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With the major outbreak in COVID-19 in China right now, I think there will be massive lockdowns coming. That bodes poorly for the economic outlook for that coun

With the major outbreak in COVID-19 in China right now, I think there will be massive lockdowns coming. That bodes poorly for the economic outlook for that country. It is truly incredible they are still locking down for a disease that, when vaccinated for, is far less deadly or harmful than the flu.

redisman 5y ago
It’s interesting how the totalitarian crackdown worked so well for the first two years but now the dirty free societies have everyone immunized by infections. As for China - I’m not sure they can crack down on omnicron as well since it’s so much more infectious and they can’t afford anymore economic shutdowns. Hong Kong already seems to have given up and following the rest of the world
- CyanBird 5y ago
  > dirty free societies have everyone immunized by infections They don't, they really don't, they just stopped caring about people dying
  - riffraff 5y ago
    Not really, for example we had people dying in droves last winter in Italy, the numbers this time were much lower, even with less harsh measures, and the expectation is the I'll be lower still going forward.
  - celticninja 5y ago
    That's not true. We have vaccines now, that's the only solution, lockdowns were necessary until we had vaccines. We can't be expected to stay in lockdown for ever, covid will not go away, the best weapon we have is vaccination and a level of personal responsibility to stay home if you are ill (doesn't help with asymptomatic transmission). We didn't stop caring, we just aren't going to sit in our houses for another few years for no appreciable benefit.
  - cf141q5325 5y ago
    Omicron is a lot less lethal then vanilla covid, thats just a reality. We started the pandemic with the threat of every 10th infected needing supplementary oxygen and the number of patients needing hospitalization went down with every mutation. By now the risk is a lot closer to the flu. You could of course say every death is one too many, but thats not the reality we live in. We do accept quite a lot of deaths as a cost of our daily life. And measures curbing the spread arent free either, they come with a death toll itself. So unless i am missing something here i am calling double standard.
- carom 5y ago
  Did it work well or did China just stop reporting cases?
deutschew 5y ago
Yes it is not covered by the media who is fixated on Ukraine at the moment but Shanghai is under lockdown.
- paganel 5y ago
  > but Shanghai is under lockdown. Damn, I honestly didn't expect to read about this first on HN, you are indeed right, almost everyone seems fixated on the war (for understandable reasons, I would say). I remember posting on this forum 2+ years ago about the Chinese authorities locking down Tianjin and potentially Guangzhou/Shenzen in the South (in early February 2020, I think), I remember a HN-er from Shenzen telling me that things were just fine there. Time does fly fast.
  - deutschew 5y ago
    It's very worrying, the footages coming out of Shanghai reminds me a lot of that, and I recall that's when we had huge outbreaks that lead to the March 2020 financial dip. We are seeing a huge rise in covid detected in wastewater in SV offices who have more people returning to office now that the pandemic is suddenly over. Even more worrying is this war causing myopia. All of our attention is glued to Ukraine and we are completely discounting the risk. This is chaos.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago
I feel bad for China. China has done everything in its power to stop COVID only the rest of the world to drop the ball. China has been blamed for origin of COVID even though WHO investigations found that COVID didn't originate in China. It's like China is in no-win situation, despite doing the right thing, because of propaganda spread by racist right wing politicians.
- celticninja 5y ago
  What WHO investigation said it didn't originate in China? China have not allowed a proper investigation to take place i.e by people from outside of China. China originally tried to cover up the extent of the problem so I don't trust China to investigate China. China dropped the ball here, there is no reason they aren't in the same stage as the rest of the world, other than their own decisions. As an autocratic state they can lock down apartment blocks and just stop people moving around and people can't do anything about it. It has ended up being the reason they still need to lockdown now.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Animals spread Covid. Was anyone expecting the world to wait for every animal to be vaccinated as well? Lockdowns are a delay strategy until vaccines are available.
dirtyid 5y ago
> far less deadly or harmful than the flu % of severe cases even after vax is enough to overwhelm PRC medical system, especially in less developed regions, leading to potentially millions of death considering size PRC population and gen pop lack of exposure. Covid-zero is still preferable if it can be maintained, vaccines (including mRNA) have completely failed to contain spread of omicron, which doesn't leave many options except waiting for an even less deadly variant + mass produce and distribute treatment drugs to take pressure off medical system. I'm guessing this is omicron catching up / experimenting with dynamic-zero now that Two Sessions is over.

redisman 5y ago

It’s interesting how the totalitarian crackdown worked so well for the first two years but now the dirty free societies have everyone immunized by infections. As for China - I’m not sure they can crack down on omnicron as well since it’s so much more infectious and they can’t afford anymore economic shutdowns. Hong Kong already seems to have given up and following the rest of the world

CyanBird 5y ago
> dirty free societies have everyone immunized by infections They don't, they really don't, they just stopped caring about people dying
- riffraff 5y ago
  Not really, for example we had people dying in droves last winter in Italy, the numbers this time were much lower, even with less harsh measures, and the expectation is the I'll be lower still going forward.
- celticninja 5y ago
  That's not true. We have vaccines now, that's the only solution, lockdowns were necessary until we had vaccines. We can't be expected to stay in lockdown for ever, covid will not go away, the best weapon we have is vaccination and a level of personal responsibility to stay home if you are ill (doesn't help with asymptomatic transmission). We didn't stop caring, we just aren't going to sit in our houses for another few years for no appreciable benefit.
- cf141q5325 5y ago
  Omicron is a lot less lethal then vanilla covid, thats just a reality. We started the pandemic with the threat of every 10th infected needing supplementary oxygen and the number of patients needing hospitalization went down with every mutation. By now the risk is a lot closer to the flu. You could of course say every death is one too many, but thats not the reality we live in. We do accept quite a lot of deaths as a cost of our daily life. And measures curbing the spread arent free either, they come with a death toll itself. So unless i am missing something here i am calling double standard.
carom 5y ago
Did it work well or did China just stop reporting cases?

deutschew 5y ago

Yes it is not covered by the media who is fixated on Ukraine at the moment but Shanghai is under lockdown.

paganel 5y ago
> but Shanghai is under lockdown. Damn, I honestly didn't expect to read about this first on HN, you are indeed right, almost everyone seems fixated on the war (for understandable reasons, I would say). I remember posting on this forum 2+ years ago about the Chinese authorities locking down Tianjin and potentially Guangzhou/Shenzen in the South (in early February 2020, I think), I remember a HN-er from Shenzen telling me that things were just fine there. Time does fly fast.
- deutschew 5y ago
  It's very worrying, the footages coming out of Shanghai reminds me a lot of that, and I recall that's when we had huge outbreaks that lead to the March 2020 financial dip. We are seeing a huge rise in covid detected in wastewater in SV offices who have more people returning to office now that the pandemic is suddenly over. Even more worrying is this war causing myopia. All of our attention is glued to Ukraine and we are completely discounting the risk. This is chaos.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

johndfsgdgdfg 5y ago

I feel bad for China. China has done everything in its power to stop COVID only the rest of the world to drop the ball. China has been blamed for origin of COVID even though WHO investigations found that COVID didn't originate in China. It's like China is in no-win situation, despite doing the right thing, because of propaganda spread by racist right wing politicians.

celticninja 5y ago
What WHO investigation said it didn't originate in China? China have not allowed a proper investigation to take place i.e by people from outside of China. China originally tried to cover up the extent of the problem so I don't trust China to investigate China. China dropped the ball here, there is no reason they aren't in the same stage as the rest of the world, other than their own decisions. As an autocratic state they can lock down apartment blocks and just stop people moving around and people can't do anything about it. It has ended up being the reason they still need to lockdown now.
mensetmanusman 5y ago
Animals spread Covid. Was anyone expecting the world to wait for every animal to be vaccinated as well? Lockdowns are a delay strategy until vaccines are available.

dirtyid 5y ago

> far less deadly or harmful than the flu % of severe cases even after vax is enough to overwhelm PRC medical system, especially in less developed regions, leading to potentially millions of death considering size PRC population and gen pop lack of exposure. Covid-zero is still preferable if it can be maintained, vaccines (including mRNA) have completely failed to contain spread of omicron, which doesn't leave many options except waiting for an even less deadly variant + mass produce and distribute treatment drugs to take pressure off medical system. I'm guessing this is omicron catching up / experimenting with dynamic-zero now that Two Sessions is over.