U.S. State Department orders non-emergency staff in Shanghai to leave | Hacker News Reader

U.S. State Department orders non-emergency staff in Shanghai to leave

cnbc.com

Title wouldn't fit verbatim: U.S. State Department orders all non-emergency government staff in Shanghai to leave as Covid surges

The shitshow in Shanghai is insane, I've been following r/shanghai, here is straight boots-on-the-ground (and humorous) take amongst many terrifying cries for help, footage of pet abuse, food shortages and small riots forming: https://old.reddit.com/r/shanghai/comments/u0us8a/going_arou...

Imagine 1984, but with incompetence/choas and hastily organized.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay6PqrrPI_o&t=3m25s

They're swabbing animals!

Strange times when travel advisory warnings are about the rules in response to the virus rather than the actual virus.

Are Shanghai's hospitals overwhelmed? Or is there a new variant over there or something? Seems very poorly handled. I hope they're permitted to leave their apartments for exercise at least, but it sounds like they are not, which is crazy.

I wonder how long China can sustain such lockdowns. It will surely hurt their bottom line, and also frustrate poor people.

I think they are going for zero Covid so entire buildings are quarantined for weeks if anyone is sick and those who fail tests are send to Covid camps which are overloaded because Omicron spreads so easily. The government is supposed to distribute food but its not done uniformly.

It's foreshadowing what is to come to the US if you ask me... This is very concerning as the Eastern region took extreme containment measures in the early stages of the pandemic.

As crime and more and more crazy mental health stress related things keep happening publicly (e.g. Will Smith's meltdown, the insane war in Ukraine, supply shortages, rising inflation, and the anti-work movement building), I worry that sere are constantly at a tipping point for societal stability. Even top execs in the US government, including the VP were recently found to be positive for Covid/

With all the cycles we've had of lockdown and fear, people have abandoned vigilance and responsibility, and that's a very dangerous place to be right now while the virus continues to mutate, and it's likely to keep going just based on the failures of forecasting by leadership (CDC, Faucci, ETC...). Accountability has truly been vacated lately, and so has preparedness, we are in an acceptance phase of the pandemic, which may lead to a devastating lack of empathy from government, scientists, corporations, and the entire health care industry in responses... Worst part is that our bills to them need to be paid in advance.

Yes it’s called an endemic. A virus that just doesn’t go away and always remains circulating in human population centers. Over time the virus mutates to become less and less dangerous as that enables easier transmission. There is not anything anyone can do once a virus has reached that phase. It doesn’t matter if you lock all the borders, the flights, ships, so forth. There will always be areas in the world, Africa, India, the Middle East, South America, and so forth where the health infrastructure let alone enforcement of any ordinance is non existent. It’s areas like this already where most of the viruses originate. Not about being vaccinated or not, but the necessary basic health precautions that people may or may not follow. That’s washing hands regularly, covering their mouthes when they cough or sneeze, cooking food well, routine medical checkups, maintaining cleanliness and sufficient distance away from people and so forth. Unfortunately a good portion of the world live in substandard environments where ultimately we’re all affected should a highly transmissible, sufficiently low mortality rate virus like SARS2 originate.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com