19 ms·

The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

268 points by ilamont 5y ago

memish 5y ago
Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?
- mpfundstein 5y ago
  because failure is not an option for regimes like the CCP.
- dougmwne 5y ago
  As near I can tell it is an arbitrary decision of an authoritarian government that is too deep into sunk cost to reverse course.
  - xster 5y ago
    What's the sunken cost of this policy?
    - mmcnl 5y ago
      Perhaps afraid that backtracking would be seen as a confirmation of policy error?
    - jackcosgrove 5y ago
      I had heard that Zero COVID is a policy associated with the Xi Jinping camp within the CCP, and not-Zero COVID is associated with his opponents. Backing down from Zero COVID would embolden Xi's opponents.
- ahmedalsudani 5y ago
  - lower natural immunity rates because zero COVID had been successful - lower vaccination rates - vaccine drives prioritized the young and healthy (the idea being they can handle side effects so this seemed like the best way to achieve herd immunity) - the newer strains are super infectious and would overwhelm the healthcare system They don't have a good way out now. They should have used the time they got last year to buy MRNA vaccines, but they did not. The central government has likely given up on zero COVID but are sticking with those policies for now to "flatten the curve" while this wave takes its course.
  - LorenPechtel 5y ago
    Yup. Failure is going to come at a horrendous price--I wouldn't be surprised at a 7-figure death toll. They're desperately clinging to hope even though containment has obviously failed.
  - AJ007 5y ago
    Also they have a vaccine that may not work.
    - ahmedalsudani 5y ago
      It helps prevent infection and temper symptoms but it's not as effective as the mRNA vaccines. Something like 50% vs 90% though that could be old data.
      - lazide 5y ago
        At least one new variant can burn through even double shot vaccinated and boosted in extreme cases. Due to various factors outside of my control, my toddler has now gotten Covid 4 times in the last year (10 months really). Antigen and PCR confirmed. Most recently, a minor window of exposure got my oldest sick (double shot vaccinated), and taking care of both of them eventually got me sick (double shot vaccinated, boosted, AND took care of my toddler in isolation for weeks at a time during his most infectious times the prior 3 times). I’ve had side effects/immune response before obviously, but never tested positive. This time I tested positive. No major adverse symptoms at least, but sick like with a moderate flu for a week+ despite all that is no fun. Folks with no prior exposure and a weaker vaccine? Yikes.
        ahmedalsudani 5y ago
        Ouch! 4 times in a year is crazy! Glad to hear your infection came with no severe symptoms. Being able to come in contact without worrying about being the unlucky person who gets hospitalized is something to be thankful for. The vaccines have been a gift.
      - 5y ago
- diebeforei485 5y ago
  I mean, the US has had a million covid deaths. China presumably doesn't want 3 million deaths?
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    This is the obvious response and I am confused every time I see an article criticizing these lockdowns. They all seem to be written from the American herd immunity point of view, neglecting that we paved the way to herd immunity with the bodies of a million of our own citizens.
    - thereisnospork 5y ago
      The problem is the lack of an endgame. For better or worse, Covid is endemic in Europe and the continental US[0]. All it takes is one false-negative test at the border[1] and a tourist or business traveler could easily create tens of millions of potential infectees (airport -> subway -> secondary city) to requisite additional lockdowns of tens of millions of people. [0]And quite probably large parts of Asia, including countries bordering China if not China itself. [1]Or rogue/lucky virus. I don't recall if it was substantiated, but I believe New Zealand at one point credibly hypothesized an outbreak had resulted from a virus preserved in a frozen food shipment.
      - whimsicalism 5y ago
        [flagged]
        moralestapia 5y ago
        >China's elderly are even worse anti-vaxxers than we are And that's within the scope of their rights, as stated in documents like UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
        throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
        Combined with their refusal to use western vaccines. If your only goal is to protect your citizens then there doesn't seem to be a good rational to make that decision; this situation is at least somewhat political. I'm curious if this will keep occurring during the N months it takes for them to develop and test efficacious mRNA vaccines and deliver them to a significant portion of the population.
- sva_ 5y ago
  I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad. If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. And looking at the fact, that they have this zero COVID policy, that should absolutely terrify anyone believing in the aforementioned hypothesis.
  - extheat 5y ago
    > then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.
    - nomel 5y ago
      > Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause. There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.
  - _dain_ 5y ago
    >If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.
- ComradePhil 5y ago
  Maybe China knows more about the real long term effects of the virus because they have been studying it for a long time?
- gpm 5y ago
  Because it's been working, both from an economics and health perspective, and the locals seem to be in support of it, except for in Shanghai Here's a well known person in Shenzhen discussing it. Obviously be aware that any source in China can't speak too directly against the government, especially the central government. However I feel rather confident that this thread is a pretty good representation of her actual opinion having read a lot of her tweets on the topic. https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1514818345689776143 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151481834568977614...
  - catchclose8919 5y ago
    "working" ? ...as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future while being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy to an extent that might be more than the price of those lives
    - gpm 5y ago
      > ..as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future I don't get the impression that the people in charge, or the people not-in-charge in China, agree with this assessment. I.e. to quote from the thread > If you're telling Chinese "Omicron can't be beaten" it's a hard sell because the West has been telling us COVID can't be beaten for two years- and most provinces here already have beaten Omicron. ... > being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy As above, to again quote from the thread I linked > Most Chinese have experienced few significant restrictions in the last two years due to COVID-Zero, fast lockdowns, and mass testing done at under 100 cases. The first time we hear about something new being tried- straying from that, it's an unforgivable human rights catastrophy. > We've been basically living a normal life for two years while we watch the rest of the world meltdown in a furnace of exceptionalism, overconfidence, and science denial. It's going to very, very hard to convince Chinese that we're doing it wrong.
    - bllguo 5y ago
      China's policies have kept the global economy afloat. They've been operating for the last two years almost at normal, in stark contrast to the US and company. And what a disgusting comment to make. Yes, how dare they stop producing goods for us to consume! Do you also discuss our obligations to the global economy like this? What is our comeuppance to be for our comically poor COVID policies reducing global demand?
- throwaway73838 5y ago
  Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  - ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
    And it corrupts not only itself, but also the society it commands in general. That's why you had to use a throwaway to post an obvious truth that is guaranteed to trigger karma decrementers.
- dictateawayyyee 5y ago
  Probably the same 3 reasons that seem to drive most authoritarian stay-the-course decisions: * Can't admit the original plan isn't working without appearing weak. * Operating on information corrupted by "compounding optimism" from every level of subordinates. * Repercussions for bad outcomes are unlikely.
- munk-a 5y ago
  I think at this point it's sheer stubbornness and to save face for the administration. I personally believe that Zero Covid was a great strategy right out the gate but it's no longer appropriate since this is clearly a global pandemic... but maybe Xi is afraid of looking wrong in retrospect.
- beefman 5y ago
  Enforcing silly, ineffective policies may serve the same purpose as publishing silly, unpersuasive propaganda, in the sense of this recent article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962199
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  The standard rumor is that the Chinese vaccines do not work as well, either at slowing down the spread or at reducing the severity of the effects, as western vaccines (whether Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, or Oxford/AstraZeneca). So, the feared effects of having most people get it are worse than here. Also, in the US, the CDC estimates that for every 10 people who get it who were confirmed/counted, there were 32 who were not counted. Since many states have had >20% of their population confirmed, that suggests that >85% of many US states have already had Covid-19, vaccinated or not. The ratio of "immunologically naive" in China is probably much higher. Not saying that makes it a sensible or even moral policy, just that's the most likely scenario as to why they are doing it.
  - jpgvm 5y ago
    Yeah combination of several factors. Lower vaccine penetration, lower efficacy, lower hospital capacity per capita. COVID zero is the only moral option, they can't choose the death of millions.
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  Authoritarian regimes benefit from cultivating fear of death and disease in their people, it makes them more manageable... Similar to not allowing regular people to own guns etc. etc. Once you become willing to die, to let others die if needed, and to kill, for freedom or other purposes, you're no longer an "easy to manage sheep" ;)
  - memish 5y ago
    I hadn't thought about it that way. We're seeing some resistance in Shanghai, but not enough to stop it. Even when killing pets and separating children from parents. Lack of grocery deliveries. It's scary.
- gscott 5y ago
  The CCP refuses to import western vaccines. The only option is lock-down because Chinese vaccines are targeted to the original covid-19 strain. There are media reports that China is close to their own mRNA vaccine...
partido3619463 5y ago
Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.
- Retric 5y ago
  Plenty of studies showed lockdowns worked. The long term impact on COVID in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations has eroded how deadly people perceive COVID. Estimates vary especially around secondary effects like hospitals being overcrowded, but cumulatively lockdowns in the US saved in the low millions of lives. “The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.” However, don’t take my or anyone else’s word for it. The research is publicly available if you go looking.
  - aaa_aaa 5y ago
    - johnny22 5y ago
      of course lockdowns would be terrible. Who's arguing that they wouldn't be? Few of the supporters of lockdown would argue otherwise. You can of course debate whether they were worth the cost, but if so, be explicit about it.
      - daenz 5y ago
        >worth the cost It depends on how you value life and death. On one end of the spectrum, there are some people who think we should stop everything if it prevents a single death. On the other end, people who think they should be allowed to do whatever they want even if it clearly endangers others. I don't think it's a question that the former extreme won out in most places wrt covid response. The hard truth is that we have to put a price tag on life and death, because no matter what we do, it's going to contribute to someone's death. It's not a popular answer, but it's the only pragmatic one.
somewhereoutth 5y ago
elfgkujgdfljkh 5y ago
- rjbwork 5y ago
  Unfortunately it is difficult to trust anything coming out of the Chinese regime, especially if it has the potential to make them look bad.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    China tried to actively cover up the infection in Wuhan. News got out, doctors posted on social media, video on Reddit showed people dying in the streets. China's great at suppressing protests, but informationally they're still porous. If millions of Chinese were dying of COVID, we'd know it. If suppressing information about deaths worked as well as you're asserting, they wouldn't have to publicly lock down Shanghai, either.
    - Cookingboy 5y ago
      >China tried to actively cover up the infection in Wuhan. News got out, doctors posted on social media A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Covid timeline showed that to be false. >video on Reddit showed people dying in the streets. That was literally just a drunk guy falling on street. Covid doesn't just make people drop dead while walking on the street lol. America suffered a million Covid deaths and we have zero videos of people just drop dead on the street from it. But I agree with you, you can't cover up an actual pandemic in a country with hundreds of thousands of foreigners living and working there.
      - ceejayoz 5y ago
        > A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Covid timeline showed that to be false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang "Rumors of a deadly SARS outbreak subsequently spread on Chinese social media platforms; Wuhan police summoned and admonished him on 3 January for "making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak."" > That was literally just a drunk guy falling on street. Covid doesn't just make people drop dead while walking on the street lol. Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dead-in-the-street-the-image-that-captures-the-wuhan-coronavirus-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dea... There were a lot of these at the time: https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virus-chilling-videos-wuhan-show-coronavirus-infected-men-women-collapsing-streets-38246 https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virus-chilling-videos-wuhan-sho... One of the defining early characteristics of COVID was shockingly low blood oxygen levels without other symptoms until you pass out. (Asymptomatic hypoxia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062941/) Reddit's what got me to stock up a bit in February, which put me in a good position when shelves got empty in March. > America suffered a million Covid deaths and we have zero videos of people just drop dead on the street from it. We benefited from knowing about the virus by the time it hit here in any significant amount. (We definitely had a few: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/woman-dies-of-covid-on-plane-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/woman-dies-of-covid-on-pla...) Wuhan in January 2020 didn't know mild cold symptoms could turn rapidly into hypoxia and walking pneumonia.
open-source-ux 5y ago
According to this BBC video report, more Shanghai residents are venting their anger and frustration by posting videos on social media. Such videos are normally censored by China's 'Great Firewall'. The BBC website states: "...the sheer volume of the clips has made it difficult for censors to keep up. Many are also being passed around in private group chats, which has made them harder to catch." Shanghai lockdown: How angry netizens test China's 'Great Firewall' (video): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-61102809 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-61102809
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  I know this is a nit, but that is a misrepresentation of what the Great Firewall is (to keep things out of the country) vs. the internal censorship regime that domestic internet services are supposed to provide. In this case, it is the internal censorship apparatus that cannot keep up, not the great firewall failing from letting information in or out of the country.
  - BobbyJo 5y ago
    I think the term 'Great Firewall' has become a colloquialism for the compute resources the CCP uses to further their agenda. They've used the same set of network/compute resources to commit cyber attacks, so thinking of the Great Firewall as only the filter for the outside world gives a false impression of how their systems work and are deployed.
    - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
      But this is not a technological thing...and it isn't CPC driven (rather, private companies are supposed to self censor inside China, via manual inspection or increasingly via AI). The Great Firewall specifically is package filtering technology installed at ISPs with out-of-china links. China can't use it against internal traffic because it would basically shut the internet down completely in the entire country (given its slow performance).
jaqalopes 5y ago
I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit. I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government. Especially galling to me as an American who's seen what we went through in Covid with my country is the claim of "zero Covid deaths" in Shanghai during the last few months. That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. If you have Covid and got sent to a quarantine center, yeah you're probably SOL. But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." Shanghai is nothing if not a big city. 26 million is a LOT of people. Your experience of life, even in the best of times, varies greatly by neighborhood, industry, income level, and more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, definitely don't buy the CCP propaganda, but equally don't take the (truly grim) videos all over social media as representative of the whole situation. This crisis is unfolding on a bell curve. That's a lesson anyone, in any country, can take away from this, to better consider and critique their own government's response to future disasters.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  > But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn't filling the gap (maybe if you are lucky, you'll get some pork and bai cai form the gov at your door). So that would suck, if true. I also rather guess experiences differ between richer districts and poorer ones.
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai. I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China. Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.
gyf304 5y ago
We must protect human lives at all costs, even at the cost of human lives. Jokes aside, what we really want to know is that - what are the human lives lost lockdown v.s. no lockdown, maybe also factor in the possible economic downturns. The government did a not-so-good job convincing people that doing a lockdown is indeed better than the alternative - "We ran the numbers, it seems like doing a lockdown at this stage is beneficial" sounds better than doing a lockdown just for the sake of it. And: limiting information to people doesn't help boost confidence.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  I mean, any crunching of the numbers shows that China has effectively averted 3 million dead of their own population due to covid - assuming equal quality of care with the US. I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?
  - ejb999 5y ago
    >>I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation? Yea, they lie - do you have any evidence that China will not try and cover up any stories that make them look bad?
    - rfoo 5y ago
      Yeah, I lie and I'm already a dead man. Thanks to the Hell Express I can even shitpost on HN after I died, so it's not too bad.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - djrogers 5y ago
    Any crunching of what numbers? You and I have no idea how many Chinese people have been infected or died of COVID. As recently as earlier this week the Chinese Gov’t was claiming 130k infections in Shanghai with zero deaths. Are those the numbers you’re trusting, or were you counting the pyres visible on satellite photos from areas that had ‘no COVID’ according to the CCP?
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Even New Zealand, an isolated island, gave up the pretence of of zero covid!
hedgehog 5y ago
While China's approach is heavy-handed it also has saved a lot of lives, even assuming some fudging of the data their death rate is the lowest of any large country. Countries like Japan and Thailand have managed to avert nearly as much death as China with very different approaches so there's a good argument that there are good alternatives. Countries like Sweden, England, or especially the US have done so much worse that they probably shouldn't be trying to give anyone any advice on the topic.
- Dig1t 5y ago
  The CCP is very well known for reporting numbers that make them look good, independent figures don't exist because the CCP wants to control their image. So it's pretty much impossible to trust any statistics on this stuff in China.
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  The only real measure of success is "customer satisfaction", and I'd dare to say that the majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied and some would have preferred even less measures to be taken...
  - alephnan 5y ago
    > majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied Did that include the people who died ?
    - cameronh90 5y ago
      You can't protect lives at all cost. What's the point of living without quality of life? We certainly don't take the zero risk approach with other aspects of living. Just an anecdote, but I know far more people who are struggling with mental health problems as a direct consequence of covid lockdowns (myself included), and it seems practically impossible to get any reasonable mental health help any more. Even private services are overwhelmed. My partner works in the hospital and some days nearly all admissions are mental health, even during the peak of the second and third waves. I certainly wouldn't have wanted a strict China-style internal lockdown, and the more porous western internal lockdowns didn't seem to make a huge difference anyway. If anything seems to have made a difference, it's travel bans and quarantine hotels (despite WHO claims). However, against Omicron, everything seems useless.
jacktribe 5y ago
I've been trying to understand CCP's reasoning for these draconian measures. Even if you haven't seen the Twitter videos showing bags of live cats and dogs being being beaten to death with sticks, the children separated from their parents, the alarms on the doors, the economic numbers, you can tell that this does't make any sense. Some theories: - Strip people of absolutely all rights, make them feel helpless. Later gradually restore some rights so that they feel like they've gained freedoms, but not all. - Keep very low COVID numbers on paper, say the west is unsafe and ban travel, preventing the outflow of money from China to the west. - Crush the economy and nationalize private companies even further than they are now. Perhaps even nationalize foreign companies that operate in China (see Russia).
- LambdaTrain 5y ago
  Or by Occam's razor, I would say the goverment simply screws up (so badly) at their top-down approach at this stage.
- wonnage 5y ago
  The problem is that the reasoning at the top isn't anything near what the drones implementing said policy at the bottom are doing. There's like a hundred layers of people between Xi and the dudes beating dogs. It's like a game of telephone where some medical experts speculate about animal reservoirs, and somebody in the mayor's circle hears about it, and next thing you know they're giving covid tests to chickens. It's the same incentive problem as the Great Leap Forward in the 50s, failure is punished, so if there's even a hint that letting some cats go free will come back to bite you, why take that risk? In some ways China's decision making is actually quite decentralized, in that the sheer mass of bureaucrats making decisions and carrying out actions is incredibly high. The center passes out a generalized order like "lockdown and limit covid spread" and leaves the implementation details to the next level. By the time it gets to your apartment community you're stuck with some uncle/auntie who spent their school years heckling teachers during the cultural revolution trying to make public health decisions. TL;DR when China does something stupid and illogical it's not always because there's a nefarious plan. The system is just broken and causing suffering for no reason.
truthwhisperer 5y ago
Animats 5y ago
Naomi Wu writes on this.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=realsexycyborg&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=realsexycyborg&src=typed_query
- jpgvm 5y ago
  This should be higher, it's the most relevant and reasoned commentary on the subject.
TheGigaChad 5y ago
LambdaTrain 5y ago
One of my family member is living Shanghai who has not taken any vaccine yet due to contraindications. Not to mention that there are millions of elders living in China who are not suitable for taking vaccine. I am very concerned if an authoritative gov aiming for "zero-covid" would push and mandate every citizen to be vaccinated. But I saw all these comments bashing gov on "why lockdown", "why not just take vax", "why not herd immunity" without deeping into questions - which is not much different from "Let them eat cake”.
catchclose8919 5y ago
Covid is endemic now and it was probably obvious from close to the beginning that it would become so. Even if vaccines curb spread a bit and reduce deaths a lot, vaccinated people still get and transmit it. We should focus on iterating vaccines faster, probably making cocktail-mRNA-vaccines with multiple strains and formulas updated every ~6 months, and helping all countries get access to the best vaccines, like open-source mRNA-vaccine tech and all the others that showed promising (compensate patent holders a couple billions etc.) We're so incredibly dogmatic in our thinking with this, just like it took >1 year to figure out that most of the time ventilators don't help (those that can be helped can so with only oxygen), we still have this lingering belief that COVID isn't here to stay. We should accept death as part of life and just iterate faster on things...
natch 5y ago
The urge to exert authority that the author speaks of in the beginning is disturbing. Having seen how they do it in China first hand, I am horrified to imagine the fate that awaits Taiwan if China ever takes over. The pent up (falsely based, imho) anger amongst PRC people toward Taiwan and its friendly people is difficult to overstate. If this (Shanghai) is how they treat their own locals, imagine how they will treat estranged “citizens” who have dared to think they have lived under a better system for all these years.
- onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
  We can already look to Hong Kong for that.
  - natch 5y ago
    I suspect Taiwan is going to be another level. In Hong Kong the transition was planned and executed over a number of years (decades even) with cooperation from most local authorities and evolutionary changes continuing gradually over many years. In Taiwan it could be sudden and brutal. If you've ever seen truly country people from the inner provinces… I mean the most country-bumpkin (土 / "earthy") type of them, not the ones you meet from big cities, and think about how the PLA is partially made up of some of these people, the stories about Russian soldiers entering Ukraine and being amazed to find that regular households have microwaves, blenders, and nutella… start to give a picture of what kind of soldiers will be blanketing Taiwan in the event of a large invasion. It will not be like Hong Kong at all.
catchclose8919 5y ago
...the Chinese seem to ignore the global play here: as Covid is endemic in the rest of the world and variants will keep emerging just like they do for common cold (it's basically just a new addition to the bundle of viruses that give the "common cold", but unfortunately with higher mortality since humans haven't been exposed to it), they'll have to isolate themselves from the rest of the world FOREVER! How about all the people who need to travel internationally often? Let's stop this nonsense and come back to thinking solutions and measures in the "open international borders" context we enjoyed before. A new minor virus shouldn't make us change our ways!
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  For a second I wondered whether this was GPT-3
- somewhereoutth 5y ago
  Except that Covid is not another common cold virus. Even with vaccination, its effects can be at least as severe as the flu - however it is as contagious as the common cold. We are yet to see what repeated infection brings - but given it is inherently a systemic disease, affecting not just the respiratory system but also the vascular system, and the high prevalence of long Covid, it would not be unreasonable to be concerned about serious damage. One thing the pandemic has shown, is that in fact the world carried on mostly fine even when people couldn't travel down the road - let alone to another country. We are changing our ways all the time with each evolution in our society and the environment in which it is situated - something that will become ever more evident as climate change picks up pace.
  - Ericson2314 5y ago
    That is true so far, but remember that pathogens do not intrinsically have fixed disease characteristics. The nature of disease is a contextual matter of both the pathogen and host populations. You have to put on your Hegel hat and really think long and hard about the ramifications of that. Examples: - mRNA vaccinated population + Omicron is not as bad - Without being surrounded by lots of ongoing chicken pox to keep the immune system vigilant, one is more likely to get shingles as a non-old person - Chicken pox and other childhood diseases are much worse if one gets them as an adult. (Shingles is not like getting chicken pox, i.e. the virus for the first time vs reactivated latent virus as an adult.) - Smallpox and other old world diseases were far worse for new world peoples. The point here is, what is COVID-19? and what is SARS-CoV-2? are two distinct questions, and both varying greatly over time. Any fixed atomistic characterization is one hell of a leaky abstraction, and will just lead you astray.
t0bia_s 5y ago
Why? What is CCP covering up? Supply chain crisis? Financial crisis because of sanctions of Russia? What benefits could their totalitarian regime gets from this inhuman policy?

268 points by ilamont 5y ago

Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?

mpfundstein 5y ago
because failure is not an option for regimes like the CCP.
dougmwne 5y ago
As near I can tell it is an arbitrary decision of an authoritarian government that is too deep into sunk cost to reverse course.
- xster 5y ago
  What's the sunken cost of this policy?
  - mmcnl 5y ago
    Perhaps afraid that backtracking would be seen as a confirmation of policy error?
  - jackcosgrove 5y ago
    I had heard that Zero COVID is a policy associated with the Xi Jinping camp within the CCP, and not-Zero COVID is associated with his opponents. Backing down from Zero COVID would embolden Xi's opponents.
ahmedalsudani 5y ago
- lower natural immunity rates because zero COVID had been successful - lower vaccination rates - vaccine drives prioritized the young and healthy (the idea being they can handle side effects so this seemed like the best way to achieve herd immunity) - the newer strains are super infectious and would overwhelm the healthcare system They don't have a good way out now. They should have used the time they got last year to buy MRNA vaccines, but they did not. The central government has likely given up on zero COVID but are sticking with those policies for now to "flatten the curve" while this wave takes its course.
- LorenPechtel 5y ago
  Yup. Failure is going to come at a horrendous price--I wouldn't be surprised at a 7-figure death toll. They're desperately clinging to hope even though containment has obviously failed.
- AJ007 5y ago
  Also they have a vaccine that may not work.
  - ahmedalsudani 5y ago
    It helps prevent infection and temper symptoms but it's not as effective as the mRNA vaccines. Something like 50% vs 90% though that could be old data.
    - lazide 5y ago
      At least one new variant can burn through even double shot vaccinated and boosted in extreme cases. Due to various factors outside of my control, my toddler has now gotten Covid 4 times in the last year (10 months really). Antigen and PCR confirmed. Most recently, a minor window of exposure got my oldest sick (double shot vaccinated), and taking care of both of them eventually got me sick (double shot vaccinated, boosted, AND took care of my toddler in isolation for weeks at a time during his most infectious times the prior 3 times). I’ve had side effects/immune response before obviously, but never tested positive. This time I tested positive. No major adverse symptoms at least, but sick like with a moderate flu for a week+ despite all that is no fun. Folks with no prior exposure and a weaker vaccine? Yikes.
      - ahmedalsudani 5y ago
        Ouch! 4 times in a year is crazy! Glad to hear your infection came with no severe symptoms. Being able to come in contact without worrying about being the unlucky person who gets hospitalized is something to be thankful for. The vaccines have been a gift.
    - 5y ago
diebeforei485 5y ago
I mean, the US has had a million covid deaths. China presumably doesn't want 3 million deaths?
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  This is the obvious response and I am confused every time I see an article criticizing these lockdowns. They all seem to be written from the American herd immunity point of view, neglecting that we paved the way to herd immunity with the bodies of a million of our own citizens.
  - thereisnospork 5y ago
    The problem is the lack of an endgame. For better or worse, Covid is endemic in Europe and the continental US[0]. All it takes is one false-negative test at the border[1] and a tourist or business traveler could easily create tens of millions of potential infectees (airport -> subway -> secondary city) to requisite additional lockdowns of tens of millions of people. [0]And quite probably large parts of Asia, including countries bordering China if not China itself. [1]Or rogue/lucky virus. I don't recall if it was substantiated, but I believe New Zealand at one point credibly hypothesized an outbreak had resulted from a virus preserved in a frozen food shipment.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      [flagged]
      - moralestapia 5y ago
        >China's elderly are even worse anti-vaxxers than we are And that's within the scope of their rights, as stated in documents like UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
      - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
        Combined with their refusal to use western vaccines. If your only goal is to protect your citizens then there doesn't seem to be a good rational to make that decision; this situation is at least somewhat political. I'm curious if this will keep occurring during the N months it takes for them to develop and test efficacious mRNA vaccines and deliver them to a significant portion of the population.
sva_ 5y ago
I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad. If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. And looking at the fact, that they have this zero COVID policy, that should absolutely terrify anyone believing in the aforementioned hypothesis.
- extheat 5y ago
  > then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us Not necessarily true. The lab in question has been known to house coronavirus variants and done bat research. SARS-cov-2 isn't the first coronavirus out of China, remember SARS-cov-1. This is not in dispute. What was in dispute is if it leaked from there or not, or spread naturally outside human error. The proximity of the lab to the first cases, the measures taken there before the known spread of the virus and their attempt to destroy information about it is what leads to speculation. We may never know what actually happened outside anecdotal information without more information from China. Given the low likelihood of it being human engineered though, we should probably still be able to trace how it evolved in nature before spreading to humans. I don't see the correlation between this and the zero-COVID policy. Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause.
  - nomel 5y ago
    > Labs (ethically) work with pathogens all the time, they obviously don't inject viruses into humans without substantial cause. There's a long history that shows this is clearly not how lab leaks work.
- _dain_ 5y ago
  >If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. why would this be the case? any secret informational advantage they had at the start evaporated as soon as it got outside their borders. and today's virus is very different to the OG one they had in the lab before it was (presumably accidentally) leaked.
ComradePhil 5y ago
Maybe China knows more about the real long term effects of the virus because they have been studying it for a long time?
gpm 5y ago
Because it's been working, both from an economics and health perspective, and the locals seem to be in support of it, except for in Shanghai Here's a well known person in Shenzhen discussing it. Obviously be aware that any source in China can't speak too directly against the government, especially the central government. However I feel rather confident that this thread is a pretty good representation of her actual opinion having read a lot of her tweets on the topic. https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/1514818345689776143 https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151481834568977614...
- catchclose8919 5y ago
  "working" ? ...as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future while being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy to an extent that might be more than the price of those lives
  - gpm 5y ago
    > ..as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future I don't get the impression that the people in charge, or the people not-in-charge in China, agree with this assessment. I.e. to quote from the thread > If you're telling Chinese "Omicron can't be beaten" it's a hard sell because the West has been telling us COVID can't be beaten for two years- and most provinces here already have beaten Omicron. ... > being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy As above, to again quote from the thread I linked > Most Chinese have experienced few significant restrictions in the last two years due to COVID-Zero, fast lockdowns, and mass testing done at under 100 cases. The first time we hear about something new being tried- straying from that, it's an unforgivable human rights catastrophy. > We've been basically living a normal life for two years while we watch the rest of the world meltdown in a furnace of exceptionalism, overconfidence, and science denial. It's going to very, very hard to convince Chinese that we're doing it wrong.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    China's policies have kept the global economy afloat. They've been operating for the last two years almost at normal, in stark contrast to the US and company. And what a disgusting comment to make. Yes, how dare they stop producing goods for us to consume! Do you also discuss our obligations to the global economy like this? What is our comeuppance to be for our comically poor COVID policies reducing global demand?
throwaway73838 5y ago
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
- ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
  And it corrupts not only itself, but also the society it commands in general. That's why you had to use a throwaway to post an obvious truth that is guaranteed to trigger karma decrementers.
dictateawayyyee 5y ago
Probably the same 3 reasons that seem to drive most authoritarian stay-the-course decisions: * Can't admit the original plan isn't working without appearing weak. * Operating on information corrupted by "compounding optimism" from every level of subordinates. * Repercussions for bad outcomes are unlikely.
munk-a 5y ago
I think at this point it's sheer stubbornness and to save face for the administration. I personally believe that Zero Covid was a great strategy right out the gate but it's no longer appropriate since this is clearly a global pandemic... but maybe Xi is afraid of looking wrong in retrospect.
beefman 5y ago
Enforcing silly, ineffective policies may serve the same purpose as publishing silly, unpersuasive propaganda, in the sense of this recent article: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962199 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30962199
rossdavidh 5y ago
The standard rumor is that the Chinese vaccines do not work as well, either at slowing down the spread or at reducing the severity of the effects, as western vaccines (whether Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, or Oxford/AstraZeneca). So, the feared effects of having most people get it are worse than here. Also, in the US, the CDC estimates that for every 10 people who get it who were confirmed/counted, there were 32 who were not counted. Since many states have had >20% of their population confirmed, that suggests that >85% of many US states have already had Covid-19, vaccinated or not. The ratio of "immunologically naive" in China is probably much higher. Not saying that makes it a sensible or even moral policy, just that's the most likely scenario as to why they are doing it.
- jpgvm 5y ago
  Yeah combination of several factors. Lower vaccine penetration, lower efficacy, lower hospital capacity per capita. COVID zero is the only moral option, they can't choose the death of millions.
catchclose8919 5y ago
Authoritarian regimes benefit from cultivating fear of death and disease in their people, it makes them more manageable... Similar to not allowing regular people to own guns etc. etc. Once you become willing to die, to let others die if needed, and to kill, for freedom or other purposes, you're no longer an "easy to manage sheep" ;)
- memish 5y ago
  I hadn't thought about it that way. We're seeing some resistance in Shanghai, but not enough to stop it. Even when killing pets and separating children from parents. Lack of grocery deliveries. It's scary.
gscott 5y ago
The CCP refuses to import western vaccines. The only option is lock-down because Chinese vaccines are targeted to the original covid-19 strain. There are media reports that China is close to their own mRNA vaccine...

partido3619463 5y ago

Given the other stories posted on this site (universally claiming lockdowns were pointless and no medical reason for them), makes me question whether these stories are representative.

Retric 5y ago
Plenty of studies showed lockdowns worked. The long term impact on COVID in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations has eroded how deadly people perceive COVID. Estimates vary especially around secondary effects like hospitals being overcrowded, but cumulatively lockdowns in the US saved in the low millions of lives. “The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other mitigation in the United States potentially saved more lives (866,350 to 1,711,150) than the number of lives potentially lost (57,922 to 245,055) that were attributable to the economic downturn.” However, don’t take my or anyone else’s word for it. The research is publicly available if you go looking.
- aaa_aaa 5y ago
  - johnny22 5y ago
    of course lockdowns would be terrible. Who's arguing that they wouldn't be? Few of the supporters of lockdown would argue otherwise. You can of course debate whether they were worth the cost, but if so, be explicit about it.
    - daenz 5y ago
      >worth the cost It depends on how you value life and death. On one end of the spectrum, there are some people who think we should stop everything if it prevents a single death. On the other end, people who think they should be allowed to do whatever they want even if it clearly endangers others. I don't think it's a question that the former extreme won out in most places wrt covid response. The hard truth is that we have to put a price tag on life and death, because no matter what we do, it's going to contribute to someone's death. It's not a popular answer, but it's the only pragmatic one.

somewhereoutth 5y ago

elfgkujgdfljkh 5y ago

rjbwork 5y ago
Unfortunately it is difficult to trust anything coming out of the Chinese regime, especially if it has the potential to make them look bad.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  China tried to actively cover up the infection in Wuhan. News got out, doctors posted on social media, video on Reddit showed people dying in the streets. China's great at suppressing protests, but informationally they're still porous. If millions of Chinese were dying of COVID, we'd know it. If suppressing information about deaths worked as well as you're asserting, they wouldn't have to publicly lock down Shanghai, either.
  - Cookingboy 5y ago
    >China tried to actively cover up the infection in Wuhan. News got out, doctors posted on social media A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Covid timeline showed that to be false. >video on Reddit showed people dying in the streets. That was literally just a drunk guy falling on street. Covid doesn't just make people drop dead while walking on the street lol. America suffered a million Covid deaths and we have zero videos of people just drop dead on the street from it. But I agree with you, you can't cover up an actual pandemic in a country with hundreds of thousands of foreigners living and working there.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      > A simple visit to the Wikipedia article on Covid timeline showed that to be false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang "Rumors of a deadly SARS outbreak subsequently spread on Chinese social media platforms; Wuhan police summoned and admonished him on 3 January for "making false comments on the Internet about unconfirmed SARS outbreak."" > That was literally just a drunk guy falling on street. Covid doesn't just make people drop dead while walking on the street lol. Sure. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dead-in-the-street-the-image-that-captures-the-wuhan-coronavirus-crisis https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/31/a-man-lies-dea... There were a lot of these at the time: https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virus-chilling-videos-wuhan-show-coronavirus-infected-men-women-collapsing-streets-38246 https://www.ibtimes.sg/china-virus-chilling-videos-wuhan-sho... One of the defining early characteristics of COVID was shockingly low blood oxygen levels without other symptoms until you pass out. (Asymptomatic hypoxia: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062941/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8062941/) Reddit's what got me to stock up a bit in February, which put me in a good position when shelves got empty in March. > America suffered a million Covid deaths and we have zero videos of people just drop dead on the street from it. We benefited from knowing about the virus by the time it hit here in any significant amount. (We definitely had a few: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/woman-dies-of-covid-on-plane-trnd/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/us/woman-dies-of-covid-on-pla...) Wuhan in January 2020 didn't know mild cold symptoms could turn rapidly into hypoxia and walking pneumonia.

open-source-ux 5y ago

According to this BBC video report, more Shanghai residents are venting their anger and frustration by posting videos on social media. Such videos are normally censored by China's 'Great Firewall'. The BBC website states: "...the sheer volume of the clips has made it difficult for censors to keep up. Many are also being passed around in private group chats, which has made them harder to catch." Shanghai lockdown: How angry netizens test China's 'Great Firewall' (video): https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-61102809 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-asia-china-61102809

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
I know this is a nit, but that is a misrepresentation of what the Great Firewall is (to keep things out of the country) vs. the internal censorship regime that domestic internet services are supposed to provide. In this case, it is the internal censorship apparatus that cannot keep up, not the great firewall failing from letting information in or out of the country.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  I think the term 'Great Firewall' has become a colloquialism for the compute resources the CCP uses to further their agenda. They've used the same set of network/compute resources to commit cyber attacks, so thinking of the Great Firewall as only the filter for the outside world gives a false impression of how their systems work and are deployed.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    But this is not a technological thing...and it isn't CPC driven (rather, private companies are supposed to self censor inside China, via manual inspection or increasingly via AI). The Great Firewall specifically is package filtering technology installed at ISPs with out-of-china links. China can't use it against internal traffic because it would basically shut the internet down completely in the entire country (given its slow performance).

jaqalopes 5y ago

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit. I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government. Especially galling to me as an American who's seen what we went through in Covid with my country is the claim of "zero Covid deaths" in Shanghai during the last few months. That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. If you have Covid and got sent to a quarantine center, yeah you're probably SOL. But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." Shanghai is nothing if not a big city. 26 million is a LOT of people. Your experience of life, even in the best of times, varies greatly by neighborhood, industry, income level, and more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, definitely don't buy the CCP propaganda, but equally don't take the (truly grim) videos all over social media as representative of the whole situation. This crisis is unfolding on a bell curve. That's a lesson anyone, in any country, can take away from this, to better consider and critique their own government's response to future disasters.

seanmcdirmid 5y ago
> But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn't filling the gap (maybe if you are lucky, you'll get some pork and bai cai form the gov at your door). So that would suck, if true. I also rather guess experiences differ between richer districts and poorer ones.
- cryptonector 5y ago
  I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai. I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China. Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

gyf304 5y ago

We must protect human lives at all costs, even at the cost of human lives. Jokes aside, what we really want to know is that - what are the human lives lost lockdown v.s. no lockdown, maybe also factor in the possible economic downturns. The government did a not-so-good job convincing people that doing a lockdown is indeed better than the alternative - "We ran the numbers, it seems like doing a lockdown at this stage is beneficial" sounds better than doing a lockdown just for the sake of it. And: limiting information to people doesn't help boost confidence.

whimsicalism 5y ago
I mean, any crunching of the numbers shows that China has effectively averted 3 million dead of their own population due to covid - assuming equal quality of care with the US. I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?
- ejb999 5y ago
  >>I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation? Yea, they lie - do you have any evidence that China will not try and cover up any stories that make them look bad?
  - rfoo 5y ago
    Yeah, I lie and I'm already a dead man. Thanks to the Hell Express I can even shitpost on HN after I died, so it's not too bad.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- djrogers 5y ago
  Any crunching of what numbers? You and I have no idea how many Chinese people have been infected or died of COVID. As recently as earlier this week the Chinese Gov’t was claiming 130k infections in Shanghai with zero deaths. Are those the numbers you’re trusting, or were you counting the pyres visible on satellite photos from areas that had ‘no COVID’ according to the CCP?

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Even New Zealand, an isolated island, gave up the pretence of of zero covid!

hedgehog 5y ago

While China's approach is heavy-handed it also has saved a lot of lives, even assuming some fudging of the data their death rate is the lowest of any large country. Countries like Japan and Thailand have managed to avert nearly as much death as China with very different approaches so there's a good argument that there are good alternatives. Countries like Sweden, England, or especially the US have done so much worse that they probably shouldn't be trying to give anyone any advice on the topic.

Dig1t 5y ago
The CCP is very well known for reporting numbers that make them look good, independent figures don't exist because the CCP wants to control their image. So it's pretty much impossible to trust any statistics on this stuff in China.
catchclose8919 5y ago
The only real measure of success is "customer satisfaction", and I'd dare to say that the majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied and some would have preferred even less measures to be taken...
- alephnan 5y ago
  > majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied Did that include the people who died ?
  - cameronh90 5y ago
    You can't protect lives at all cost. What's the point of living without quality of life? We certainly don't take the zero risk approach with other aspects of living. Just an anecdote, but I know far more people who are struggling with mental health problems as a direct consequence of covid lockdowns (myself included), and it seems practically impossible to get any reasonable mental health help any more. Even private services are overwhelmed. My partner works in the hospital and some days nearly all admissions are mental health, even during the peak of the second and third waves. I certainly wouldn't have wanted a strict China-style internal lockdown, and the more porous western internal lockdowns didn't seem to make a huge difference anyway. If anything seems to have made a difference, it's travel bans and quarantine hotels (despite WHO claims). However, against Omicron, everything seems useless.

jacktribe 5y ago

I've been trying to understand CCP's reasoning for these draconian measures. Even if you haven't seen the Twitter videos showing bags of live cats and dogs being being beaten to death with sticks, the children separated from their parents, the alarms on the doors, the economic numbers, you can tell that this does't make any sense. Some theories: - Strip people of absolutely all rights, make them feel helpless. Later gradually restore some rights so that they feel like they've gained freedoms, but not all. - Keep very low COVID numbers on paper, say the west is unsafe and ban travel, preventing the outflow of money from China to the west. - Crush the economy and nationalize private companies even further than they are now. Perhaps even nationalize foreign companies that operate in China (see Russia).

LambdaTrain 5y ago
Or by Occam's razor, I would say the goverment simply screws up (so badly) at their top-down approach at this stage.
wonnage 5y ago
The problem is that the reasoning at the top isn't anything near what the drones implementing said policy at the bottom are doing. There's like a hundred layers of people between Xi and the dudes beating dogs. It's like a game of telephone where some medical experts speculate about animal reservoirs, and somebody in the mayor's circle hears about it, and next thing you know they're giving covid tests to chickens. It's the same incentive problem as the Great Leap Forward in the 50s, failure is punished, so if there's even a hint that letting some cats go free will come back to bite you, why take that risk? In some ways China's decision making is actually quite decentralized, in that the sheer mass of bureaucrats making decisions and carrying out actions is incredibly high. The center passes out a generalized order like "lockdown and limit covid spread" and leaves the implementation details to the next level. By the time it gets to your apartment community you're stuck with some uncle/auntie who spent their school years heckling teachers during the cultural revolution trying to make public health decisions. TL;DR when China does something stupid and illogical it's not always because there's a nefarious plan. The system is just broken and causing suffering for no reason.

truthwhisperer 5y ago

Animats 5y ago

Naomi Wu writes on this.[1] [1] https://twitter.com/search?q=realsexycyborg&src=typed_query https://twitter.com/search?q=realsexycyborg&src=typed_query

jpgvm 5y ago
This should be higher, it's the most relevant and reasoned commentary on the subject.

TheGigaChad 5y ago

LambdaTrain 5y ago

One of my family member is living Shanghai who has not taken any vaccine yet due to contraindications. Not to mention that there are millions of elders living in China who are not suitable for taking vaccine. I am very concerned if an authoritative gov aiming for "zero-covid" would push and mandate every citizen to be vaccinated. But I saw all these comments bashing gov on "why lockdown", "why not just take vax", "why not herd immunity" without deeping into questions - which is not much different from "Let them eat cake”.

catchclose8919 5y ago

Covid is endemic now and it was probably obvious from close to the beginning that it would become so. Even if vaccines curb spread a bit and reduce deaths a lot, vaccinated people still get and transmit it. We should focus on iterating vaccines faster, probably making cocktail-mRNA-vaccines with multiple strains and formulas updated every ~6 months, and helping all countries get access to the best vaccines, like open-source mRNA-vaccine tech and all the others that showed promising (compensate patent holders a couple billions etc.) We're so incredibly dogmatic in our thinking with this, just like it took >1 year to figure out that most of the time ventilators don't help (those that can be helped can so with only oxygen), we still have this lingering belief that COVID isn't here to stay. We should accept death as part of life and just iterate faster on things...

natch 5y ago

The urge to exert authority that the author speaks of in the beginning is disturbing. Having seen how they do it in China first hand, I am horrified to imagine the fate that awaits Taiwan if China ever takes over. The pent up (falsely based, imho) anger amongst PRC people toward Taiwan and its friendly people is difficult to overstate. If this (Shanghai) is how they treat their own locals, imagine how they will treat estranged “citizens” who have dared to think they have lived under a better system for all these years.

onlyrealcuzzo 5y ago
We can already look to Hong Kong for that.
- natch 5y ago
  I suspect Taiwan is going to be another level. In Hong Kong the transition was planned and executed over a number of years (decades even) with cooperation from most local authorities and evolutionary changes continuing gradually over many years. In Taiwan it could be sudden and brutal. If you've ever seen truly country people from the inner provinces… I mean the most country-bumpkin (土 / "earthy") type of them, not the ones you meet from big cities, and think about how the PLA is partially made up of some of these people, the stories about Russian soldiers entering Ukraine and being amazed to find that regular households have microwaves, blenders, and nutella… start to give a picture of what kind of soldiers will be blanketing Taiwan in the event of a large invasion. It will not be like Hong Kong at all.

catchclose8919 5y ago

...the Chinese seem to ignore the global play here: as Covid is endemic in the rest of the world and variants will keep emerging just like they do for common cold (it's basically just a new addition to the bundle of viruses that give the "common cold", but unfortunately with higher mortality since humans haven't been exposed to it), they'll have to isolate themselves from the rest of the world FOREVER! How about all the people who need to travel internationally often? Let's stop this nonsense and come back to thinking solutions and measures in the "open international borders" context we enjoyed before. A new minor virus shouldn't make us change our ways!

rmbyrro 5y ago
For a second I wondered whether this was GPT-3
somewhereoutth 5y ago
Except that Covid is not another common cold virus. Even with vaccination, its effects can be at least as severe as the flu - however it is as contagious as the common cold. We are yet to see what repeated infection brings - but given it is inherently a systemic disease, affecting not just the respiratory system but also the vascular system, and the high prevalence of long Covid, it would not be unreasonable to be concerned about serious damage. One thing the pandemic has shown, is that in fact the world carried on mostly fine even when people couldn't travel down the road - let alone to another country. We are changing our ways all the time with each evolution in our society and the environment in which it is situated - something that will become ever more evident as climate change picks up pace.
- Ericson2314 5y ago
  That is true so far, but remember that pathogens do not intrinsically have fixed disease characteristics. The nature of disease is a contextual matter of both the pathogen and host populations. You have to put on your Hegel hat and really think long and hard about the ramifications of that. Examples: - mRNA vaccinated population + Omicron is not as bad - Without being surrounded by lots of ongoing chicken pox to keep the immune system vigilant, one is more likely to get shingles as a non-old person - Chicken pox and other childhood diseases are much worse if one gets them as an adult. (Shingles is not like getting chicken pox, i.e. the virus for the first time vs reactivated latent virus as an adult.) - Smallpox and other old world diseases were far worse for new world peoples. The point here is, what is COVID-19? and what is SARS-CoV-2? are two distinct questions, and both varying greatly over time. Any fixed atomistic characterization is one hell of a leaky abstraction, and will just lead you astray.

t0bia_s 5y ago

Why? What is CCP covering up? Supply chain crisis? Financial crisis because of sanctions of Russia? What benefits could their totalitarian regime gets from this inhuman policy?