QALY saved from city-wide covid deaths is far outweighed by the "quality of life" lost in a single day of lockdown (63k QALY by my calculation). At this point, of the lockdown, the lockdown is 10x if not 100x costlier than just letting the virus rip through the population.

If you don't buy the Shanghai numbers, you can use other country's modeling which suggests Omicron in a vaccinated population is a bit less severe than seasonal flu. Obviously, we don't lock down every year to avoid seasonal flu as the ROI is terrible.

> The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths

We have highly effective vaccines available globally. Even in the twisted American healthcare system I can walk into any CVS or Walgreens and get a free mRNA vaccine, 47 times over, anytime I want to.

There is no good argument in favor of China's lock-down policies in the present, post vaccine availability. Unless of course their vaccines are particularly mediocre at preventing death and or serious disease, in which case they should be placing a multi-billion dose order with Pfizer and Moderna.

Western mrna vaccine proven equally useless at preventing spread which overwhelms underdeveloped PRC medical system. Living with covid wasn't a choice after vaccines failed 1 of 2 epidimeology goals. Second being preventing severe disease which Chinese vaccines are almost as good at. Covid zero is simply superior to depending on vaccines if it can be maintained.

They've worked spectacularly well at preventing death. It means health systems arent being overwhelmed even when the disease is infecting people at record levels. Chinese vaccines may not have been particularly effective so that why China has to rely on lockdowns again even for Omicron, but other countries that have mRNA vaccines are virtually back to normal now.

PRC vaccines work almost as well on severe cases. The significant advantange of mRNA was preventing breakthrough/spread which is has failed post delta, ergo countries resign to living with covid exposing all those who can't/won't vaccinate to risk - because they're systemically incapable of executing more effective lockdowns. These health systems aren't being overwhelmed _anymore_ because they spent 2 years spreading out cases load on more developed medical systems. PRC is relying on periodic lockdowns like it always has because it's fundementally more effective than vaccines at preventing deaths especially relatively to largely uninfected population. In the mean time most of the country has been back to normal since April 2020. mRNA wank is suggesting handing everyone bullet proof vests is better than just preventing mass shootings in the first place.

I lived in Shanghai for many years. One of my kids was born there. The Shanghai of the 2010s is the not the Shanghai of today. The author of this piece is spot on. Shanghai especially was not subject to the same extreme of “collectivist” policies of most of the country — it is/was almost the new Hong Kong — a lot of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is/was a significant engine of Chinese innovation and source of wealth and prestige for the rest of the country.

And suggesting these policies saved millions? That’s just not supported by any evidence. Cape Town didn’t have millions of deaths from Omnicron — nor did any other major world city where Omnicron showed up.

This is a communist flex — an opportunity to remind the Shanghainese that Beijing calls the shots. Lockdowns are a political tool disguised as a public health tool — much like lockdowns everywhere.

Still hard to believe that governments are getting away with the war in Eastasia (or was it Eurasia?) What an epilogue to 1984 we’re seeing!

The larger picture is that they think they can do it like Great Leap Forward. That sone human can just do thing their ways ignoring other humans, nature and reality. It might work for awhile. Just like Soviet Union and mao. It would not.

Where is the injection? With only a 50% effective vaccine which pass its days even with last variant? That we take the weakness as the strength. And when the weakness finally shown it is just another lock down.

May be chinese like to die in a totalitarian country, but many do want to live in a free society.

That is the big picture. Of humanity.

The greater good argument, eh? That never works in the long run.

The merits of putting 16 million people under indefinite house arrest in tiny apartments, depriving them of fresh air, exercise, real social interaction, medical care, access to food, etc?

I'm not sure if you understand just how deeply sociopathic and disturbed you come across.

Sounds like you’re a CCP apologist.

Obvs this will be downvoted by the other CCP apologists. It’s still true though.

I really don't understand why a country where (on average, from Google) every citizen has received 2+ vaccinations there should still be such a strict policy

China's government didn't want the western-made mRNA vaccine. They lobbied and propagandised HARD against it.

Now Omicron hit and their own non-mRNA vaccines don't work. And even if they did, people still believe the propaganda that mRNA is bad for you.

Hard lockdowns are their only tool.

Kind of crazy how someone is calling this "sentimental and emotional". And claiming that, at "grand scale", "millions of deaths" and "probably tens of millions of cases" are prevented and the economy still going(, so it's fine?).

Yeah.... it's not really a big deal, just few dogs and stories such as:

- Hospital refused to rescue their own nurse who had an asthma attack, leading to her death (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220329/20220329A02CZK00.html)

- In another an asthma death case, an ambulance (carries another patient) drove away while refusing to offer any help to the person who was having an asthma attack (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220331/20220331A0DFA900.html)

- Here is a video of an elderly man crying in front of a hospital, because the hospital refuse to take in his daughter: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tz74vk/%E4%B8%8A...

- The "neighborhood committee" (a community level management department) refuse to let a heart attack patient go to hospital. The patient dead as result: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tztiu0/%E5%B1%85...

Those were all caused by the lockdown.

Let me teach you a Chinese word here, called 理中客, which is an abbreviation for 理性 (Rational), 中立 (Neutral) and 客观 (Objective). This is not a positive word, instead, 理中客 is a derogatory term describes people who disgusts their excuse under layers of reasoning that looked Rational, Neutral and Objective at first, but starts to break down upon deeper inspection.

For example, someone might apologetically claim that "Yes, there are pains, but in the end, most people will survive, so it's all good", which is rational, neutral and objective. But is it though? Why the pain essential? Have you tried something else? Have you learned anything from the good instances in the past two years?

I'm not an emotional person as well, nor sentimental. But if a policy is leading to such massive destruction, then objectively speaking it's a bad policy, especially when there are many safer and better ways to implement such lockdown. Using word such as "sentimental and emotional" to describe people who's currently suffering through this disaster is, logically, at very least, "weird".

I hope you learned something today.

Excuse me, you really want to discuss grand scale policy merits while they can't/won't distribute enough food to prevent people starving to death?

Have they prevented anything though, or just forestalled it? Other countries aren’t having this crisis at the moment. Granted in many countries they had the crisis already, but that’s what I mean. If doing all this just delays what’s going to come then what good is it?

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