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> What’s utterly astonishing is what’s going on in Shanghai in spite of this. And ironically, with the case numbers vs. deaths we see there, it seems to strong

> What’s utterly astonishing is what’s going on in Shanghai in spite of this. And ironically, with the case numbers vs. deaths we see there, it seems to strongly support the stance that the crisis is over. 7 deaths for 12k infected is ridiculous. They just cannot change course from zero covid without losing face, this is why they push through with this nonsense.

contravariant 5y ago
What do you find ridiculous about it? For a city with a population of 24 million that sounds pretty alarming to be honest.
- fps_doug 5y ago
  7 in 12k is way less than the rate you'd expect in the overall population. It's 0.5 in 1000 people. The US' overall death rate was 8.8 per 1000 in 2020.
  - contravariant 4y ago
    It's still thousands of potential deaths, and nearing a million for all of China. And that's before taking into account the fact that this will be an underestimation since deaths tend to trail the infection count by something like 2 weeks. Still more alarming than ridiculous in my books.
    - fps_doug 4y ago
      > It's still thousands of potential deaths, and nearing a million for all of China. People die all the time. Every day. Shanghai has 25M people. Let's assume the US's annual death rate of 8.8 per 1000. That's 220k deaths per year, or 4230 deaths per week. Statistically with the current numbers, getting everybody infected would result in less deaths than having no covid at all :o) Sure, we'll only see real deaths with a delay of a few weeks, so that's witless, but as stated in my sibling comment in this thread, Omicron seems not to deliver on this from my personal experiences at all. Having a total lock-down over it seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
      - contravariant 4y ago
        I'm willing to call the Shanghai lock-down ridiculous, because it seems to be doing quite a lot of harm and doesn't serve any kind of realistic end goal. But I am worried about the effectiveness of their vaccines and the rate at which the disease will eventually spread.
  - tharne 4y ago
    You're also assuming that the Chinese government is reporting the numbers accurately and honestly, and that's a big assumption considering how much effort they put into burying the truth about COVID in late 2019 / early 2020.
adrr 5y ago
Deaths trail by weeks so the death count is not reflective of mortality rate.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  Purely anecdotal of course, but currently, covid is rampant here in Germany, at least my region. Everybody and their mom is catching it currently, I had it two weeks ago, most of my colleagues did or currently do. All were vaccinated, nobody went down for longer than 2 or 3 days with a fever, and a few more days to get up to speed again. No loss of sense of smell/taste, nobody short on breath. This is very different from any cases from my circle of acquaintances in 2021/2020, which were way more severe. Also, no more overloaded ICUs here. I guess this is why they're lifting all the restrictions here currently, despite case numbers skyrocketing. This seems to be the norm with Omicron. If Shanghai is just Omicron too, I'd be surprised if a wave of deaths will follow.
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    It's similar here in the UK. 1 in 13 people in the UK had covid last week. And deaths are up, but not more than previous waves where we had far fewer cases. What seems to be somewhat different in China is that between an up-til-now successful zero-covid policy (facilitated by lockdowns) and the less effective Sinovac vaccine, immunity levels are much lower. And I've seen a lot of people suggesting that the milder cases from Omicron are mostly down to existing immunity (either from vaccines or past infection) rather than Omicron being inherently milder (tentative consensus seems to be that it is a bit milder, but not so much as the reduced severity of infections would suggest in absence of other factors).
  - kashunstva 4y ago
    > currently, covid is rampant here in Germany, at least my region It's _probably_ true here in Canada, too; but in our province, if not nationally, they've given up nearly entirely on PCR testing and case tracking. Schools aren't mandated to report absences unless they reach some very high threshold. As a consequence, there aren't any really good ways for an individual to judge their risk.
sremani 4y ago
The billion dollar question is how effective are the Chinese vaccines. The Zero tolerance policy may be a reflection of effectiveness or lack there of, of the Chinese vaccine.
- chrischen 4y ago
  Even the Pfizer vaccine isn’t super effective against Omicron, dropping to 15% by the 25 week mark. The boosters work but then efficacy seems to drop faster after them. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451
  - nicoburns 4y ago
    For Pfizer/Moderna/AstraZeneca, protection against severe disease seems to hold up better however, which may end up being the most important number.
    - chrischen 4y ago
      It's likely whatever vaccine they have has similar effects, but they're going for a zero-Covid strategy so death rate doesn't even matter.
      - nicoburns 4y ago
        My understanding is that that the clinical trials for Sinovac showed ~50% efficacy against the original covid variant vs 70-something percent for AstraZeneca, and 80-something for Pfizer and Moderna, and that efficacy for all of them has decreased as new variants have emerged. While 50% isn't useless it does seem significantly worse than the other vaccines. And frankly if I were Chinese I'd be questioning why China didn't license one of the other vaccines rather than continuing with their less effective homegrown version. My understanding is also that regardless of vaccine used, the Chinese government is still trying to blame outbreaks on foreigners, and as such has prioritised vaccinating people like dock workers and airline staff over their elderly which seems rather questionable at this point. Australia and New Zealand also attempted a zero-covid strategy, which worked well enough until Omicron. But they have both now abandoned this strategy, and I feel like China is going to have to do the same at some point.
tharne 4y ago
The CCP would gladly watch their entire country burn to the ground if it meant saving face.
ellopoppit 4y ago
It's amazing that so many people believe the numbers that the Chinese government has been publishing, considering they have been censoring the truth since the very beginning of the pandemic and arresting people who try to report the truth.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Sure but… there’s no reason to believe China is experiencing a significantly worse pandemic. If they’re lying and it’s just America’s 2021 experience with worse vaccines, that’s not really that bad still. Or at least, it’s not “imprison 24 million people in your wealthiest city for weeks with poor food supply planning” level of bad. For all the tiresome arguments of the cure being worse than the disease, just this once I’ll have bite and say yeah, this cure is WAY worse than the disease.
- fps_doug 4y ago
  It's amazing to me how people resort to these "hurr durr China bad" rhetorics to justify any claim about China. I don't see how the numbers are off besides how they simply couldn't do nearly enough tests by the start of the pandemic in 2020. Zero covid was successful up until Omicron, evidently. While Christmas markets had to close early in Germany because Delta was so bad, you had huge overcrowded markets in Shanghai, with many people not wearing a mask. If anything, we probably have the most statistically significant numbers about infectiousness and ratio of symptomatic:asymptomatic cases because of the totally over the top testing of every possible contact they did whenever even a single case popped up anywhere. If anything, with the current draconian lockdown if they had any incentive to lie, they would have to make it look worse than it actually is to justify it.
  - ellopoppit 4y ago
    >I don't see how the numbers are off besides how they simply couldn't do nearly enough tests by the start of the pandemic in 2020. Look harder. April 19th, 2020. Look at the reported deaths before and after; skyrocking, then straight to zero. Then look at the arrests (on that same day) of activists who had been reporting the coverups and censorship that had been happening since the very beginning. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor... If you dare to know how deep it goes, look at those activists Github page. Use google translate in Chrome.

contravariant 5y ago

What do you find ridiculous about it? For a city with a population of 24 million that sounds pretty alarming to be honest.

fps_doug 5y ago
7 in 12k is way less than the rate you'd expect in the overall population. It's 0.5 in 1000 people. The US' overall death rate was 8.8 per 1000 in 2020.
- contravariant 4y ago
  It's still thousands of potential deaths, and nearing a million for all of China. And that's before taking into account the fact that this will be an underestimation since deaths tend to trail the infection count by something like 2 weeks. Still more alarming than ridiculous in my books.
  - fps_doug 4y ago
    > It's still thousands of potential deaths, and nearing a million for all of China. People die all the time. Every day. Shanghai has 25M people. Let's assume the US's annual death rate of 8.8 per 1000. That's 220k deaths per year, or 4230 deaths per week. Statistically with the current numbers, getting everybody infected would result in less deaths than having no covid at all :o) Sure, we'll only see real deaths with a delay of a few weeks, so that's witless, but as stated in my sibling comment in this thread, Omicron seems not to deliver on this from my personal experiences at all. Having a total lock-down over it seems absolutely ridiculous to me.
    - contravariant 4y ago
      I'm willing to call the Shanghai lock-down ridiculous, because it seems to be doing quite a lot of harm and doesn't serve any kind of realistic end goal. But I am worried about the effectiveness of their vaccines and the rate at which the disease will eventually spread.
- tharne 4y ago
  You're also assuming that the Chinese government is reporting the numbers accurately and honestly, and that's a big assumption considering how much effort they put into burying the truth about COVID in late 2019 / early 2020.

adrr 5y ago

Deaths trail by weeks so the death count is not reflective of mortality rate.

fps_doug 4y ago
Purely anecdotal of course, but currently, covid is rampant here in Germany, at least my region. Everybody and their mom is catching it currently, I had it two weeks ago, most of my colleagues did or currently do. All were vaccinated, nobody went down for longer than 2 or 3 days with a fever, and a few more days to get up to speed again. No loss of sense of smell/taste, nobody short on breath. This is very different from any cases from my circle of acquaintances in 2021/2020, which were way more severe. Also, no more overloaded ICUs here. I guess this is why they're lifting all the restrictions here currently, despite case numbers skyrocketing. This seems to be the norm with Omicron. If Shanghai is just Omicron too, I'd be surprised if a wave of deaths will follow.
- nicoburns 4y ago
  It's similar here in the UK. 1 in 13 people in the UK had covid last week. And deaths are up, but not more than previous waves where we had far fewer cases. What seems to be somewhat different in China is that between an up-til-now successful zero-covid policy (facilitated by lockdowns) and the less effective Sinovac vaccine, immunity levels are much lower. And I've seen a lot of people suggesting that the milder cases from Omicron are mostly down to existing immunity (either from vaccines or past infection) rather than Omicron being inherently milder (tentative consensus seems to be that it is a bit milder, but not so much as the reduced severity of infections would suggest in absence of other factors).
- kashunstva 4y ago
  > currently, covid is rampant here in Germany, at least my region It's _probably_ true here in Canada, too; but in our province, if not nationally, they've given up nearly entirely on PCR testing and case tracking. Schools aren't mandated to report absences unless they reach some very high threshold. As a consequence, there aren't any really good ways for an individual to judge their risk.

sremani 4y ago

The billion dollar question is how effective are the Chinese vaccines. The Zero tolerance policy may be a reflection of effectiveness or lack there of, of the Chinese vaccine.

chrischen 4y ago
Even the Pfizer vaccine isn’t super effective against Omicron, dropping to 15% by the 25 week mark. The boosters work but then efficacy seems to drop faster after them. https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451 https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2119451
- nicoburns 4y ago
  For Pfizer/Moderna/AstraZeneca, protection against severe disease seems to hold up better however, which may end up being the most important number.
  - chrischen 4y ago
    It's likely whatever vaccine they have has similar effects, but they're going for a zero-Covid strategy so death rate doesn't even matter.
    - nicoburns 4y ago
      My understanding is that that the clinical trials for Sinovac showed ~50% efficacy against the original covid variant vs 70-something percent for AstraZeneca, and 80-something for Pfizer and Moderna, and that efficacy for all of them has decreased as new variants have emerged. While 50% isn't useless it does seem significantly worse than the other vaccines. And frankly if I were Chinese I'd be questioning why China didn't license one of the other vaccines rather than continuing with their less effective homegrown version. My understanding is also that regardless of vaccine used, the Chinese government is still trying to blame outbreaks on foreigners, and as such has prioritised vaccinating people like dock workers and airline staff over their elderly which seems rather questionable at this point. Australia and New Zealand also attempted a zero-covid strategy, which worked well enough until Omicron. But they have both now abandoned this strategy, and I feel like China is going to have to do the same at some point.

tharne 4y ago

The CCP would gladly watch their entire country burn to the ground if it meant saving face.

ellopoppit 4y ago

It's amazing that so many people believe the numbers that the Chinese government has been publishing, considering they have been censoring the truth since the very beginning of the pandemic and arresting people who try to report the truth.

oneoff786 4y ago
Sure but… there’s no reason to believe China is experiencing a significantly worse pandemic. If they’re lying and it’s just America’s 2021 experience with worse vaccines, that’s not really that bad still. Or at least, it’s not “imprison 24 million people in your wealthiest city for weeks with poor food supply planning” level of bad. For all the tiresome arguments of the cure being worse than the disease, just this once I’ll have bite and say yeah, this cure is WAY worse than the disease.
fps_doug 4y ago
It's amazing to me how people resort to these "hurr durr China bad" rhetorics to justify any claim about China. I don't see how the numbers are off besides how they simply couldn't do nearly enough tests by the start of the pandemic in 2020. Zero covid was successful up until Omicron, evidently. While Christmas markets had to close early in Germany because Delta was so bad, you had huge overcrowded markets in Shanghai, with many people not wearing a mask. If anything, we probably have the most statistically significant numbers about infectiousness and ratio of symptomatic:asymptomatic cases because of the totally over the top testing of every possible contact they did whenever even a single case popped up anywhere. If anything, with the current draconian lockdown if they had any incentive to lie, they would have to make it look worse than it actually is to justify it.
- ellopoppit 4y ago
  >I don't see how the numbers are off besides how they simply couldn't do nearly enough tests by the start of the pandemic in 2020. Look harder. April 19th, 2020. Look at the reported deaths before and after; skyrocking, then straight to zero. Then look at the arrests (on that same day) of activists who had been reporting the coverups and censorship that had been happening since the very beginning. https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor... If you dare to know how deep it goes, look at those activists Github page. Use google translate in Chrome.