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If there is no case in your region, then strict measures means life as usual. If you have a case, then you and your contacts need to quarantine. Contact tracing
by captainmuon 5y ago
If there is no case in your region, then strict measures means life as usual. If you have a case, then you and your contacts need to quarantine. Contact tracing is extremely effective for Corona. Also remember that most people don't infect anybody, but few people are very contagious. This is to an extent still true for Omicron.
The calculation for China is: inconvenience a small fraction of people, save thousands of lives - even though Omicron is mild, you can still have complications. And China is huge, so a small probability multiplies. They likely prevent millions of cases of long covid. And keep their economy going, where western countries had losses.
Imagine the opposite question: Should they sacrifice thousands of people, and billions of dollars, so a fraction of a percent don't have to spend two weeks in lockdown? Popular support seems to be completely for the lockdown measures. In fact, I think some of it is really over the top (the hazmat suites, the lockdown hotels, stopping a train mid-route because of a suspected contact...) but they do it because the people demand it, not because it is strictly neccessary.
- user_named 5y agoThis is on point.
- snovv_crash 5y agoThese techniques worked for earlier variants, but Omicron is too virulent. I'm not sure how long it will take for China to realise this.
- easytiger 5y agoGetting a common cold is not dangerous to practically anyone. To assert that suppression of a common cold virus is state sanctioned murder is not appropriate. And a people built by a brutal, and frankly evil, regime are not the best arbiters of rational response to totalitariansim.
- DiogenesKynikos 5y agoThis "common cold" has already killed over 100k people in the US since New Years Day.
- easytiger 5y agoNo it hasn't
- DiogenesKynikos 5y agoAnyone can look up the numbers. Cumulative CoVID-19 deaths in the US: * 31 December 2021: 848k * 17 March 2022: 997k That's nearly 150k deaths since New Years. The Omicron wave this winter was extremely deadly, but people have gotten used to a high level of death and the public messaging in the US has been that Omicron is mild / the pandemic is basically over.
- easytiger 5y agoWith or in the proximity of, not of. Numbers are vastly inflated incidental admissions conflation
- DiogenesKynikos 5y agoNo, of, and these numbers are very likely to be underestimates. Excess mortality studies generally show larger death tolls than recorded CoVID-19 deaths. US life expectancy has dropped by 2 years because of CoVID-19, which is completely unprecedented in the post-WWII era.
- makomk 5y agoThis calculation would make sense if they could keep cases restricted to limited regions and then stamp them out, which seemed to work with earlier variants according to official reports. It hasn't been working with Omicron: the cases are appearing everywhere in the country, they're struggling to stamp them out even with strict lockdowns, and by the time they start to lock down the virus has already spread to people outside the lockdown zone, probably several steps away from anyone who's been in it.