Shanghai Disney shuts: Visitors unable to leave without negative Covid test
bbc.com
bbc.com
Lockdown may be a temporary solution. The long-term solution is to maintain better hygiene (masks, washing hands) and get the vaccine without turning into political drama all over Twitter.
I always thought the pandemic will make fist bumps or other forms of greetings “mainstream”. But everyone (I know) have reverted back to hand shakes. I guessing the same with Covid hygiene measures.
> get the vaccine without turning into political drama all over Twitter.
Like the majority of the people not taking the vaccine are on Twitter or do so because of social media drama.
But here we are.
[Edited to explicitly indicate that this was a satirical post]
So glad that we are back to the way it was.
Projection of your overall health & cleanliness?
Of course, we cannot expect us Westerners to have that level of compassion and common sense.
The people I know who still wear masks and myself wear them so that others don't get our cold, not necessarily to protect ourselves. A form of respect towards co-workers etc.
While it’s not a majority of people, I still routinely see people wearing masks out and about, particularly on public transport. But I suspect it’s primarily as a defence against other peoples germs. Which I’ll admit is why I’m currently looking at nicer less “hospital” masks, notably a few companies that make respirators had a mini boom and diversified into “everyday wear” models that didn’t look like you were fumigating for termites. There are reusable respirators that just look like nicer disposable ones now.
It’s also helps that people don’t find it as weird if you have a mask on when riding a bike since that’s been sort of a normal look for a while, pioneered by both the Lycra wearing enthusiasts and the boom in bike couriers thanks to food delivery apps and no one riding as a courier wants to breath car and truck fumes all day.
I thought masks were the clearest indicator of a person’s perspective on themselves and their role in society: the same ones who complain about their rights being oppressed are the ones who get the most upset with people like me who take them at their word and then suddenly discover hypocrisy at the core.
I’m so glad we had this moment for people to show their true selves in such a simple fashion. Not as easy as the “Insane” hand stamp that Homer Simpson got (“why won’t this wash off?!?!”) but it’s nature at work again. See bright color snake or reptile? Likely poisonous as a defense mechanism. See a human with dyed hair and a bunch of metal shit in their face? Different kind of poisonous but still there. No mask during peak time = asshole.
The same kind of asshole that doesn’t put their shopping cart / trolley back in the corral. Yes, those people are assholes. If you’re that lazy, reader, stop acting like an asshole.
Hope you have a living will or your own respirator on standby, cuz your attitude is going to mandate in the long run you’re in the “didn’t give a shit then, so we don’t give a shit now” pile. It’s called a hospital.
A very, very close friend was saved by NYC EMTs and Doctors and from that experience career changed into a full RN now on a cardiac ward in Ohio. He’s super high risk and excerpt from COVID work thankfully. It was a hard job at first, watching 50% of patients die because what brought them in was too late to fix. Game over.
When COVID hit he told me stories of how many middle America reasonable people were in denial as it was killing them in beds. They fought until the end. The worst ones realized they fucked up and would pay for it and with no friends or family on the way out. Fuckin brutal, death in cold sterile isolation with yourself to blame. Intellectual suicide.
It will never be the way it was ever again, because our society is broken because people like you care more about the wrong shit than you can admit, and politely, don’t wear a mask, fully inhale on that helium tank to entertain your friends with a funny voice at your next party.
Asking for glove use would have a huge environmental impact…
Nobody would be able to tell in our era.
I'm aware that fomites are not the main cause (or even a cause at all) that the disease spreads. Nevertheless, proper hand hygiene seems to be a good idea to me.
I think Fauci said that he hoped that COVID would stop "the barbaric practice of shaking hands."
Yeeeahhh... I don't think that's happening.
In some Asian countries, people bow, or clasp their own hands in greeting and/or respect.
I thought that the pandemic would make sneezing and coughing into your hands passé, but I still see plenty of people doing exactly that.
Of course the risk-averse would not be satisfied with "pretty low risk" and can still refuse handshakes. I remember reading that for someone to give you Covid through a handshake, they'd have to cough into their hand, shake your hand, and you'd have to put your hand close to your mouth/nose soon after that.
The Chinese government were reporting virus samples found on surfaces after 3 days, but these were tiny samples, tiny viral loads won't harm us.
Indoor masking is also not 100%, you can't smell Covid but you can smell cigarette smoke, I think an appropriate analogy is, if someone's been exhaling their cigarette-smoke-laden breath into a room for 30 minutes, and you walked into that room, would you smell the cigarette? Even with a Covid mask?
Outside of China, how many countries continued a lockdown solution after vaccines became widely available (in that country)? Some countries at least pursued split lockdowns where vaccinated people were completely free.
Not trying to shoehorn this discussion into politics, but the movement pushing back against lockdowns and forced/semi-forced vaccination isn't composed entirely out of anti-vaxxers or conspiracy nuts.
I'm quite sure it's always going to be controversial to enforce a lockdown, no matter what country you're in. In some countries the controversy will be whispered because it cannot be shouted, but it doesn't make it less controversial.
Still, if the only goal of the lockdowns was to keep the health system from collapsing, and the vaccines effectively reduced the health problems associated with infection, then a relatively relaxed attitude about infection amongst vaccinated individuals is completely consistent with my implicit claim, here made explicit: that the lessons my original PP alleged we learnt so we could do better next time are exactly what we came up with in the height of the pandemic. Yet it was extremely divisive and destructive of social unity. I honestly doubt most democratic/responsible countries could do the same thing if another pandemic came out in five years time - even the same leaders would make different decisions. If the lesson is "what we did was the best we could do", then that just isn't good enough.
Now imagine how frustrated I've been for nearly two years on this: I knew this in Dec 2020. Pfizer never lied here, and we knew for a month or two after the vaccines were announced that this was the case. The lie came from media and politicians months after the vaccine was announced.
For example, before it was memory-holed:
https://www.washington.edu/news/2020/12/02/covid-19-vaccines...
https://www.businessinsider.com/who-says-no-evidence-coronav...
https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2020/12/covid-...
i've heard that sinovac vaccine for covid wasnt as effective as mrna ones, and that may be a reason they are still doing lockdowns.. they may not have much of a choice
good to hear some info from people there... then i wonder why they are still doing zero-covid lockdowns?
is it hesitation for getting the vaccine? something else?
That's why I wonder what China is trying to achieve here. Are they trying to get rid of any foreign dependence under the pretext of health concerns? Turkey's Erdogan did something like that with their stock exchange, i.e. pushing out foreign capital let Erdogan do economically ridiculous things without having international pushback.
Most likely explanation: Population/unrest control. If you can randomly shut down parts of the country for the pretend reason of a plague, you can stop unrest from rising. Do shut down small areas randomly for maximum fear and effect.
Remember the Hong Kong protests?
Perhaps the authority was concerned the unproductive unrest would go down like Libya, Syria, Egypt, Ukraine without and endstate better than how things were before the young and impressionable took to the street.
Based on one metric. But ultimately it's self defeating. If you flush the economy down the toilet then there isn't the money for clean water, or hospitals etc.
Further zero flu works better than the vaccine. Do you want to stop the world until every disease is eradicated.
Lockdowns were never sustainable, in the context of a modern economy. It's a question of the least worst option. Vaccines mean it's no longer the least worst option.
Millions of dead, and 100s of millions taken out of workforce for ~2 weeks during infection, possibly multiple times, possibly with long covid effects for years after, or we're coming up on winter where immunity weakest. It's far from clear vaccines isn't the worst option short term (0-3 years).
>flush the economy down the toilet
I mean sure? Except with confluence of global factors PRC economy, while underperforming is still outperforming most of western countries, as stated above. Hence status quo is currently sustainable, there is less pressure to deliver economically when everyone else is sinking. Obviously sustainable not long term, but I can easily see another year or two, especially with global slow down. The broader point being, all the western MSM reporting on PRC wrecking itself economically is avoiding the fact that it's not wrecking itself as much as most developing countries with RU sanctions, or dealing with US dollar, and US dealing with end of cheap money. Zero covid + three red lines on real estate + tech crack down, etc all deliberate policy choices are not as devasting as 10% inflation or end of cheap credit causing housing sales + tech valuations to crash like in PRC. It's not world ending, PRC is collapsing stuff.
>Do you want to stop the world until every disease is eradicated
No I think PRC wants to stop this specific disease that has demonstrably kills many people with linger side effects even in wealthy countries with access to better health care.
E: posting rate limited so @benj111
>So I don't even know what figures you are working with
Studies conservatively extrapolating TW/SKR post living with covid + mRNA numbers to PRC with modifier for lower per capital med care access. I don't know what figures you are working with to conclude ~3M would get covid when it will be 100s of millions since no vaccine prevent spread and majority of pop have no natural immunity. Estimates from scientists who actually crunched the numbers: a few million dead, significant % of which due to overhelming hospital infra.
1. Millions of dead (conservative estimate is ~2+) is still factually a lot of dead to deal with. If that can be avoided with accepted costs (which I'm arguing, currently is) then why not.
2. It's worse in that it comes with millions of dead bodies and at least 10s of millions long covid. Maybe zero covid is sunk cost and those figures are inevitable, but still no compelling reason for lifting short term.
3. Covid = flu? Are linger side effects of flu as well understood as covid? Annual influenza deaths is fraction of covid deaths. Extrapolating from US annual flu deaths, in PRC, influenza would kill ~100,000 per year vs again millions of covid deaths in same period. Like if PRC can get away with only 500k hospitalizations, Xi could personally go smother each covid ICU patient and still spin it as a win.
1. In a country of billions, 'millions' could mean fractions of a percent. 'millions' in this context is just emotive rather than factual.
2. What do you mean taken out of the workforce? From illness? That sound wrong. From isolating? How is that worse than it Chinese status quo?
>No I think PRC wants to stop this specific disease that has demonstrably kills many people with linger side effects even in wealthy countries with access to better health care.
Which is why I specifically gave the example of flu. A disease that kills and has lingering side effects. A disease that we live with currently. Millions of people in China probably due from flu every year. Which incidentally shows how flawed your use of the figure is.
From what I can work out ~3m people would be expected to get covid in China if they were all vaccinated. ~500k would be hospitalised. And ~70k would develop long covid lasting at least 6 months. So I don't even know what figures you are working with.
https://health-study.joinzoe.com/post/risk-covid-after-vacci...
>We saw that 2,394 and 187 people tested positive for COVID-19 more than two >weeks after their first and second jabs, respectively, with the chances of ?>becoming infected falling as time passed.
>That’s the equivalent of one in 500 (0.2%) and one in 3,333 (0.03%)
1,400,000,000 x 0.002 = 2,800,000
(Note I actually misinterpretted this as applying to 2 different vaccines, of which I chose the least effective, whereas this is after just 1 jab.)
based on double jab figures the figure would be around 0.5 million.
>Reassuringly, only 104 people in the vaccinated group who tested positive for COVID-19 ended up in hospital (one in 2,500 or 0.04%).
1,400,000,000 x 0.0004 = 560,000
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/long-term-effects/... >Estimates of the proportion of people who had COVID-19 that go on to >experience post-COVID conditions can vary:
>13.3% at one month or longer after infection >2.5% at three months or longer, based on self-reporting >More than 30% at 6 months among patients who were hospitalized
2,800,000 x 0.025 = 70,000 (although this is based on the single jabbed figure, fully jabbed the figure would be 1400.
>when it will be 100s of millions since no vaccine prevent spread
Are you saying the vaccine doesn't stop you getting covid? that is false. It doesn't stop it 100% but it is significant, significant enough that outbreaks can die off on their own. Further i'm not sure if thats even relevant, the issue is how many it kills. its easy to get a cold, you don't need to worry about getting a cold because that won't kill you. so the relevant factor is how good is the vaccine at preventing major illness and hospitalisation.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...
vaccines lower risk of infection by 60% - 80% vaccines lower the risk of symptomatic disease by 65% - 90% vaccines lower risk of hospitalisation by 90% vaccines lower risk of death by over 90%
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01855-7
> lift such measures could see more than 112 million symptomatic cases of Covid-19, five million hospitalisations, and 1.55 million deaths.
There's also later analysis that extrapolates with TW/SKR numbers after they began living with covid with IIRC greater deaths. These are fellow East Asian examples with more simliar conditions than PRC except they have much better per capita health care infra.
>relevant factor is how good is the vaccine at preventing major illness and hospitalisation.
Yes and the relevant factor to that relevant factor is PRC doesn't have the ICU beds / hospital infra per capita to absorb even vaxed spread. Most of country is old and underdeveloped and "crushing the curve" is still the best path. Vax prevents severe cases but at PRC scale and infectiousness of omicron, in dense urban enviroments during colder seasons, that's still more symptomatic severe cases than the medical system can handle.
>We find that the level of immunity induced by the March 2022 vaccination campaign would be insufficient to prevent an Omicron wave that would result in exceeding critical care capacity with a projected intensive care unit peak demand of 15.6 times the existing capacity
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/11/lifting-zero-c...
That's the crux of the issue, PRC is a developing country with low hospital beds per capita that demographically skews old (and antivax). These factors means PRC is better off with no vaccines and zero covid than vaccines and living with covid until zero covid or some other factor makes zero covid unsustainble.
If China was able to logistically handle zero covid, I would be more inclined to agree with you. However, each time a city in China has been locked down, it has been a logistical disaster that almost always resulted in:
- extremely poor quarantine zones in unsanitary conditions (which defeats the purpose of being free of disease). This includes many people who were lucky enough to quarantine in their own homes as even their pets are not allowed to leave, they need to dedicate spaces in their home for their animals to defecate.
- lack of basic necessities; food, heating, water leakage, insect problems, or even lacking a proper indoor building in some cases.
- a lack of professionalism, discipline, or even respect of human decency among the staff. Attaching spikes to entrances to keep people from leaving by force, refusing to allow elderly access to medical care, threatening people with weapons, security bao'ans going on China social media laughing about all the new found power and control they have over the populace, beating people in a show of their power trips.
- questionable policies, such as requiring everyone in a community to come together, line up, for a covid test, which increases the likelihood of getting covid, rather than go door to door.
This has lead to more than just inconveniences, it's lead to death. Which is supposedly the very thing this is all supposed to avoid. The Chinese state has proven by experience, repeatedly, that it cannot logistically handle these strict policies. It is a failure of the zero covid policy and a failure of the Chinese Communist Party to administer its State in a competent manner.
Seeing as we are almost 12+ months post delta/omicron and local outbreaks have consistently been contained to prevent uncontrolled geometric spread, yes PRC is logistically handling zero covid. Over many lock downs, of various sizes, across different regions, to keep spread at so-far managable levels.
> logistical disaster / always resulted in / it's lead to death
Of course, it's not a smooth 5star process, shutting down urban regions with millions fundmentally can't be. That's not a failure of policy, but acceptable baseline for competent epidemiologic management, competence being it contains spread and saves significantly more lives than it takes. Some pain/death is inevitable operating on the scale of hundreds of millions. The "very thing it's suppose to avoid" is millions of deaths due to uncontrolled spread and overwhelmed medical system, not a hundreds/thousands of incidental deaths because someone peoeple starved/suicided/bus crashed. Same with increasing chance of local spread to prevent higher order spread. Like these aren't exquistily managed bespoke interventions, they're coarse but by now tested methods that can be implemented in a snap. Of course it's not clean, but it's better than health system collapsing. The cost benefit analysis of maintaining zero covid, when one can, and PRC can, is obvious. So obvious that I'd argue they're politically trapped by repeated demonstrating ability to logistically execute zero covid.
You understand that with globalization, this makes no sense, right? It will return, again and again. Economic impact of always going into lockdown will be insane. Another reason for western companies to become less dependent on China in the long term, massive reduction in productivity in the short term.
Also high IFR viruses usually have high symptoms. Much easier to contain a disease when you can tell people are sick. People feeling sick will also travel and spread less. What made covid so widespread is that it was so mild to so many people. So there is a kind of bell curve of deadliness vs infectiousness. So not really convinced by those argument of what if covid was so much deadlier. You would need a virus with zero symptom while you are infectious, and then that kills you, like an airborne HIV. Anything is possible but with ifs...
Second, the measures allowed most people to move relatively freely and go to discos when we still had blanket lockdowns in the west. The idea was to crackdown hard and quickly create green zones were life was possible almost as before. While that means millions of people on lockdown at a given time, it was likely a small fraction of the total population. (I'd like to see actual numbers here but find them hard to come by TBH).
Third, COVID is special as it is one of the few airborne / aerosol-transmitted diseases that you have a good chanche of supressing. The reason is that it shows overdispersion: most people are only slightly contagious, but few people are extremely contagious. (Caveat: I think that was the case with SARS, and with the early SARS-COV-2 variants, but I haven't seen data for Omicron.) This means that contact tracing is extremely effective. Most people will have had contact with the same few spreaders, and if you take them out, you can suppress the virus such that it will die out in a population. Western countries borked that up completely. When the incident numbers were really low, we dropped most measures, but that would have been the opportunity to eradicate it with just 1-2 more weeks of social distancing. Asian countries were much more successful with suppression.
Finally, China is a huge country. Most people move around inside, but rarely leave (its a bit like the US in that regard but much more so). To leave as a Chinese citizen you actually need an exit visa. So the majority of people are not bothered very much by travel restrictions. The comparatively little cross border traffic you can control by just giving everybody mandatory PCR tests. I could imagine the Borders to north Korea, as well as to Laos/Vietnam might be problematic to control, but AFAIK they are pretty closed up now.
So it makes totally sense to them to continue their strict course. I imagine as soon as a good vaccine becomes available there too (maybe a nasal vaccine that can prevent infection and not just severe cases), they will reevaluate.
The fatal flaw of this reasoning is that it lies dormant in animals.
I don't think bats are to blame, nor can this be a "simple matter" of zoonotic spillover.
With the mRNA vaccines and the weaker virus variants, we averted a lot of deaths and the "collapse" of the hospitals in many places. But we are still dealing with many dead, millions of work days lost per year, and many cases of long covid...
How is this determined? A democratic vote....in China? At best, it's tyranny of the majority. The article quoted Xi as saying the people wanted it, but that's not the same thing.
"Videos posted on Chinese social media site Weibo showed people rushing to the park's gates following the announcement but finding them already locked."
It's a great policy to apply to other people. But it seems that they don't want any of it.
From reading scientific papers about the occurrence of complications in people who've had Covid twice, it looks like the virus inflicts long-lasting damage to the body, even if it isn't readily apparent.
People how have Covid twice have a higher rate of complication the second time around (including post-Covid syndrome a.k.a. long covid). There are no reasons to think that people in places where "living with Covid" is a thing really are rotting with it. Vaccines do little to protect against this.
In Europe, the cumulative incidence of confirmed infections is nearing 50% of the population (and ~30% in the US). In China, that number is less than 1%.
Major caveat regarding the reasoning above, the studies were carried before omicron emerged. These variants have fewer complications, not sure how this will compound.
It is possible that the drop in productivity in the US that's been reported this week (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33405389) is in part driven by lower mental acuity or immune system performance. The decline may not be large enough to be noticeable on a day to day basis, yet show up in aggregate measurements.
Xi may be playing the long game here. If the above holds, even if Covid ends up endemic in China after a while, its workers would have an edge on the rest of the world.
————
https://www.researchsquare.com/article/rs-1749502/v1 (it's only a preprint, but third party experts vouch for it: https://edition.cnn.com/2022/07/05/health/covid-reinfection-...)
I've read an earlier paper on the topic, but I can't find it right now.
If you can believe that number. If I had Covid in China I would do everything to keep that a secret.
The drop in productivity is a fake as it is still higher than in 2010 before Covid.
China already has an edge by numbers alone. Total productivity is the main factor here.
> The drop in productivity is a fake as it is still higher than in 2010 before Covid.
Could it be that we made technological progress in the mean time?
The drop definitely isn't fake (https://www.bls.gov/charts/productivity-and-costs/nonfarm-bu..., look at the blue line), and a stark break from a consistent increase in productivity that's been ongoing for decades with few exceptions (https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/labor-productivity-per-ho...).
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2022/10/31/productiv...
This is a typical media filler story. Textual bullshit. Reality was probably too boring again.
The WaPo article only shows the dotted line data from the BLS graph, which is far noisier, but shows two consecutive quarters of decline, which is unusual too.
I had no idea this was openly discussed over there (though I suppose I should have guessed it was).
Exactly the same as what the western world has tried for 2 years, give or take. It doesn’t work either way, but due to their authoritarian government they just have the ability to keep trying for longer.
Frankly I'm surprised that China managed to control Omicron. It's certainly a social-technical feat.
In the end, only time will tell whether the Chinese strategy was a good one for China. Obviously China has paid extreme costs to maintain its policy. It's still unknown what the longer term results to the health of the population will be in other countries will be though.
The fantasy with COVID was that you'd get R<1 for a period of time until there was a vaccine, and then the vaccine would do all of the work keeping R<1. Unfortunately the COVID vaccine doesn't do that. Hopefully some day we will have one that does that.
Now at the beginning, one strategy could have been: get R much lower than 1, and push the disease to near eradication, and then dynamically change anti-covid measures so that R approximately equaled 1, which would entail substantial restrictions, but not a Wuhan or Shanghai style lockdown.
The problem is that riding along at exactly R=1 means any time the seasons change, or there's a new variant, or people's behavior changes, you have to constantly adjust restrictions. Generally it has been shown to be impossible in democracies to get enough people to agree to do this, and it's generally not politically possible to enforce this.
Once the vaccines came out, the hope was always that they would dramatically reduce transmission so that R was much less than 1 and we could treat it like measles, and for a while (mid-2021, pre-Delta) that seemed to be the case, but between waning immunity and Omicron, it turned out that the vaccines were not able to reduce transmission to a great enough degree to make this happen.
Either way the R values theory was never going to work because there was always going to be a big part of the population (animals, people abroad) that can’t be controlled with lockdowns or vaccine mandates. And that also should have been known.
And lastly, R values theories make for nice, easy to explain pop science, but it’s all statistics with all the downsides: the R value that’s on the news is just a number calculated from limited tests, and those tests can be manipulated. And it’s part of a random process; R>1 doesn’t ‘mean flare ups will occur’. It means the chance is higher that the numbers will go up. But they can also randomly go down.
All interesting for pop science and for making models and reports but a lot less useful for political decisionmaking in the real world.
The problem is that this data was gathered with a different version of the virus than we have now, and it was gathered with relatively fresh vaccinations. Even pre-Delta, you could see immunity waning leading to increased transmission in Israel. With Omicron, the efficacy of the vaccines is also much less.
That said, from all the evidence we have, the existing vaccines still do reduce transmission, but not enough to prevent epidemic spread. There are a lot of numbers, because every study has a different population and different ways of measuring, but roughly speaking, being vaccinated cuts your risk of contracting and transmitting COVID by something on the order of 50%. That's a lot better than nothing, but COVID is so contagious that it's not enough.
The "R values theory" is perfectly reasonable and almost tautologically correct, and works regardless of an animal reservoir and imported cases from travel. We have the same issue with imported cases with Measles, but hardly anyone gets Measles, because almost everyone is vaccinated, and the R value in the population is much less than 1. If you import a case, that case infects less than 1 person on average, who infects less than 1 person on average, etc, until it dies out. R<<1 doesn't mean you have no cases, it just means that it's self limiting. If you import say, 100 cases a year, maybe that leads to 50 or 100 locally acquired cases total, but for the average person, you don't really have to worry about it. The exception is communities with low vaccination rates. You sometimes see Measles pop up still in the U.S. in religious communities, etc, because R for Measles in those communities is greater than 1 due to the lack of vaccination.
It would be great if COVID and COVID vaccines were like Measles, but unfortunately the vaccine isn't yet good enough.
At this point, it is about the appearance of taking action so that the policy decisions of Xi Jinping's government seem correct, not about doing what's effective for the overall health of the system which includes all of the governed in all the variety of their activities and pursuits.
The divestment of China has more reasons than just COVID:
- Wages in China have risen to a point where other countries have an advantage because unchecked capitalism always optimizes for "inefficiency", and labor costs are an immense factor for these extremely large operations
- Western sanctions against China have increased, to a point where Western customers cannot be sure they are not the next ones caught in the crossfire
- China itself has drifted away from their weird "communism plus capitalism with some personal liberty" hybrid under Xi Jinping, who has pretty much cleansed the party of everyone not lined up with his ideology over the last years, additionally large investors have been penalized by the Party in various degrees (e.g. Jack Ma). Foreign investors do not like the prospect of their investment being seized at will by the Party as well, and not everyone can afford the level of influence ultra-corporations like BASF or VW have on their local governments to protect them to some degree from such actions.
- China's internal economy is collapsing as well, adding further insecurity for foreign investors
- Many are scared of the possibility of China snacking themselves off a piece or the whole of Taiwan. The US have a long-standing commitment to defend Taiwan, so it is crystal clear that any such attempt would lead to a full-blown war with all associated costs. Unfortunately, as we've seen with Putin, individual idiocy of dictators can be enough to override common sense.
> Lockdown may be a temporary solution. The long-term solution is to maintain better hygiene (masks, washing hands) and get the vaccine without turning into political drama all over Twitter.
Agreed. The problem with China's COVID policy, however, is not antivaxxers on Twitter - it is that the Chinese vaccines are absolute trash compared to Western vaccines, but Xi Jinping can't really backtrack on his decision to only use domestic vaccines because that would imply he, the half-god, has made an error in judgement.
The Chinese vaccine was the first vaccine out; and in particular the mRNA vaccine technology was new and unproven. There would be no shame in saying, "We can be proud that Sinovac was the first vaccine approved; it saved millions of lives and allowed us to go back to normal long before anyone else. But now, in the light of the new, more virulent strains of COVID (created in part by decision of the rest of the world not to implement coordinated lockdown strategies), and in the light of the extensive testing of the new mRNA vaccine technology, it makes sense to move on."
At least, there shouldn't be any shame in saying something like that; the shame is only in he heads of the CCP.
This is the political equivalent of a comb-over. People wearing a comb-over look in the mirror and convince themselves that it looks better than just being bald; whereas everyone else can already see that they're bald, and disrespect them more for refusing to accept the fact than they would just pure baldness.
China can't be that absurd can they? That just seems totally crazy to me.
Also China's vaccine isn't that bad, really. And it'd probably be pretty solid with a single MRNA booster.
It absolutely is, particularly against Omicron and its successors [1].
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/729f1dc0-32d1-42c9-bb62-63a41f1e8...
If they want to limit demonstrations and get even more power over the people, lockdowns and not allowing mRNA based vaccines inside the country is a great tool.
Now find me the exact Chinese legal doc that bans Winnie the Pooh.
Edit: A chinese resident confirmed that two links into the Quora page linked to above. Quora insists on Facebook or Google for me, so no linking.
They want to avoid that the Dear Leader (who went all in on a massively restrictive Covid policy and took full credit for it) loses face.
Jinping isn't pulling the strings. Mouse Tse-Tung is behind this.
https://www.gavi.org/vaccineswork/how-important-are-surfaces...
Are you sure Taiwan, South Korea and Hong Kong fit on that list?
The default talking point and narrative is that even if masks were only 0.1% effective that tiny effect exponentially compounds and over time and leads to <insert massive number here> lives saved.
Then you have Pakistan where no measures are taken yet the there is no exponential spiraling out of control
The vaccine that doesn't stop you from getting it.
Universal masking is actually embarrassingly ineffective.
Properly worn PPE ( like done in hospitals, takes 10 minutes to put on and will leave a mark on your face ) and Hazmats work pretty well though.
The shitty disposable surgical mask from slave labourers in india that you have kept in your pocket for 6 months does fuck all.
What a surprise. You might be right, but the onus is on you to provide evidence if you are challenging the status quo.
Then in 2020 hysteria broke out, most scientists got scared shtless and you could only publish papers that indicate that masks work even though all the empirical evidence around us show that they don't.
If anything shows how short term scientific consensus is trivially falsifiable as it depends on few influential people.
Good luck trying to get a NIH grant with the hypothesis that masks might no be effective ... It is a no-go hypothesis from the start.
Same with zoonotic vs lab origin.
Can we please drop this from COVID discussions? COVID isn’t spread by touch. That was apparent early on, but a lot of energy and resources were still diverted from “things that work” to a cleaning fetish.
Their post wasn't only about covid.
COVID's primary means of infection certainly isn't touch, but that doesn't preclude getting the droplets on your hands and introducing them by touching your face.
so the whole touching your face is a red herring
I am sure you and I and everyone else, has lots of things on their faces at all times
At that point, it seems kind of obvious that washing your hands reduces disease. But for cultures that have more "advanced" bathroom ritual, is hand washing beyond cleaning literal shit off your hands actually effective? I can't imagine that a person could dedicate enough time to hand washing versus the amount of times they touch things and their faces, to make it a practice with good enough adherence rates to be considered useful policy.
I believe it's been shown extensively in military studies as a means to reducing respiratory illnesses.
So there's an outbreak, but yeah let's let everyone squish onto the rides together.
On the other side, in some parts of Europe there's a discussion to let the infected go to work (even with symptoms and of course, if one's feeling capable of work) - but, still, go to work with other infected/work with infected.
I can understand that with so high density in people even one infection can lead to big massive spreads and thus to overloaded capacity of local hospitals in less than 48h - but, it's too much. I don't have a suggestion how to handle that either. The Best would be everyone just stick a few weeks to the measures and diminish the countless spots to a few controllable one's. If that would be possible, we would not only reduce the cases, but also slowly minimize the spreading. May be 1-2 months, everything wouldn't be a problem any more..
Nike: just do it :)
Isn’t that what China has been attempting for months, rather unsuccessfully?
Regimes lock up particular people when particular people are a threat. They may lock people up unnecessarily just to err on the side of caution. But if they overdo it it can backfire. So far the main reason I hear from Chinese people to criticize Xi and the CCP is mostly about COVID and lockdowns, and never for any of the reasons westerners point the finger against the regime
If you had to choose between a 1% risk of being crippled by COVID, or a 100% risk of living under the strictest lockdown measures your country had for the rest of your life, what would you choose? And the actual risk of long-term consequences is lower.
I live in Europe, the "infected" have gone to work since this February just fine. I mean, those that didn't call in sick days out of their own volition.
Mr. Bones wild ride is real! https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/rhs54/one_does_not_...
It's a little frustrating, because a bit of painless extra caution now could help avoid something stronger down the line :-/
And of course, all those deaths are horrible, and I feel that pain when I contemplate that for a second. But in my day to day life, I don't see why I'd need to change my behavior.
I am a bit worried about the effects of long Covid for people, but IMO I feel like I need to choose the lesser between two evils which is:
1. Do I lock myself down for 2 years, and fight preventing long Covid and 2% deaths population wide?
2. Do I lock myself down for 5 years, and fight preventing reduced long Covid and 0.15% deaths population wide?
The choices are written down simplified. If you think that there's hindsight bias, there's some but a lot less than you think. I was 2 to 3 weeks ahead of the Dutch government at any point in time. I've been able to protect all the people I care about. For example, my grandparents/parents never caught Covid when there was no vaccine (I was tracking Covid since mid Feb 2022 as a potential threat and constantly ran the probabilities). I'm not even sure if my grandparents ever caught it.
[1] coronadashboard.rijksoverheid.nl
Just look at the RIVM site. It's probably higher than you specified, closer to 6-7k average per year, with massive differences.
> on average 5 people are dying per day (1825 per year)
This is a bit of a dishonest comparison. You're looking at the numbers from before the expected peak, since it's still incredibly warm in the Netherlands right now and peaks seem to happen when it gets colder. So it'll probably be closer to 4000 per year.
While that still seems less than the flu, it's important to realize that the most vulnerable people are now getting vaccinated multiple times a year for covid. A lot of people who never got a flu shot are also being vaccinated. Then there's the fact that a lot of people are still distancing more than they used to. There's more work from home, many people still stay home when they have covid, while in the past, many people prided themselves for going to work with the flu.
It's really hard to compare historic flu statistics with current covid statistics, because the way we handle covid is still very different from how we used to handle the flu. Therefore your conclusion is misguided.
Now I really don't care whether you care about covid, but at lease the interpretation of the statistics should be correct and you missed a ton of details.
It was never as high as 2% in the first place. The numbers were inflated because we didn't have enough tests to go around, so only the people who we were already pretty sure were infected were tested.
Personal observation ( which contracts established 'science' ). There were always some 'long' aspects of all diseases including for colds/coughs/flu/tuberculosis etc. Nothing special with 'covid'.
Discussions? It's already a thing at least here in Lithuania. Unless you're seriously ill with side effects, you're good to go.
And how is that bad for Chinese gov? That's exactly what the gov wants - total control over peoples lives, over crossborder flow, but the main reason are health codes allowing total control over population. XJP literally wants his China be NoKo 2.0, COVID was just extremely good excuse, if COVID leaked from Chinese lab I would not be suprised if this was the their goal - introducing COVID zero strategy to have control over whole population under pretense of fighting the virus.
Meanwhile my family can't really come to visit abroad (and they are the lucky ones having passports, good lucking getting new passports and being allowed to travel abroad for pleasure), we could in theory visit China but it's too troublesome and risky under these conditions.
https://apcoworldwide.com/blog/xi-jinpings-new-era-of-global...
"Leading the world in science and technology" means "having more advanced science and technology than the rest of the world"; and even "providing a model" means, "letting people copy it if they feel like it". That's all completely about China.
When people talking about the US leading the world, it's more about guidance and influence over coordinated action; NATO, climate change, IMF, WHO, etc. That's something China as a country has never been particularly interested in.
Imagine, for instance, China trying to arrange sanctions in response to something. They're not even close to having that kind of influence, and they're not particularly trying.
Obviously there's a need for a small portion of pioneers. But should society aim for mass creativity or just highlight those who cannot not create.
From another news source (CBS):
"The park closed Monday for testing of staff and visitors, Walt Disney Co. and the government said in separate statements. The city health bureau said guests all tested negative and were allowed to leave by 8:30 p.m., but one visitor from elsewhere in China told the Reuters news agency she didn't make it out until 10 p.m.".
https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/shanghai-disneyland-closed-...
Covid will always be around, but with effective vaccines it’ll be more an annoyance than a serious disease.
Right now China is treating each case like they did before vaccines.
Clearly once restrictions will relax, Covid will spike. At least if they hope to have any normal sort of relationship with the outside world.
So what then? Ignore it? Just one day say “infections don’t matter”?
It’s odd.
Protecting the government image is paramount in totalitarianism.
Last report is that everyone left by 10:30pm [0]
Don't get me wrong however, I would not appreciate being stuck in such circumstances for multiple hours.
[0] https://www.scmp.com/video/coronavirus/3197996/thousands-stu... (video timestamp: 0:50)
That certainly sounds hectic, but this feels like clickbait. Being delayed by a few hours is pretty typical anywhere you may go with unforeseen circumstances.
Being locked inside disneyland is one of those situations you envision?
> However, those awaiting their freedom at Shanghai Disney can console themselves with one positive: rides are continuing to operate for those trapped inside The Happiest Place on Earth.
A friend of mine worked in China for many years, but after several months of being locked in their apartment block and tested every 72 hours they chose to leave China.
I honestly couldn't imagine people in the West putting up with that, however I'm yet to fully understand why Chinese people continue to suffer the rules without riot.
https://www.thestatesman.com/world/tibetans-march-on-streets... (note that the protestors are by and large Chinese, not Tibetan)
Of the remaining privileged minority, many are choosing to GTFO.
Edit: the ellipses are because there are other possible outcomes, just that.
I am not blaming the Chinese people. I am blaming the present (well, last 70 years at least) mode of government.
Read Soljenitsin or Ginzburg or Nadiezda Mandelstam and you wil see what totalitarian Communism is capable of.
More edit: I would be totally scared as well, by the way.
Was the French Ancient Regime a liberal government letting people choose their lawyers?
Was the French Revolution bloodless?
I can also see those people struggling to understand the American style of fierce individualism that creates so much pain and interpersonal conflict for seemingly little gain.
I can also see those people struggling to understand the American style of fierce individualism that creates so much pain and interpersonal conflict for seemingly little gain.
Fierce individualism in some aspect, maybe. But don't forget that the state is extremely powerful in enforcing and reinforcing certain patterns of living.
They do not riot, because they, too, understand, that the capacity of hospitals is quite low comparable to the density of people.
The other points: You can't just leave the country without being a foreigner. Chinese people need a Visa for the countries they want to enter.
The social score / if you participate in riots, you for sure will get identified.
The fear being hurt.
No other possibility, because the Chinese officials are really hard in that terms and they don't care if one get hurt.
No other possibility, because the doors are locked by the officials. No one can go to riot.
They use an app to track one's location and track whether one's in "red area". If so, you lose. Everyone have this app. Without app you can't even buy things on the market.
And of course, the CCP. They have a high membership rate. You can't do some jobs like teacher/professor without being a CCP member. So, they're full on the line of party, because they really believe in that. My exgirlfriend entered the party on her 18th, because her father was a doctor at a military hospital. Being a non member gives you some disadvantages in some parts of live (indirectly, but there are some).
So, you have to speak the language (me do) and have to have lived there for a while (me did) to understand why they're doing it and why they're is not much withstanding of the people.
One of my girlfriends (haha) just arrived two weeks ago in europe. She says it's crazy over there. No end of the 0-covid in sight... Her flight was cancelled 8h before flight because of lockdown of the airport. She had to rebuy the tickets, go to Shanghai and start off there.. But she does not criticize or get angry when talking about this. Her family is still there. She is just happy to be in Europe, because of me and main purpose studying - not because of the measures.
But, yes. It's crazy.
Maybe it's just something about being an American, but even while I was in the Army I had a "fuck you" attitude about most everything that the brass (i.e. the leadership, if "brass" doesn't translate) made us do. Now that I'm a "civilian" again I still retain this attitude. A lot of important business leaders do too. I'm not really sure if this is a feature of American culture or not, but it's certainly a truism that has existed for a loooooong time.
If you're blasted with propaganda constantly, if the means and mode of productions are set up in a certain way which encourages certain behaviour, it becomes very difficult for people to even realise there are other possibilities.
This is a feature of every society, including in the West. We have a strong individualist "fuck you, I've got mine" tendency, but just like China and Russia, there is a large portion of the population that also lauds the people who exploit us because they are seen as something to aspire to.
Don't get me wrong, I'd rather live in the West, but personally I see many similarities when you look at the life of an average person.
I agree with this point:
> We have a strong individualist "fuck you, I've got mine" tendency, but just like China and Russia, there is a large portion of the population that also lauds the people who exploit us because they are seen as something to aspire to.
There's a problem when "fuck you" is taken to scale and is the operative means for running a government. It's a hard problem to solve, since I want a responsible and competent republic to maintain a reserve of "fuck you" people because, and let's be honest here, they're the ones who fight wars.
The consequences are where the biggest difference lie. Look what happened to Jintao a week ago. You are truly never safe issuing criticism in China.
You can have some immigrant like Elon Musk tweet insults to the president and people complain but nothing happens. You can have companies create new businesses directly in violation of laws (Uber, AirBnB). There are very few sacred cows and we tend to root for the underdog.
From living in Asia, deference plays a big role in social relations - deference to parents, deference to elders and definitely deference to authority/government. And it’s often not for a rational reason but just because “you should respect your elders”.
I hear lots of people say it’s “well they are more group oriented and think about what’s best for everyone” but one look at the piles of trash randomly dropped or people shoving to the front of lines makes me think it’s not that.
It’s more of acceptance that what the government says is how it will be. They’ll bitch about it, happily break rules if they can get away with it, but if the government comes in and says “dont do that or you’ll be punished” they won’t push back and will defer to the governments authority.
Main reason is family first. The ccp will threaten your loved ones, if you do not comply. And family is all you got to rely on, as social network, as thrustworthy people, as pension plan, as everything in a culture optimized to pitch man vs man.
Its a mob, threatening the citizens. All the cultural factors amplify the mobs power, and no nobody believes the texts of the ccp. Its just that the don is always right.
You can't study at a university without your membership card. Just in case why you wondered why everybody you meet is a CCP member.
But all the other schools run by privates, it's not an big issue.
:)
Xi said that they will end lockdowns in 2024, the same year they will come out with their MRNA vaccines. I dont know why they arent buying western vaccines though. Trade restrictions? Xi's pride?
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fosun_International
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pfizer%E2%80%93BioNTech_COVID%...
The biggest COVID problem in Hong Kong (and also to a large extend in China) I gather is that the vaccination rate among the elderly was the lowest, which is a reversal from most other countries. That creates huge problems for hospitals, as the elderly are massively over-represented in COVID hospitalisations. It's not completely known why the elderly vaccination rate is relatively low, but I suspect misinformation and conspiracy stories (which proliferate just as much on the Chinese social media platforms as here on Facebook) is a significant contributor.
2 reasons.
1) Because while they bought MRNA vaccines for themselves (top CCP officials) they want their own local made vaccines to appear good. In China when you have vaccines for kids and such, people who have money pay to use western versions of the vaccines, while those who can't afford use the free local ones. This is mainly due to the issues with fake vaccines in the past.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/23/world/asia/china-vaccines...
2) Xi and the CCP are trying to save face, they cannot admit to the number of cases, deaths, or that zero covid is hurting the economy and failing spectacularly. They have spent 3 years trying to convince the world they were right and that they are the success story while everyone else is a failure.
Internally they have the benefit of controlling 100% of the media so they can control the narrative. But videos and such leak out of China and those can't be scrubbed, they rely on the spreading of their own propaganda on Twitter and Youtube to discredit anyone who talks negatively about China. Any video that shows a door being welded shut with people inside, or a person being put in a box, or dogs being killed in the streets, this is all "western propaganda". It sucks that the CCP giving China a bad name when majority of people there just want to live their lives and are good people.
Xi's project was Xiongan New Area and its an epic failure. Essentially his baby, is slowly being swept under the rug and pretending it doesn't exist. Since 100% of the media in China is state owned and controlled, when things fail like this they just pretend its either going well or it never happened.
Had a co-worker who also moved back to Singapore after spending many years living in Shanghai. They gave her 4 eggs and a bag of lettuce to last for 1 week, thankfully the apartment block she lived in had a person sneak in every few days with groceries for the building because the local authories didn't care. Being woken up at 5am daily for mandatory testing.
A demonstration risks not only destabilision of this myth, it risks bloodshed and massacres because stability was won after so much pain.
To be Chinese in a certain way is to work against chaos. As much as to be British is to maintain the dignity of individual persons.
It's kind of hard to find a western equivalent which uses the hard lessons of history. Maybe something like the rule of law?
The government here even outwardly admitted that there was no scientific proof or support for curfews, and yet nothing happened, and they just got re-elected a month ago with a crushing majority.
It's patently obviously with Covid quickly becoming or already endemic in the rest of the world that these outbreaks will continue, and likely grow, in China. So are they using this policy just as a tool to show the control they have? At some point of there is enough damage to the economy and damage to individuals that it only increases the likelihood of large scale social unrest.
Malicious compliance of people implementing the programs.
Ruining Chi's legacy.
Normalization for a more authoritarian shift.
Fear of losing a tool that prevents movement (IE lockdowns have been pivotal to prevent banking theft protests).
It won't be one thing. And someone posting here won't have the best insights, and access.
The Store is Closed.