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Comment by exdsq | Hacker News Reader

I'm going to put my tin hat on here but if covid-19 was leaked from a Chinese lab due to error or whatever, the reason they're having such strict lockdown measures like in Shanghai make much more sense when you see papers being released regarding damage to the brain than if it was a regular virus leading to a flu - especially in highly vaccinated population centres. Assuming a lab leak they may well be aware of these effects already from previous research and therefore enforce zero-covid to avoid it because it's riskier than we currently understand.

This stems from my thoughts that it is fairly likely to be from a lab and that the lockdown measures of physically padlocking buildings to the point vaccinated people are starving in Shanghai for weeks is just incredibly OTT for what the risks are viewed as in the West.

And I take the tin hat off :)

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The more realistic tin foil hat is the Chinese version of the vaccine is less effective than they admit and the extra measures are needed to control it. In fact they are far more likely to be covering up incompetence than they are to be covering up the hypercompetence needed to make a top-secret-mild-brain-damage-virus.

>they are far more likely to be covering up incompetence than they are to be covering up the hypercompetence

I like this as a sort of modified Hanlon's razor for conspiracy theories. "Never attribute to hypercompetence that which is adequately explained by incompetence." Afterall a hypercompetent conspirator would do a better job of hiding all the breadcrumbs that led to the conspiracy theory.

That would be my take as well, only an effective vaccine allows you to go on as normal.

China must think they don't have that and given they have absolute control of the country, nobody will dare to say otherwise.

Thankfully, in democratic countries the best vaccine for the job was chosen.

> in democratic countries the best vaccine for the job was chosen.

thats a bit of a white washing job, there was 1000's of posts about the risk/effectiveness of Astrazeneca and the JnJ vaccine that were removed from social media, labeled as misinformation (but were accurate).

The biggest message was "the best vaccine is the first one available", so while we eventually gravitated to Pfizer/Moderna ... it was based on supply and not "the science".

I don't doubt China is hiding info, but America was not exactly a light in the darkness as you're painting it to be.

The best vaccine is the first one available. The thing that protects you is aggregate herd immunity, not the individual personal effectiveness (so long as the first vaccine available has a breakthrough rate under 1-1/r0).

The first vaccine available is not guaranteed to be the best one forever, breakthrough rates and effiacy rates are important.

China cannot change their vaccine of choice (Sinovac) due to political constraints, which is why they are stuck with COVID issues and most of the world have moved on.

The table in this article illustrates it very clearly. At this point in time Pfizer or Moderna are the best choices, unless you want to prolong COVID efforts.

https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-02-28/COVID-19-vaccines-appr...

I think the lockdowns are because they were able to successfully beat the virus and contain it to mostly Wuhan last time with drastic measures, and even in Wuhan it was gone in 6 weeks.

There were no countrywide large surges till now, so they're still clinging on to it, a bit like Australia, NZ etc. with Omicron.

>Assuming a lab leak they may well be aware of these effects already from previous research and therefore enforce zero-covid to avoid it because it's riskier than we currently understand

What previous research is needed when in the past few years the virus has been studied in real life scenarios with massive sample sizes across almost all ethnicities, age groups, comorbidities etc. The dangers have been well documented by a huge number of real life experiences and studies in the west and else where. Every bit of the RNA code has been studied extensively for it's effects. So I think the scenario of "bioweapon designed so that everyone wh had it drops dead in 7 years" is super unlikely if not impossible.

Most studies show brain damage.

If I wanted to be the central kingdom, with everyone sending me tribute, making everyone else dumber would probably accomplish that. And it'd be good payback for opium too.

I don't think this was a bioattack, but a more likely scenario is a leak of a bioweapon still being developed. I don't consider that even unlikely. If I assign that scenario, or one like it, even 10% odds, extreme precautions still make sense.

If it were needed, this whole experience should be a good demonstration of the folly of trying to develop viral bioweapons.

The brain fog inherent in long covid has been documented for how long now? You don't need to assume a lab leak to conclude that China's desperate lockdowns are intended to curb long-covid and not just deaths.

Yeah pretty much. Especially in the US we've oriented mostly in minimizing economic damage. Which is valid I guess, but we also need to acknowledge that other optimizations are possible. Different choices don't need to be based on different information available, just different values and desired/acceptable outcomes.

We're optimizing to short-term economic damage. I suspect if COVID rolls through a dozen times, and gives just a few percent of the population brain fog on each pass, the long-term economic damage will be astronomical.

Agreed but I was trying to keep it as neutral as possible in that one.

If this is really the mass disabling event I suspect it is, and given the way it has expressed along the lines of inequality that already exist, and how healthcare is tied to employment... and we really only accept "personal responsibility" as the cause of all hardship....

Prob gonna get real eugenicsy over here the next 5-10 years. I pray that I'm wrong I truly do.

Doctors and researchers were warning of long term damage from the virus since feb 2020. The long term damage of SARS 1 is well documented, and it would be prudent of anyone to assume something similar from SARS 2.

> Assuming a lab leak they may well be aware of these effects already from previous research and therefore enforce zero-covid to avoid it because it's riskier than we currently understand.

You're reading way too much science fiction or something.

We're two years into this virus with the combined effort of the entire world's scientists trying to determine why it causes loss of smell and we barely have an explanation so far. The Chinese did not unravel the mysteries of SARS-CoV-2 anosmia before the pandemic ever started.

Once again in a conspiracy theory the conspirators are both completely incompetent (the lab leak) and nearly omniscient (the ability to engineer SARS-CoV-2 from scratch and determine all its properties and keep all the research perfectly secret). Schroedinger's BLS4 facility.

They can't stop coronavirus from reappearing in their population. For such methods to work, they would have to shut down all immigration and literally kill all animals that can carry coronavirus. So all their lockdown attempts are destroying their economy, while only reducing the spread of the virus.

Shanghai GDP is 4% of the country's GDP and 20% of the export goes through it. Shutting it down is quite insane.

They have shut down all immigration to non-SARs, prohibited inter-hukou travel to infected zones, and reports on Weibo from Shenzhen allege the quarantine workers actually are killing dogs. The answer to "we have to do these extreme measures" seems to be to actually enact said measures.

China has a very long border and all that ocean shore. All it takes is one infected person crossing somehow somewhere.

What research do you think they would be doing that would have given them a clear picture of long COVID prior to widespread infection?

For me it is more that the CCP doesn't need to focus on the next election (but! Xi's 3rd term etc), and instead knows its continued grip on power depends on delivering good and improving quality of life for Chinese citizens as a whole. They can be very clear eyed over what short term pain is required for that long term gain.

Strict lockdowns are more likely due to subpar surge capacities and an aging more vaccine hesitant population.

I would look at the strict lockdown as a difference in governing philosophy. Politicians who do things like that in the US put their political career at risk, because they risk losing votes.

Politics in China work very differently.

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