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> Spanish Flu epidemic Trying to compare now to >100 years ago is full of all kinds of bad assumptions. Life in 1918 hardly resembles life in 2020 in any disce

> Spanish Flu epidemic Trying to compare now to >100 years ago is full of all kinds of bad assumptions. Life in 1918 hardly resembles life in 2020 in any discernible way. > China had the mother of all lockdowns and is back to robust economic growth Believing this means you have to trust information disseminated by the Chinese Communist Party, which would be a foolish thing to do. They are 100% committed to saving face, not to saving lives.

simonh 6y ago
It’s how it looked to the virus that really matters. Large urban populations, massive global movements of people, no vaccine. I think from an epidemiological point of view it really wasn’t all that different. Was it really all that different in terms of day to day economic contact either? Urban sprawl, shopping centres, industry, trains, trucks, telecommunications, global freight. Businesses losing workers and customers had basically the same problems. Sure the Chinese government can’t be trusted, but there are plenty of foreigners in China these days, including journalists. My wife is Chinese and we’re in almost daily contact with family over there. When it comes to general movements of the population and public or industrial policy these things come out eventually.
- leesalminen 6y ago
  Do you really believe that journalists, of any nationality, in China feel free to express their honest take on this (or any) event that affects how people view the CCP?
  - simonh 6y ago
    Foreign Journalists come and go in China all the time, they’re not locked up in the country permanently. If what you say was true, direct first hand reporting of the Uighur situation would be impossible, yet even that happens. Do you think reporting on factory activity in Guangzhou is that much harder? China has incredibly vibrant industrial reporting, businesses running just in time supply chains and making investment decisions need accurate information. Your just making up excuses and I suspect you know it perfectly well. Well executed lockdowns with high compliance rates work. They did it, it happened and there’s plenty if other evidence too. There’s no refuge left for the lockdowns don’t work brigade except “Laa Laaa I’m not listening”. Where they don’t work it’s precisely because the lockdowns don’t work brigade won’t let them, with low compliance rates.

simonh 6y ago

It’s how it looked to the virus that really matters. Large urban populations, massive global movements of people, no vaccine. I think from an epidemiological point of view it really wasn’t all that different. Was it really all that different in terms of day to day economic contact either? Urban sprawl, shopping centres, industry, trains, trucks, telecommunications, global freight. Businesses losing workers and customers had basically the same problems. Sure the Chinese government can’t be trusted, but there are plenty of foreigners in China these days, including journalists. My wife is Chinese and we’re in almost daily contact with family over there. When it comes to general movements of the population and public or industrial policy these things come out eventually.

leesalminen 6y ago
Do you really believe that journalists, of any nationality, in China feel free to express their honest take on this (or any) event that affects how people view the CCP?
- simonh 6y ago
  Foreign Journalists come and go in China all the time, they’re not locked up in the country permanently. If what you say was true, direct first hand reporting of the Uighur situation would be impossible, yet even that happens. Do you think reporting on factory activity in Guangzhou is that much harder? China has incredibly vibrant industrial reporting, businesses running just in time supply chains and making investment decisions need accurate information. Your just making up excuses and I suspect you know it perfectly well. Well executed lockdowns with high compliance rates work. They did it, it happened and there’s plenty if other evidence too. There’s no refuge left for the lockdowns don’t work brigade except “Laa Laaa I’m not listening”. Where they don’t work it’s precisely because the lockdowns don’t work brigade won’t let them, with low compliance rates.