Respectfully, I disagree. If there was no possible way to avert it, how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths?
The action/omission distinction is for judging who started a fight in a schoolyard, not for judging the actions of nation-states.
By being ready to lock people in their homes and preventing them to even go buy groceries.
Are you proposing that western countries should/could do this?
We could also ban all sugar/sweeteners, alcohol, driving and sitting still for more than 6 hours a day; this would also save a lot of lives.
You can tune a Paperclip Optimizer to any single good metric, it does not mean that it is a good idea.
Data from China is how we even got the sequence for the virus in the first place.
So, at the end of the day, I think the rest of the discussion remains unchanged.
I'm pretty confident in stating that the average Chinese has overall better immune system function. On a related note I've just learned that one of the reasons they are more affected by the lockdowns is that the culture much prefers fresh food.
And no, there was no way most or any Western nations could have managed lockdowns of the sort that would have the necessary impact (of which I'm highly doubtful), for numerous reasons. The consequences of the so called "soft" approach on lockdowns are and are going to be massive anyway. And probably for naught.
I would disagree with this, especially in Southern China in the winter. The lack of indoor heating has a huge impact on your immune system, to the point that it is extremely easy to get sick.
There is a reason a bunch of old people die in Hong Kong whenever the temperature drops below 5C, which is much more developed compared to the rest of southern china.
I agree, we won't have data, but my gut feeling, having been raised in this kind of environment, is most people are basically poisoned by such lifestyle factors. 88% percent of Americans have a metabolic dysfunction. Again, I agree we couldn't prove this in a satisfactory scientific way, just what my eyes are seeing.
American life expectancies are still significantly higher than Chinese ones. Now, that could just be correlated to healthcare resources (America spends a lot, Chinese spends much less and much of it is wasted on pseudo medicine), but environmental factors also come into play (air pollution must be having an effect already).
Do you really believe they 'averted 'the deaths? or is it more likely they hid the truth. I vote for the latter; they don't have a good track record.
They would not be able to hide infection on the level that the US has had it - antibody tests from travelers from China would show it trivially, social media would show it.
The idea that China has secretly had 3 million covid deaths and widespread infection without anybody realizing is a conspiracy theory.
You’re saying the firefighters (WHO and the Western response) didn’t do enough to put out the fire burning down their houses (western countries), while simultaneously praising the neighbor (China) who found the fire, lied about the fire, “disappeared” people who attempted to report the fire, delayed response to the fire, spread the fire, but FINALLY at the eleventh hour made sure their own house didn’t burn from the fire.
As I've said, it would be obvious from antibody tests if they did this.
Not going to keep responding, you are letting your feelings about China's government cloud your judgement on the facts.