The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown | Hacker News Reader

The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

storiesfromthestateofexception.wordpress.com

268 pointsilamont277 comments

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit.

I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government. Especially galling to me as an American who's seen what we went through in Covid with my country is the claim of "zero Covid deaths" in Shanghai during the last few months.

That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. If you have Covid and got sent to a quarantine center, yeah you're probably SOL. But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends."

Shanghai is nothing if not a big city. 26 million is a LOT of people. Your experience of life, even in the best of times, varies greatly by neighborhood, industry, income level, and more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, definitely don't buy the CCP propaganda, but equally don't take the (truly grim) videos all over social media as representative of the whole situation. This crisis is unfolding on a bell curve. That's a lesson anyone, in any country, can take away from this, to better consider and critique their own government's response to future disasters.

> But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends."

From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn't filling the gap (maybe if you are lucky, you'll get some pork and bai cai form the gov at your door). So that would suck, if true. I also rather guess experiences differ between richer districts and poorer ones.

I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai.

I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China.

Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.

Interesting. A form of the supply chain crisis if you will.

They definitely do not prep in that city. Maybe you can survive a year on a sack of rice and potatoes, if your utilities aren't cut off.

But without guns and land, prepping becomes "hiding until the situation hopefully goes away"

That'd have to be a big fucking sack of rice and potatoes.

The body also needs some other nutrients than the carbs you‘d find in potatoes and rice…

Potatoes are actually the better option.

IIRC there was a long experiment in pre-war Poland (University of Lwow, now Lviv in Ukraine) to demonstrate that potatoes consumed with milk, sour cream etc., while very being a very monotonous diet, can nevertheless sustain adults without causing them nutritional deficiencies.

Of course, you need to be able to tolerate milk, which many East Asians aren't.

Furthermore, the Irish survived on potatoes and cream alone.

The milk doing all the hard work, as it's a nutritionally complete food to raise babies.

You don't last long on potatoes only. I bet milk only is doable even if very not optimal to an adult body.

I'm still shaking my head over anyone who didn't stock up (assuming they could easily afford it) once it became clear that getting infected = 2 weeks quarantine (which was the case in many Western countries too). Even a year into the pandemic people kept being surprised about the obvious.

Not everyone has the place or the budget to stock up. If you live paycheck to paycheck in a tiny apartment, it might not be that obvious.

In many large Asian cities the average person has little space to store food and often no cooking appliances and minimal fridge space, this is especially true of younger people who are stuck in the rent trap and spending US$1k+/month on a shoebox. This is becoming increasingly true as people start to rely on takeout food delivery which is quite convenient when you work 12 hours per day.

Correct. I'm in Shanghai.

> An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government

The inevitable result of centralized control.

That is certainly an important factor. I think it goes even deeper.

China doesn't recognize human rights as we know them. The collective, represented by state interests (CCP), is above all. Hence any individual right can be sacrificed for the greater good. Aka state interests.

And that's why situations like this shutdown in Shanghai can unfold. It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson.

> It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson.

What a bizarre statement. How can you simultaneously think it's a deep philosophical issue and also that there is an obvious solution?

I didn’t say it was obvious? Even in the western world, it’s sometimes contested.

Still, the consequences of having and not having human rights have been observed often enough by now. Including in Chinas (recent) history.

Oh please, spare me. So what did "ample opportunity to learn the lesson" mean?

"Observed often enough by now," we don't need to talk any specifics, _obviously_ Western ideals are superior! End of history and all that jazz, huh? I was hoping for more critical thought when you rightly mentioned this to be a "deeply philosophical problem."

I understood parent as: The unnecessary deaths count in China since the Great Leap is obvious and provides the learning opportunities. But sadly none are taken and death toll is ongoing. But hopefully someday learning and philosophy can take place as it did in the West after the war. If I read that right, what in there is so inflamatory to you?

You got me right.

He seems to have a problem with the idea that the western world figured something out that China hasn’t (yet). Or the idea that different values cause different outcomes.

Or the issue is that I’m not making much of an argument? Seemingly implying that my conclusion is obvious. In that case, I apologise for not going into more detail here.

Any time we humans have tried decentralized control, we've found a way to turn it back into centralized control.

Hell, just look at the universe. What started as a random distribution of gas still found ways to condense into literally an infinitely dense point.

Any minor power imbalance in a decentralized system will be exploited and provide the cumulative advantage over time to turn it back into a centralized system.

Centralism worked well enough in Europe. The problem is counterpowers and rule of law, not the structure of government.

Where were these checks and balances when Europe decided to rob and enslave the whole world? (British, Spanish and Belgian colonies)

That's most besides the point and disingeneous thing I've ever read on HN.

What link is there between COVID management and the colonial empires ? How can administration predating or concurrent to the industrial revolution could possibly be used as a placeholder for current administrations ? Your comment makes no sense.

Thank you for your take on this. My reaction is that you are of course right that this is not affecting everyone equally. Certainly the CCP is not starving out all 26 million people in Shanghai. But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.

> But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.

How is that an authoritarian government problem? You do realize that minority voices get silenced in every government and justice is nowhere equally distributed. Unless you are asserting the US, Canada, Australia, etc are/were authoritarian governments. The mindless propaganda when it comes to china is laughable.

The degree to which voices are silenced is definitely quite different. Canada has recently been having a very difficult discussion on Native American deaths and disappearances at residential schools - this is a discussion that could never happen under the Chinese government.

Yes, it's wrong to say that voices are completely silenced in China and completely free in Canada - but it's pretty disingenuous to suggest they're on equal footing.

> Canada has recently been having a very difficult discussion on Native American deaths and disappearances at residential schools -

What difficult discussion? The natives were exterminated and have no power or recourse. How "difficult" can the discussion be when there is nothing at stake. How about this, lets have a discussion where china or russia or the UN takes half or more of canada, forms a new native nation and returns it to the native canadians. Lets see how warm canada will be to such discussions.

The only thing canada is good at is superficial virtue signaling "discussions" when there is nothing at stake.

> this is a discussion that could never happen under the Chinese government.

That's cause china didn't go to the other side of the world and exterminate a continent full of nations. What is there to discuss?

> Yes, it's wrong to say that voices are completely silenced in China and completely free in Canada - but it's pretty disingenuous to suggest they're on equal footing.

No more or less they are. There are things you'll get punished for saying in china and canada. It's disingenuous to pretend one is better than the other.

The only country in the world that is genuinely better than china, canada and everyone else when it comes to free speech is the US. But even here free speech is under attack both by internally and externally.

> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster.

I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution when it comes to things like viruses but I think our natural tendency is to believe things are more uniform.

Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.

> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible.

It worked for original SARS, no?

Not really. There's also a lot of differences, like SARS didn't escape to be a global pandemic. I'd say that's a big difference. At this point zero covid is like trying to create a zero flu policy. That's very different from a zero measles policy.

Why? It's worked for them for a few years now and they have successfully mitigated what would have been millions of deaths.

Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.

I don't think it has worked until they have zero covid. Maybe a silver lining from this will be people resisting anything happening they perceive as mistreatment from their government.

Okay, I think that avoiding 3 million deaths might be worthy of some level of praise but agree to disagree :)

You are assuming their reported death numbers are accurate. You are also assuming the deaths caused by these policies won’t end up exceeding that number.

Neither assumptions are backed by evidence.

That's exactly my concern too - right now China's response looks great on the world stage... but the pandemic isn't over yet and China rolled out an extremely ineffective vaccine that leaves their population quite vulnerable.

If this disaster spreads to other Chinese metropolitan areas it would be devastating.

Exactly this, the Chinese developed vaccine Sinovac is the primary cause of the poor COVID results.

It simply doesn't do the job well enough, but good luck trying to make the Chinese leader choose an American product.

So the stubbornness of the regime is at fault, but with no limits on terms anymore, i see only bad things for the future of China.

Or a German product ;) Although it seems they have recently gotten round to some extensive testing for an mRNA vaccine. Makes you realise how advanced the Biontech and Moderna vaccines were.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/china-walvax-says-has-m...

Gosh for all sorts of reasons, direct and indirect, I hope this walvax turns out good.

Didn't know this, that is great news for all Chinese citizens.

Better late than never must be the motto China is going for.

China's response actually looks terrible on the world stage. I didn't see any other countries welding people into their apartments as a drastic overreaction.

I'm not sure why this is downvoted. This is literally what the CCP is saying, except maybe the part about the efficiency of their vaccine. But other than that, yeah, it is in line. The "0.5% of a billion people is still a lot of people, we can't take that risk" is exactly what they are saying.

Exactly. CCP stats doesn't pass Benford's law.

Source? First hit on DDG, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7487520/, says:

  We find Chinese confirmed infections match the distribution expected in Benford’s Law and are similar to that seen in the U.S. and Italy.

That's infections, not deaths, and so doesn't necessarily disagree with what you said. But I still need your source.

I based it on this.

https://kevinbasset.medium.com/i-used-benfords-law-to-analyz...

Tough both are reporting on old data which tells nothing (good or bad) about the current situation.

> Neither assumptions are backed by evidence.

To the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that China has had the spread necessary to kill 3 million people nor any evidence suggesting that they have covered up 3 million deaths.

You might naively think we have no way of checking, but this level of spread would be trivial to infer from antibody tests of people traveling to China. We have seen no indication of a deception anywhere near the scale you are suggesting.

Given how China repeatedly covered up COVID from early on...I think the starting point is assuming that the numbers coming out of there are not accurate.

> this level of spread would be trivial to infer from antibody tests of people traveling to China.

Who is doing that testing?

If people weren't so resistant to government policy we might have seen something close to zero covid rolled out in the US and, instead of the US being the locus of disease for a number of years, we might have actually ended this pandemic with a decisive but painful quarantine - instead we'll continue in this state of psuedo quarantine for who knows how many years... how we comport ourselves today might just be the new social standard.

China's decision to continue on the zero-covid route seems extremely unwise once it was clear that breakouts were happening across the globe and containment was no longer an option - but initially pursuing containment was an extremely wise policy.

That's just nonsense completely divorced from scientific reality. Even a strict quarantine wouldn't have sufficed to stop a highly contagious respiratory virus with multiple animal reservoirs.

It's now clear that the best strategy would have been to focus on protecting the most vulnerable, as recommended by leading experts back in 2020.

https://gbdeclaration.org/

WWe have successfully eradicated SARS, a respiratory virus, in the past. If we had actually responded faster we could have done the same.

China has averted 3 million deaths and most of the country has been free of lockdown for the last 2 years once they got the virus under control. That is "scientific reality". Claims that China's numbers are problematic, while probably true, are not the same as saying that China has hidden millions of covid deaths, which basically nobody who studies this believes.

We didn't eradicate SARS-CoV. It died out on its own. Due to the high R0 and animal reservoirs there is no way to eradicate SARS-CoV-2, or even keep it permanently under control. It will be around forever, just like the other 4 endemic human coronaviruses.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/vinay-prasad/94646

The only human virus we have eradicated is smallpox. And that only worked because there were no animal reservoirs, and the vaccines were fairly effective at preventing infection and transmission. That situation does not obtain with SARS-CoV-2.

Several countries, including the world's most populous country, did, in fact, succeed in completely eliminating the virus.

The countries that pursued an elimination strategy (a.k.a. zero-CoVID) have had orders of magnitude fewer deaths, and were able to enjoy long periods of time with virtually no restrictions on everyday life. Life in the vast majority of China has been basically normal for most of the last 2 years. People have been going to restaurants, holding parties, going to concerts, etc. without having to worry about the virus, because it hasn't been spreading in the country.

> recommended by leading experts

The Great Barrington Declaration isn't some sort of consensus of "leading experts." It's a document drawn up by a libertarian think tank, that a small number of academics signed. For political reasons, most Western countries have ended up following something close to this strategy since fairly early on in the pandemic, and the results (both in terms of deaths and economic impact) have been abysmal, particularly in comparison with the zero-CoVID countries.

Your priors have expired.

It’s impossible to have zero Covid unless you vaccinate all mammals in the world.

I don’t think it matters at all if it works or not. It shouldn’t be done. It’s basically a violation of basic human rights. I’d like to think even in our worst of times, we’d respect basic human rights…

But it isn't a violation of basic human rights. It is a community working together to protect itself from an 'invader' - much as we would see in places under attack by less invisible threats.

you have to get all of society to agree to your restrictions. By forcing people via mandates you are violating their human rights. Maybe their risk assessment is different? Maybe they value other things than you? Doesn’t matter, the fact they don’t agree with the restrictions should be respected. We have no right to do it.

See also: this article. What is happening in china right now is just slightly more advanced than what many countries and states did for themselves.

No that's incorrect. You appear to have made a category error. Protecting against a virus isn't a valid reason for violating the fundamental human right of free assembly.

And no, there is no human right to be protected against the risk of disease.

> Human rights include the right to life and liberty

Literally the first one is to life.

https://www.un.org/en/global-issues/human-rights#:~:text=Hum....

But is it ok to take away others' rights?

The UDHR you linked to mentioned freedom from detention, freedom of movement, the right to peacefully assemble, to work, leisure, and education, and to participate in cultural life. All of these rights were negatively impacted by lockdowns which many people did not agree with.

In the example of the pandemic: Would it have been better to offer support for the vulnerable (people with a 1 in 10 chance of dying if they caught it), rather than punish those who were not vulnerable (people with a 1 in 100,000 or greater chance of dying).

When is it ok for one person's rights to come at the expense of others? Is it ok for a few politicians to decide to impose on a bunch of unwilling people to do something they don't want to do? Should we lockdown every year for the flu, because some people will die? Should we allow the majority to force their views on the minority becuase they believe it is for the greater good?

I don't believe so. Not when there are other options.

Sorry is the "freedom of movement" clause the one that is immediately followed by:

> 3. The above-mentioned rights shall not be subject to any restrictions except those which are provided by law, are necessary to protect national security, public order (ordre public), public health or morals or the rights and freedoms of others, and are consistent with the other rights recognized in the present Covenant.

Or is there some other clause you are referring to that this is actually violating?

The intention behind my reply was to say that the right to life is not the only right that people have, they have many others, and it is not a simple matter of saying one right some people want automatically gets priority at the expense of many other rights for many other people.

I'm not sure if I'm misunderstanding your comment. Are you saying that restricting rights to protect public health is more important than the right of freedom of movement and other rights?

This is why I mentioned the flu as an example of how difficult it can be to draw a line. Why don't we lock down everyone for the flu every year? Is it because the numbers are different? People still die. Even when people agree on the numbers they don't interpret the risk the same. Some people don't think covid was that big a deal, certainly not worth the impact lockdowns had on everyone. And I also mentioned the idea of helping protect the vulnerable without punishing those who don't feel they are vulnerable. I think a lot more could have been done in this regard.

I just don't get why some people feel justified imposing on the rights of others when there are other approaches. Different values, I suppose.

Everyone dies. No one has the right to live forever. We could probably prevent a lot of deaths from influenza if we imposed permanent lockdowns on everyone forever. But there's more to life than avoiding death.

And besides, the UN is a joke. It's a nice little debating society, but otherwise in the real world no one takes it seriously.

> Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.

Well either viruses typically are very good at killing you (SARS style) and so you can curb it fast or they aren't and stick around awhile until you can vaccinate a ton of the population and build immunity (measles). If they adapt too rapidly that they escape the effectiveness of a vaccine faster than you can develop and deploy them, you have the flu. Covid seems to be in the third camp rather than the other two.

2 big differences SARS didn't explode all over the globe and if you got SARS your fate was decided very quickly. Covid can be very mild or even asymptomatic making it easy to miss.

Not to mention spread!

SARS spread across the globe. It was effectively contained by public health authorities in various countries.

It is possible to eliminate SARS-CoV-2 in countries with competent public health systems. However, most countries did not attempt elimination. Instead, they followed their standard pandemic response plans, which are based on influenza, and which only aim to slow the spread of the virus.

Notably, a number of countries did not follow the standard response plans for an influenza pandemic, and instead went for (and rapidly achieved) complete elimination: mainland China, Taiwan, New Zealand, Australia, Vietnam, Singapore, and others.

I think if the world had been on board with a zero covid policy we probably would've weathered the pandemic much better - but convincing western nations to adopt that approach and their populace to actually accept the approach would have been a job and a half. My feeling through most of COVID (as someone in BC, Canada) is that the government is trying their best to minimize the amount people leave their homes while avoiding significant open protests. People marching in the streets is the last thing you want during a pandemic, it will cause an absolutely explosive number of cases - especially if those marches are done by people refusing vaccination and not using masks. And, to be honest, what's a government going to do - if Bonnie Henry declared a full lock down and tried to patrol the streets the number of law enforcement officers would be stretched to a breaking point - if people in a Condo building decided to storm the street they'd easily overwhelm the police...

So I think the zero covid policy is a decent idea if you can contain the disease before it spreads overseas but that a lot of western democracies are no where near well positioned enough to follow suit and, if you are the only country with a zero covid policy then there's going to be a really big tidalwave if the virus stays alive long enough to mutate and spread back into your country.

It sucks but this thing was global before lock downs were taken seriously so focusing bureaucracy on containment instead of preparing for the eventual return wave seems unwise.

Whether or not global lockdowns would have worked, I prefer a world in which you can get covid to one in which the government can confine you to your house. You're welcome to move to China if you prefer the latter approach - or just confine yourself to your house yourself...

In fact I have mostly confined myself to my house. I can work remotely and we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food. We go out for walks in the neighborhood but we avoid going in stores or restaurants except on rare occasions. We've taken one vacation (during the lull before omicron became a thing) and we'll try and take another vacation this summer but, otherwise, we're trying our best to contribute to keeping everyone around us, our friends and relatives, safe. That doesn't mean I don't want it to end though.

I don't think your comments about moving to China are at all productive to the dialog though.

> I don't think your comments about moving to China are at all productive to the dialog though.

I want to address this. Why is it not productive? One great thing about the world is that we have different jurisdictions that value different things, so they can compete and like minded people can potentially get together somewhere and live as they want. Many people are moving to Florida e.g. because of its approach to covid. If you want the opposite, and your initial comment I understood to basically be support for China's approach, there are jurisdictions you can go to that provide that. It's better for you because your priorities are supported, and it's better for people in other places with different priorities. What's not productive is trying to lobby the government to force everyone around you to behave the way you want them to.

Seriously, if you support China's approach, and value it more than what you're getting in Canada, move to China, don't try and make Canada any more authoritarian

Oh, mostly because I'm a Canadian and the Canadian response to everything is dictated by its citizens determining what the government does in reaction to various stimuli. I'm not going to execute a violent coup to overthrow the Canadian government to force my personal ideals on everyone else but me expressing my ideals and trying, within the system, to tilt the responses to what works for me is, in fact, the Canadian government working as designed.

Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida - it isn't authoritarian or freedom loving as an inherent property, it is responding to the will of its populace. I personally think my ideals would help Canada be a safer and more prosperous country, so why should I say "screw all these guys" and jump ship... I'd prefer to stay and try and make my neighbors safer. That said, I'm actually a US-Canadian dualie so it is an adopted home.

Fair enough, I'm canadian and the same reason I haven't moved to Florida is because I'd rather stay and try to fight people like you than just give up and move somewhere else. I think the difference is that all I want is to be left alone, while a you want is for the government to force people to do what you want (because anything else would somehow harm you and your fellow citizens), but that's a pretty classic struggle between libertarian and authoritarian.

And I guess I should add that our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country. Which is why I think it's better if you leave if you don't like it.

I think there's a problem with assuming that basic libretarian thinking is about freedom though. I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people. There are an awful lot of unjust laws that can color people's view on acting as a society - but there are also quite necessary forces in there to make sure that people have the ability to live good lives.

My central philosophy in life is basically to strive to have a positive net impact on those around me - and it's why I find that old Franklin quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." so problematic - it comes from a good place (basically it can, IMO be read as a scathing indictment of America's response to 9/11) but it gets taken so far overboard so often. Everyone just wants to live, when we're threatened with an existential (for some of us) threat like a pandemic, we need to coordinate an appropriate group response to sanely respond to it. When the threat is minor we can delegate that to the individual and let folks do as they will - but when we're talking about a pandemic group action is required to overcome the issue.

I'm fine seeing wide ranging debates on the political stage over national drug care and the like - but this pandemic is a very serious threat that has killed a lot of Canadians. I don't think it's fair to paint pretty reasonable quarantine restrictions as authoritarian when that word, to so many people, draws up the image of Stalin or Hitler.

> I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people.

I personally think that the rule should be "don't impose on others".

The murder example you used is an imposition on another person. Telling someone that they can't impose on someone else is not an imposition, it is preventing an imposition.

There can be problems if we allow the majority to impose whatever they want on the minority. It seems that many people seem are ok with that, as long as they are in the majority.

I mostly agree with that take. I just think the discussion is more complex when we're talking about a pandemic - acting personally in a reckless manner is imposing your risks on others. Base jumping off a bridge with no expectation of medical care is a personal risk - taking the subway without a mask on when you're feeling ill in the middle of a pandemic is a shared risk.

I agree that the discussion about pandemic lockdowns is more complex. Good and honest people can look at the same data and disagree on how to handle something like this, even individuals who share the same age and health related covid risks. Some mitigation measures work better than others. Lockdowns have a negative impact, and this needs to be taken into account also.

I think a lot has to do with quantifying the risk. We don't mandate masks during flu season. Covid has killed 10 times as many people per year in the U.S. than a bad flu season. Somewhere in between is where we as a society have drawn the line, at least on short notice for a scary new virus. And that line is in a state of flux, given better treatments, vaccines, less deadly variants, and lockdown fatigue, etc. It seems that the numbers matter when it comes to these issues, which is why we don't lock down or mandate masks every year for the flu and other diseases.

If the numbers matter then it is a shame that the media didn't do a better job of informing people. It seems that the headlines were focused on worst case scenarios, anecdotes, and controversy at the expense of probabilities, perspective, and measurements.

Personally I wish that we could have given N95 masks, which effectively protect the wearer, to everyone who felt vulnerable and was unable to isolate.

"our constitution and history make liberty and minimal government power the default here, so all of the authoritarianism that's come with covid is an attack on what was once a free country"

I usually see Canada being described the other way around, and to be honest if someone asked me for the most free countries Canada would not be the first in my list.

>Canada is an abstract concept - just like Florida

Ah, the same mindset that caused Justin Trudeau to say

>There is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada ... the first postnational state.

in a New York Times interview (<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/13/magazine/trudeaus-canada-...>). If he hadn't been explicitly quoted, his supporters would say that attributing such words to Trudeau is actually an alt-right white-nationalist Trumptard conspiracy theory to make him look bad.

Nah, I'd just say it was historically ignorant, because lots of superstates without a strong uniting identity have been formed, especially as part of decolonialization, but most of them have at some point (not always immediately after independence) viewed the lack of uniting identity as a problem to solve.

It requires a lot of privilege to live the kind of Covid lifestyle you describe.

Absolutely, I'm not saying it's something everyone should go through - I'm just saying that because we can afford to do it we're trying to keep from adding more problems to the pandemic.

> I think if the world had been on board with a zero covid policy

and

> I can work remotely and we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food.

Quite obviously only a minority of the population shares your personal situation. And yet you are calling for global lockdowns, which would include lesser developed countries where a vanishingly small percentage of the population is in this situation.

I shouldn't even be having to point this out. It's been a continuous theme that office-workers and IT workers have been self-indulgently calling for economies to lockdown because "Hey, why not just work from home?". And people have made the response I have above many times, which kills this dumb argument. So why is it still being made?

This is an incredibly privileged and self indulgent take. As a fellow BC resident, I am actually surprised how many people feel like their view on life is the only one and are happy to steamroll over the lives of others globally, consequences be damned.

This line of thinking is short sighted. It stops right at "See, this works for me, everyone should do this" and never carries the thought through to its conclusion. Mainly, how will these enforced measures affect everyone involved (and you) now, and in the long term, contexts being taken into account.

Frankly, as Canadians, we are thought of as respectful and considerate of other people. This thinking is the opposite and it's abhorrent.

>we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food.

Aside from all the other self righteous defenses of authoritarian measures due to your personal, in my view health paranoid views on COVID, this section above was particularly self indulgent. Who delivers your food? Your lockdown notions don't apply to them because, "oh, but I need to have my meals"?

Also, very basic thing: a vanishingly small percentage of the world's population can afford to totally lock down at home for more than a few days. They literally need to be on the streets and among crowds nearly every single day just to barely scrape by. I live in a developing country and few things about privileged, middle class WFH-capable people's lockdown arguments gall more than this absurd accidental or willful ignorance of how 80% of the planet lives.

Finally, most of Canada's population is vaccinated. Those that aren't had every opportunity to be and simply chose not to. What credible reason is there for any continuing lockdown nonsense given this? Simple reflex? Emotional paranoia? Please explain.

You have lived in a world in which the government can confine you to your house your entire life.

Why is it only recently you have noticed?

It’s a matter of degree of truth in this case, and it is an order of magnitude or more true for China.

You already live in a world where the government can confine you to your house. They likely already did.

I was under the impression that there was a animal reservoir of covid out in the wild. Is that not true?

Yes most mammal species can carry the virus. It has been detected in dogs, cats, deer, tigers, mink, hamsters, gorillas, etc. This is one of several reasons why the virus can never be eradicated.

One of the possible origins of Omicron (not confirmed AFAIK) was a jump back to humans from rats, that had been infected with an early 2020 variant.

"Zero anything" in my experience is almost always a propaganda play.

> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.

I'd argue it worked well for the initial phase of the pandemic. Even if you don't trust chinese data, China had little restrictions for most of 2020-2022, and by the sheer transmissibility of covid, this suggests they were very successful in keeping infections at bay. The problem is the lack of exit strategy. For a good example on how to deal with covid we can look at Singapore, which also had harsh lockdowns, rules and travel restrictions, and is now opening up again after vaccinating the vast majority of the population. Australia and NZ are also good examples of how to deal with the virus.

China can't do that though, because the elderly and vulnerable aren't vaccinated, and the chinese healthcare system is already strained without a pandemic. There's really not much they can do at the moment unless they find a way to massively increase vaccinations with effective vaccines, which proves hard when the population most vulnerable tends to have doubts and reservations on the vaccines.

I'd also like to mention that the way Europe and the US dealt with the initial two years of the pandemic was absolute shit. Healthcare workers were worked to death, sometimes literally, and we lost hundreds of thousands of people, while still restricting ourselves in some futile, some sensible ways.

Many calamities are unevenly distributed, so I would suppose Covid and lockdowns are just the same. (Even natural disasters- some homes are flooded, some homes are not…) the problem is in aggregate how much loss and suffering is acceptable. Especially in a case like this, arguably man made.

> an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government

Perhaps even actively malicious, with "perhaps" converging to "definitely".

This shouldn't be a controversial opinion. This is the evolution of a government that never faced any consequences for the Great Leap Forward, the Tiananmen Massacre or their concentration camps in modern Xinjiang. The CCP is actively malicious and very willing to kill it's citizens by the thousands in further an of their political goals.

> Your experience of life, even in the best of times, varies greatly by neighborhood, industry, income level, and more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, definitely don't buy the CCP propaganda, but equally don't take the (truly grim) videos all over social media as representative of the whole situation. This crisis is unfolding on a bell curve.

In general, isn't this true everywhere? For example, drive by shootings don't happen everywhere. Or even with Covid in the USA, the non-white underserved had more deaths and more hospitalizations. This was mentioned, by always in passing.

I'm not sure about Western governments, but at least in the USA, the media is very good at using emotions to sway perceptions of the actual underlying data / statistics.

Not to harp on a secondary point but term limits was your breaking point?

The lesson I take away from this is that governments with the power to enforce lockdowns are far more dangerous than any virus.

The issue is the indefinite timeline and the shutdown of grocery deliveries. You can get food now via wechat more easily, but it's been a huge amount of uncertainty the past 14 days.

Shanghai has always been a mixed pot. I have seen people selling live turtles for food at the door of a skyscraper in the business quarter. Gave off major cyberpunk/Blade Runner vibes.

According to this BBC video report, more Shanghai residents are venting their anger and frustration by posting videos on social media. Such videos are normally censored by China's 'Great Firewall'.

The BBC website states: "...the sheer volume of the clips has made it difficult for censors to keep up. Many are also being passed around in private group chats, which has made them harder to catch."

Shanghai lockdown: How angry netizens test China's 'Great Firewall' (video): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-61102809

I know this is a nit, but that is a misrepresentation of what the Great Firewall is (to keep things out of the country) vs. the internal censorship regime that domestic internet services are supposed to provide. In this case, it is the internal censorship apparatus that cannot keep up, not the great firewall failing from letting information in or out of the country.

I think the term 'Great Firewall' has become a colloquialism for the compute resources the CCP uses to further their agenda. They've used the same set of network/compute resources to commit cyber attacks, so thinking of the Great Firewall as only the filter for the outside world gives a false impression of how their systems work and are deployed.

But this is not a technological thing...and it isn't CPC driven (rather, private companies are supposed to self censor inside China, via manual inspection or increasingly via AI). The Great Firewall specifically is package filtering technology installed at ISPs with out-of-china links. China can't use it against internal traffic because it would basically shut the internet down completely in the entire country (given its slow performance).

> it isn't CPC driven (rather, private companies are supposed to self censor

The CCP dictates what gets filtered, so not sure what you mean by them not 'driving' it. Are you saying that because they don't own the hardware? If so, that's rather pedantic, given that the party has effectively unlimited power to dictate how any given resource is used, and is doing so in this case.

> The Great Firewall specifically is package filtering technology installed at ISPs with out-of-china links.

If this were an academic conversation about what the word means, or where it originated, then yeah, I get you. However, I was pointing out what the term has come to mean colloquially and why. If you generally have a gripe about the confusing overload of the term, then your argument should focus on potential confusion.

> China can't use it against internal traffic because it would basically shut the internet down completely in the entire country (given its slow performance).

Edit: I misread your last paragraph.

There s ample evidence the CCP deploys the same type of filtering internally, I don't think it being potentially different hardware or methods is anything more than technical detail is the outcome if the same.

> The CCP dictates what gets filtered

That isn’t accurate, the CPC (let’s use the correct acronym at least, even if the word order is different in Chinese) doesn’t dictate, they just tell the private companies “don’t allow anything that will make us mad”, and they then have to enforce rules that aren’t dictated, but are left intentionally very vague.

The internet companies would of course be in a much better place if the government just did all the filtering for them. Unfortunately they don’t get off that easily. The GFW is another matter altogether: the government simply maintains a list of what to block that all ISPs (most state owned) plug into.

> That isn’t accurate, the CPC (let’s use the correct acronym at least, even if the word order is different in Chinese)

No thank you. The English web is still wholey organized around the term CCP. I'm not going to switch my terminology because the party wants me to, no matter how nicely they ask.

> doesn’t dictate, they just tell the private companies “don’t allow anything that will make us mad”,

You are aware of the definition of dictate correct? So, you can see how that is what that is, no? Vague, sure, but that's still a command, and still carries legal consequences if you do it wrong. Just because Xi doesn't feel the need to create a formal list everytime a new meme pops up doesn't make it less of dictation.

> The internet companies would of course be in a much better place if the government just did all the filtering for them

Cost savings for the party I suppose.

> the government simply maintains a list of what to block that all ISPs (most state owned) plug into.

Wait, I thought it was vague? Sounds like it's absolute, just ever changing. That's not what vague means.

I worry the US internet is trending in that direction. It already sounds too familiar.

Can anyone explain how an automated filtering/censorship system can't "keep up" with this, technically? Even with a tiny delay, it seems to me the problematic videos or posts could be taken down easily. It's not like every Chinese citizen is posting terabytes of data daily...

My understanding is that normal people have to find and manually block a lot of the content. That's why it can't keep up - because there's MUCH more content to block now than normal.

Anyone?

...the Chinese seem to ignore the global play here: as Covid is endemic in the rest of the world and variants will keep emerging just like they do for common cold (it's basically just a new addition to the bundle of viruses that give the "common cold", but unfortunately with higher mortality since humans haven't been exposed to it), they'll have to isolate themselves from the rest of the world FOREVER! How about all the people who need to travel internationally often?

Let's stop this nonsense and come back to thinking solutions and measures in the "open international borders" context we enjoyed before. A new minor virus shouldn't make us change our ways!

For a second I wondered whether this was GPT-3

Except that Covid is not another common cold virus. Even with vaccination, its effects can be at least as severe as the flu - however it is as contagious as the common cold. We are yet to see what repeated infection brings - but given it is inherently a systemic disease, affecting not just the respiratory system but also the vascular system, and the high prevalence of long Covid, it would not be unreasonable to be concerned about serious damage.

One thing the pandemic has shown, is that in fact the world carried on mostly fine even when people couldn't travel down the road - let alone to another country.

We are changing our ways all the time with each evolution in our society and the environment in which it is situated - something that will become ever more evident as climate change picks up pace.

That is true so far, but remember that pathogens do not intrinsically have fixed disease characteristics.

The nature of disease is a contextual matter of both the pathogen and host populations. You have to put on your Hegel hat and really think long and hard about the ramifications of that.

Examples:

- mRNA vaccinated population + Omicron is not as bad

- Without being surrounded by lots of ongoing chicken pox to keep the immune system vigilant, one is more likely to get shingles as a non-old person

- Chicken pox and other childhood diseases are much worse if one gets them as an adult. (Shingles is not like getting chicken pox, i.e. the virus for the first time vs reactivated latent virus as an adult.)

- Smallpox and other old world diseases were far worse for new world peoples.

The point here is, what is COVID-19? and what is SARS-CoV-2? are two distinct questions, and both varying greatly over time. Any fixed atomistic characterization is one hell of a leaky abstraction, and will just lead you astray.

However a virus is a delivery device that precisely codes elements for self-replication, for structural form, and for pathogenesis. This last is the intrinsic disease causing component, though exactly how badly the interaction goes for an individual is dependent on the context of their immune system and general physiology. Apparently the 1918 H1N1 influenza virus had a particularly nasty pathogenic component, that mercifully has not been seen in the typical seasonal flu.

particularly nasty pathogenic component for that population, yes :).

There are several possible Chinese goals here, none of which require permanently closed borders:

1. Zero Covid until mRNA vaccines become available to them. Given the infectivity of Omicron and the technical hurdles to mRNA vaccines, they seem unlikely to succeed here.

2. Contain the burn to one city/region at a time so that resources from across the country can be moved in, reducing deaths. Again, seems unlikely to be possible given the infectivity of Omicron, but this goal requires quarantined borders to work.

3. Wait until less lethal variants arise, then select only less lethal variants to allow into the country. Given their failure in keeping out Delta and Omicron, this seems impossible, but it would be a good goal. It is complicated by their lack of effective vaccination, which makes comparing variants hard.

4. Continue Zero Covid as theater to avoid undermining the government's legitimacy, perhaps until the population can become quietly infected. This could be combined with ineffective testing, variant selection, and more effective censorship. (And perhaps border closures need only occur until these systems are in place.)

5. Maintain Zero Covid until the next political meeting. Let the floodgates loose after the current government is stable.

6. Find a way to end Zero Covid which can be blamed on political enemies (domestic or foreign).

Honestly, I am skeptical both that the Chinese have a real long term plan, and that their current border restrictions cannot be maintained forever. While it seems impossible to contain a virus with the infectivity of measles, it is travellers who pay for the border quarantines. The state might enjoy maintaining them merely as a way of reducing contact with subversive foreign ideas.

7. Try to "flatten the curve" (keep the infection rate under where it overwhelms hospitals).

Omicron was spreading like wildfire even in places that had reasonably strict measures in place and mRNA vaccines + many prior infections providing some level of protection.

There's a good chance that China can't keep it from growing exponentially and very quickly with anything short of a lockdown, and expects hospitals to collapse because many elderly who had zero prior exposure will get it almost at the same time.

This is both the most plausible explanation for current actions and future planning. They can't afford to "let it rip" as US/UK/Australia did as they don't have the same hospital capacity per capita and the number of resulting deaths would be politically untenable.

We must protect human lives at all costs, even at the cost of human lives.

Jokes aside, what we really want to know is that - what are the human lives lost lockdown v.s. no lockdown, maybe also factor in the possible economic downturns. The government did a not-so-good job convincing people that doing a lockdown is indeed better than the alternative - "We ran the numbers, it seems like doing a lockdown at this stage is beneficial" sounds better than doing a lockdown just for the sake of it.

And: limiting information to people doesn't help boost confidence.

I mean, any crunching of the numbers shows that China has effectively averted 3 million dead of their own population due to covid - assuming equal quality of care with the US.

I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?

>>I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?

Yea, they lie - do you have any evidence that China will not try and cover up any stories that make them look bad?

Yeah, I lie and I'm already a dead man. Thanks to the Hell Express I can even shitpost on HN after I died, so it's not too bad.

Any crunching of what numbers? You and I have no idea how many Chinese people have been infected or died of COVID.

As recently as earlier this week the Chinese Gov’t was claiming 130k infections in Shanghai with zero deaths. Are those the numbers you’re trusting, or were you counting the pyres visible on satellite photos from areas that had ‘no COVID’ according to the CCP?

Source on the 130k number?

If 3 million people had died in China of covid, they wouldn't be able to hide it. Even if they could hide that level of deaths, that level of covid spread would be obvious from antibody tests from peoe traveling from China.

Five days ago this was posted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30984108

Basically, there is no correlation between lockdowns and health outcomes. It's a pretty consistent finding, they reference a few others who found the same with different ways of measuring it in there.

Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?

because failure is not an option for regimes like the CCP.

As near I can tell it is an arbitrary decision of an authoritarian government that is too deep into sunk cost to reverse course.

What's the sunken cost of this policy?

Perhaps afraid that backtracking would be seen as a confirmation of policy error?

I had heard that Zero COVID is a policy associated with the Xi Jinping camp within the CCP, and not-Zero COVID is associated with his opponents. Backing down from Zero COVID would embolden Xi's opponents.

- lower natural immunity rates because zero COVID had been successful

- lower vaccination rates

- vaccine drives prioritized the young and healthy (the idea being they can handle side effects so this seemed like the best way to achieve herd immunity)

- the newer strains are super infectious and would overwhelm the healthcare system

They don't have a good way out now. They should have used the time they got last year to buy MRNA vaccines, but they did not.

The central government has likely given up on zero COVID but are sticking with those policies for now to "flatten the curve" while this wave takes its course.

Yup. Failure is going to come at a horrendous price--I wouldn't be surprised at a 7-figure death toll. They're desperately clinging to hope even though containment has obviously failed.

Also they have a vaccine that may not work.

It helps prevent infection and temper symptoms but it's not as effective as the mRNA vaccines.

Something like 50% vs 90% though that could be old data.

At least one new variant can burn through even double shot vaccinated and boosted in extreme cases. Due to various factors outside of my control, my toddler has now gotten Covid 4 times in the last year (10 months really). Antigen and PCR confirmed.

Most recently, a minor window of exposure got my oldest sick (double shot vaccinated), and taking care of both of them eventually got me sick (double shot vaccinated, boosted, AND took care of my toddler in isolation for weeks at a time during his most infectious times the prior 3 times). I’ve had side effects/immune response before obviously, but never tested positive. This time I tested positive.

No major adverse symptoms at least, but sick like with a moderate flu for a week+ despite all that is no fun.

Folks with no prior exposure and a weaker vaccine? Yikes.

Ouch! 4 times in a year is crazy!

Glad to hear your infection came with no severe symptoms.

Being able to come in contact without worrying about being the unlucky person who gets hospitalized is something to be thankful for. The vaccines have been a gift.

Afaik those numbers are for covid classic. For Omicron et al, I don't think the mRNA vaccines do anything except "prevent severe infection". They dont stop catching or transmitting it. No idea how the chinese and other vaccines fare against the new variants.

I think the other thing is China has somewhat demonised the rest of the world for is covid response, and it seems there was a lot of 'pride' at the fact the CCP had kept it at bay. Sort of "only the Chinese governmental system can save you", which for many months/years seemed true, with most of the rest of the world struggling to cope, wheras China was completely normal for a long time.

It's clear this is going to end extremely badly. Take a look at Hong Kong's death rate climb when it got out of control there - and HK is much richer than mainland China, with some of the best medical care in the world, and HK did have a fair bit of mRNA vaccine usage, whereas China has close to 0.

Yeah it does look like their initial success has set them up for a much bigger shock with Omicron. It's so much more infectious and is actually still rather severe. Most of us here have been vaccinated and/or have some natural immunity from prior waves, which made Omicron seem mild.

China seems to have a perfect storm of a healthcare system already stretched thin, low immunity among the population, and a super infectious strain.

The lockdowns are probably their best option but they also need to ramp up mRNA vaccinations in tandem. Zero COVID is unsustainable.

I mean, the US has had a million covid deaths. China presumably doesn't want 3 million deaths?

This is the obvious response and I am confused every time I see an article criticizing these lockdowns. They all seem to be written from the American herd immunity point of view, neglecting that we paved the way to herd immunity with the bodies of a million of our own citizens.

The problem is the lack of an endgame. For better or worse, Covid is endemic in Europe and the continental US[0]. All it takes is one false-negative test at the border[1] and a tourist or business traveler could easily create tens of millions of potential infectees (airport -> subway -> secondary city) to requisite additional lockdowns of tens of millions of people.

[0]And quite probably large parts of Asia, including countries bordering China if not China itself. [1]Or rogue/lucky virus. I don't recall if it was substantiated, but I believe New Zealand at one point credibly hypothesized an outbreak had resulted from a virus preserved in a frozen food shipment.

I mean, I think people believe that there would not be that many deaths because China has a heavily vaccinated population and a less strict lockdown could still be stricter than anything the US did, perhaps something closer to Australia.

On the first point, I think that the Chinese vaccine is much worse than the mRNA vaccines against Omicron, but I'm not sure what that would mean for death rates. On the second point, well, I guess the Chinese government tried that to some degree, but didn't feel it was going well.

A less effective vaccine pretty directly leads to higher death rates. I read in other news articles they didn't aggressively vaccinate older people like we did. Apparently a similar thing has happened in Hong Kong.

Well, less effective on some measure is not the same as less effective as preventing death, and I'm not sure how much less effective it is, actually.

Data out of Turkey, Brazil etc where Chinese vaccines were widely deployed with less lockdowns/restrictions do suggest lower efficacy at both reducing hospitalization and death. That said they are still fairly effective, just apparently not effective enough that China is willing to activate the floodgates. Also they have low vaccine penetration among the elderly which are hesitant to take vaccines in general

They could (have) vaccinate(d) people more effectively.

I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad. If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. And looking at the fact, that they have this zero COVID policy, that should absolutely terrify anyone believing in the aforementioned hypothesis.

>If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us.

why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.

> then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us

Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.

> Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.

There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.

I find it more amusing that someone can think that the could CCP be seriously concerned about the long term wellbeing of the Chinese people. Surely if it disportionately affects older individuals, especially in the light of the demographic crisis China will being facing in not to distant future (and with no social security or widespread private pension schemes and limited immigration it would be reasonable that it will hurt the Chinese people more than those living in the west), culling as a many of them would help increase the average productivity of their 'citizens'?

What I just wrote must sounding disgusting, but let's not forget we're talking about country which until very recently practised forced abortion upon women choose to have more than a single child (pursuing an absurd and nonsensical policy which might imply that the CCP is not the most rational bunch...) and is still sending thousands if not millions of people in to concentration/reeducation camps merely because of their ethnicity and religion.

So if the CCP truly cared about the people they'd cull the elderly. This is the quality of discussion on China these days on HN. The idea that "hey, obviously they wouldn't consider that, maybe they're not the comic-book villains I've been led to believe!" doesn't even cross your mind.

No? I didn't mean to imply that at all. Rather the opposite. If they cared about economic growth above anything else, I don't think it would a completely beyond them to do something like that (and you don't even need to get back to the times when Mao was still alive to find proof, the one child policy was a misguided crime against humanity, was it not?).

Of course engineering a virus for that purpose would be highly impractical and utterly absurd (one would hope so at least...).

I mean Sweden, and New York did it idk why we would put it past the Chinese. Might be cultural though

You completely misunderstood their post.

If you abide by the lableak theory, then part of its mythos was that he NIH funded the research, making them equally knowledgeable on it.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/10/nih-admits-funding-r...

The nih thing isn’t a theory. The lab leak Part is speculation

Maybe China knows more about the real long term effects of the virus because they have been studying it for a long time?

Because it's been working, both from an economics and health perspective, and the locals seem to be in support of it, except for in Shanghai

Here's a well known person in Shenzhen discussing it. Obviously be aware that any source in China can't speak too directly against the government, especially the central government. However I feel rather confident that this thread is a pretty good representation of her actual opinion having read a lot of her tweets on the topic.

https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151481834568977614...

"working" ? ...as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future while being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy to an extent that might be more than the price of those lives

> ..as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future

I don't get the impression that the people in charge, or the people not-in-charge in China, agree with this assessment.

I.e. to quote from the thread

> If you're telling Chinese "Omicron can't be beaten" it's a hard sell because the West has been telling us COVID can't be beaten for two years- and most provinces here already have beaten Omicron.

...

> being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy

As above, to again quote from the thread I linked

> Most Chinese have experienced few significant restrictions in the last two years due to COVID-Zero, fast lockdowns, and mass testing done at under 100 cases. The first time we hear about something new being tried- straying from that, it's an unforgivable human rights catastrophy.

> We've been basically living a normal life for two years while we watch the rest of the world meltdown in a furnace of exceptionalism, overconfidence, and science denial. It's going to very, very hard to convince Chinese that we're doing it wrong.

China's policies have kept the global economy afloat. They've been operating for the last two years almost at normal, in stark contrast to the US and company.

And what a disgusting comment to make. Yes, how dare they stop producing goods for us to consume! Do you also discuss our obligations to the global economy like this? What is our comeuppance to be for our comically poor COVID policies reducing global demand?

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

And it corrupts not only itself, but also the society it commands in general. That's why you had to use a throwaway to post an obvious truth that is guaranteed to trigger karma decrementers.

Probably the same 3 reasons that seem to drive most authoritarian stay-the-course decisions:

* Can't admit the original plan isn't working without appearing weak.

* Operating on information corrupted by "compounding optimism" from every level of subordinates.

* Repercussions for bad outcomes are unlikely.

I think at this point it's sheer stubbornness and to save face for the administration.

I personally believe that Zero Covid was a great strategy right out the gate but it's no longer appropriate since this is clearly a global pandemic... but maybe Xi is afraid of looking wrong in retrospect.

Enforcing silly, ineffective policies may serve the same purpose as publishing silly, unpersuasive propaganda, in the sense of this recent article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962199

The standard rumor is that the Chinese vaccines do not work as well, either at slowing down the spread or at reducing the severity of the effects, as western vaccines (whether Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, or Oxford/AstraZeneca). So, the feared effects of having most people get it are worse than here.

Also, in the US, the CDC estimates that for every 10 people who get it who were confirmed/counted, there were 32 who were not counted. Since many states have had >20% of their population confirmed, that suggests that >85% of many US states have already had Covid-19, vaccinated or not. The ratio of "immunologically naive" in China is probably much higher.

Not saying that makes it a sensible or even moral policy, just that's the most likely scenario as to why they are doing it.

Yeah combination of several factors. Lower vaccine penetration, lower efficacy, lower hospital capacity per capita. COVID zero is the only moral option, they can't choose the death of millions.

Authoritarian regimes benefit from cultivating fear of death and disease in their people, it makes them more manageable... Similar to not allowing regular people to own guns etc. etc.

Once you become willing to die, to let others die if needed, and to kill, for freedom or other purposes, you're no longer an "easy to manage sheep" ;)

I hadn't thought about it that way. We're seeing some resistance in Shanghai, but not enough to stop it. Even when killing pets and separating children from parents. Lack of grocery deliveries. It's scary.

The CCP refuses to import western vaccines. The only option is lock-down because Chinese vaccines are targeted to the original covid-19 strain. There are media reports that China is close to their own mRNA vaccine...

I've been trying to understand CCP's reasoning for these draconian measures. Even if you haven't seen the Twitter videos showing bags of live cats and dogs being being beaten to death with sticks, the children separated from their parents, the alarms on the doors, the economic numbers, you can tell that this does't make any sense.

Some theories:

- Strip people of absolutely all rights, make them feel helpless. Later gradually restore some rights so that they feel like they've gained freedoms, but not all.

- Keep very low COVID numbers on paper, say the west is unsafe and ban travel, preventing the outflow of money from China to the west.

- Crush the economy and nationalize private companies even further than they are now. Perhaps even nationalize foreign companies that operate in China (see Russia).

Or by Occam's razor, I would say the goverment simply screws up (so badly) at their top-down approach at this stage.

The problem is that the reasoning at the top isn't anything near what the drones implementing said policy at the bottom are doing.

There's like a hundred layers of people between Xi and the dudes beating dogs. It's like a game of telephone where some medical experts speculate about animal reservoirs, and somebody in the mayor's circle hears about it, and next thing you know they're giving covid tests to chickens. It's the same incentive problem as the Great Leap Forward in the 50s, failure is punished, so if there's even a hint that letting some cats go free will come back to bite you, why take that risk?

In some ways China's decision making is actually quite decentralized, in that the sheer mass of bureaucrats making decisions and carrying out actions is incredibly high. The center passes out a generalized order like "lockdown and limit covid spread" and leaves the implementation details to the next level. By the time it gets to your apartment community you're stuck with some uncle/auntie who spent their school years heckling teachers during the cultural revolution trying to make public health decisions.

TL;DR when China does something stupid and illogical it's not always because there's a nefarious plan. The system is just broken and causing suffering for no reason.

People here in Venezuela used the same excuse, "Oh Chavez doesn't know about it", it being corruption etc, as if there weren't hundreds of reports/testimonies appearing in newspapers/etc every single day.

What's next, Xi doesn't know about the organ farms? Hah.

What the parent comment said was that not every little detail is decided at the top.

Chavez knew the country was corrupted but do you think he was behind every clerc or doctor that asked for a bribe?

Dictators are not superior beings able to manage a country : they are just good at keeping hold and at hiding their mistakes.

> he was behind every clerc or doctor that asked for a bribe?

Yes he was, he purposely allowed corruption to flourish, communism 101.

The urge to exert authority that the author speaks of in the beginning is disturbing. Having seen how they do it in China first hand, I am horrified to imagine the fate that awaits Taiwan if China ever takes over. The pent up (falsely based, imho) anger amongst PRC people toward Taiwan and its friendly people is difficult to overstate. If this (Shanghai) is how they treat their own locals, imagine how they will treat estranged “citizens” who have dared to think they have lived under a better system for all these years.

We can already look to Hong Kong for that.

I suspect Taiwan is going to be another level. In Hong Kong the transition was planned and executed over a number of years (decades even) with cooperation from most local authorities and evolutionary changes continuing gradually over many years.

In Taiwan it could be sudden and brutal.

If you've ever seen truly country people from the inner provinces… I mean the most country-bumpkin (土 / "earthy") type of them, not the ones you meet from big cities, and think about how the PLA is partially made up of some of these people, the stories about Russian soldiers entering Ukraine and being amazed to find that regular households have microwaves, blenders, and nutella… start to give a picture of what kind of soldiers will be blanketing Taiwan in the event of a large invasion. It will not be like Hong Kong at all.

Naomi Wu writes on this.[1]

[1] https://twitter.com/search?q=realsexycyborg&src=typed_query

This should be higher, it's the most relevant and reasoned commentary on the subject.

While China's approach is heavy-handed it also has saved a lot of lives, even assuming some fudging of the data their death rate is the lowest of any large country. Countries like Japan and Thailand have managed to avert nearly as much death as China with very different approaches so there's a good argument that there are good alternatives. Countries like Sweden, England, or especially the US have done so much worse that they probably shouldn't be trying to give anyone any advice on the topic.

The only real measure of success is "customer satisfaction", and I'd dare to say that the majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied and some would have preferred even less measures to be taken...

> majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied

Did that include the people who died ?

You can't protect lives at all cost. What's the point of living without quality of life? We certainly don't take the zero risk approach with other aspects of living.

Just an anecdote, but I know far more people who are struggling with mental health problems as a direct consequence of covid lockdowns (myself included), and it seems practically impossible to get any reasonable mental health help any more. Even private services are overwhelmed. My partner works in the hospital and some days nearly all admissions are mental health, even during the peak of the second and third waves.

I certainly wouldn't have wanted a strict China-style internal lockdown, and the more porous western internal lockdowns didn't seem to make a huge difference anyway. If anything seems to have made a difference, it's travel bans and quarantine hotels (despite WHO claims). However, against Omicron, everything seems useless.

You are talking about the costs of half-hearted US lockdowns that accomplished the worst of both worlds. Meanwhile China's strict lockdowns allowed them to end said lockdowns extremely quickly. Things like welding doors shut were temporary measures that let them _avoid_ things like lockdown-induced mental problems and overwhelmed medical services. Until Omicron their policies were working splendidly, with life essentially at normal. Even with Omicron it's only Shanghai being drastically affected.

Focusing on Shanghai ignores the >1billion other people that strongly approve of Chinese policy and who saw firsthand how their quality of life was _preserved_.

One thing that is left out is the efficacy of the Chinese vaccines Sinovac and Sinopharm.

They are simple not good enough to stop COVID, to do that the Chinese regime would have to choose an American vaccine.

Which they of course never will do, so one can ask if the Chinese regime really wants the best for their citizens ?

https://myacare.com/blog/comparison-of-covid-19-vaccines

The CCP is very well known for reporting numbers that make them look good, independent figures don't exist because the CCP wants to control their image. So it's pretty much impossible to trust any statistics on this stuff in China.

Even New Zealand, an isolated island, gave up the pretence of of zero covid!

Covid is endemic now and it was probably obvious from close to the beginning that it would become so. Even if vaccines curb spread a bit and reduce deaths a lot, vaccinated people still get and transmit it.

We should focus on iterating vaccines faster, probably making cocktail-mRNA-vaccines with multiple strains and formulas updated every ~6 months, and helping all countries get access to the best vaccines, like open-source mRNA-vaccine tech and all the others that showed promising (compensate patent holders a couple billions etc.)

We're so incredibly dogmatic in our thinking with this, just like it took >1 year to figure out that most of the time ventilators don't help (those that can be helped can so with only oxygen), we still have this lingering belief that COVID isn't here to stay.

We should accept death as part of life and just iterate faster on things...

One of my family member is living Shanghai who has not taken any vaccine yet due to contraindications. Not to mention that there are millions of elders living in China who are not suitable for taking vaccine.

I am very concerned if an authoritative gov aiming for "zero-covid" would push and mandate every citizen to be vaccinated. But I saw all these comments bashing gov on "why lockdown", "why not just take vax", "why not herd immunity" without deeping into questions - which is not much different from "Let them eat cake”.

Why? What is CCP covering up? Supply chain crisis? Financial crisis because of sanctions of Russia? What benefits could their totalitarian regime gets from this inhuman policy?

Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.

Plenty of studies showed lockdowns worked. The long term impact on COVID in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations has eroded how deadly people perceive COVID. Estimates vary especially around secondary effects like hospitals being overcrowded, but cumulatively lockdowns in the US saved in the low millions of lives.

“The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.”

However, don’t take my or anyone else’s word for it. The research is publicly available if you go looking.

I think we need to distinguish between government imposed lockdown and measure that people take on their own. The study you cited [0][1] assumed that people wouldn't do anything in lieu of a government imposed lockdown, which is patently false.

> We attributed all COVID-19 lives saved (relative to the unmitigated counterfactual) to the public health measures (lockdowns, social distancing recommendations, masking recommendations), even though some voluntary behavioral modifications (e.g., limiting social contacts, trips to the store, or non-essential travel outside the state) would likely have taken place among the public even in the absence of these government interventions.

I think the most interesting studies are those that try to figure out the effectiveness of government intervention based on the timing of the lockdown. IIRC (big if), the timing of government intervention didn't matter much indicating that because of self imposed behavioral changes were about as effective as government intervention (or that people ignored government imposed lock-downs, ha ha). But take that with a big grain of salt.

[0] https://ihpi.umich.edu/news/lockdowns-during-early-pandemic-...

[1] https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...

> I think we need to distinguish between government imposed lockdown and measure that people take on their own.

Why? It’s an exponential curve, either the number of cases is increasing or decreasing it makes little difference until you swap from one to the other. There is zero evidence that purely voluntary methods would have worked.

Further, the problem with using a zero policy baseline is voluntary lockdowns would also wrecked the economy. Movie theaters etc can’t operate if 90+% of the population including their staff is staying home. You can try and get some sort of synthetic baseline economic harm without government policies but you also get feedback loops of people staying home more as the situation falls apart.

That’s especially true of foreign countries. China’s lockdowns appeared to be extremely effective, but they where going to wreck US supply chains irrespective of the US response to COVID.

It’s even possible that government shutdowns reduced overall economic harm. Remember, lockdowns prioritized essential services, the disease wouldn’t have been so discriminatory. The zero government intervention baseline likely results in major disruptions in essential services like food delivery.

I don’t think anyone questions the effectiveness when we literally didn’t know how Covid spread or how to treat it and our hospitals were getting overwhelmed.

The question is if they’re a useful endgame tool, after we have testing and treatments and vaccines. Absent the authoritarian measures China is deploying, the answer appears to be no: enough people skirt the rules to permit community spread.

I doubt any researcher believes our response was completely optimal or that US lockdowns would have ever eliminated COVID.

So allowing controlled spread after a successful vaccination campaign while avoiding overwhelming hospitals was the long term strategy if vaccination never hit herd immunity. Yes, we had strings like mask mandates last winter, but public schools where open almost everywhere even as the number of new cases spiked to unprecedented levels. The core difference was the dramatic reduction in hospitalization rates meant the healthcare system could cope with a spike of that magnitude.

It's frustrating when anti-lockdown folks don't differentiate between lockdown now, when the disease is basically endemic and vaccines make COVID a non-issue for healthy/abled individuals, vs. in March 2020 when there was no vaccine, a mask shortage, a ventilator shortage, no consensus on transmission (the whole aerosol vs droplets shit), and just general pandemonium.

In my experience, the reason they don't differentiate is because they're implicitly arguing against the subset of pro-lockdown folks who don't differentiate. It's easy to forget, because most of us are understandably excited to memory hole the entire debate, but as recently as last fall there were mainstream voices arguing that it wasn't safe for kids to go to school.

Where are those mainstream voices now, in the grand scheme of things claiming that it's not safe for kids to go to school is a claim not rooted in science or statistics.

But probably those mainstream voices are not that interested in either.

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