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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 th

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.
  - seanmcdirmid 5y ago
    Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.
    - chiefalchemist 5y ago
      Interesting. A form of the supply chain crisis if you will.
  - jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
    They definitely do not prep in that city. Maybe you can survive a year on a sack of rice and potatoes, if your utilities aren't cut off. But without guns and land, prepping becomes "hiding until the situation hopefully goes away"
    - lampshades 5y ago
      That'd have to be a big fucking sack of rice and potatoes.
    - cmarschner 5y ago
      The body also needs some other nutrients than the carbs you‘d find in potatoes and rice…
      - inglor_cz 5y ago
        Potatoes are actually the better option. IIRC there was a long experiment in pre-war Poland (University of Lwow, now Lviv in Ukraine) to demonstrate that potatoes consumed with milk, sour cream etc., while very being a very monotonous diet, can nevertheless sustain adults without causing them nutritional deficiencies. Of course, you need to be able to tolerate milk, which many East Asians aren't.
- user_named 5y ago
  Correct. I'm in Shanghai.
dougmwne 5y ago
Thank you for your take on this. My reaction is that you are of course right that this is not affecting everyone equally. Certainly the CCP is not starving out all 26 million people in Shanghai. But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  - rrsmtz 5y ago
    "We" didn't kill anybody, they died of a highly transmissible and novel disease for which there was no cure and no vaccine for over a year. There was no possible way that death could have been completely averted. Yes, there were policy choices that could have been made differently, that would have potentially slowed the spread. We implemented many, decided not to implement others, and had a difficult time enforcing the policies we did enact. But using the language of murder when talking this, and arguing using an implied base rate of zero, is hardly good faith.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      > There was no possible way that death could have been averted. Respectfully, I disagree. If there was no possible way to avert it, how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths? The action/omission distinction is for judging who started a fight in a schoolyard, not for judging the actions of nation-states.
      - QuikAccount 5y ago
        I'm not taking a side on whether or not deaths could've been averted but I would be very skeptical of data coming out of China.
        5y ago
dqpb 5y ago
> An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government The inevitable result of centralized control.
- kharak 5y ago
  That is certainly an important factor. I think it goes even deeper. China doesn't recognize human rights as we know them. The collective, represented by state interests (CCP), is above all. Hence any individual right can be sacrificed for the greater good. Aka state interests. And that's why situations like this shutdown in Shanghai can unfold. It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    > It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson. What a bizarre statement. How can you simultaneously think it's a deep philosophical issue and also that there is an obvious solution?
    - kharak 5y ago
      I didn’t say it was obvious? Even in the western world, it’s sometimes contested. Still, the consequences of having and not having human rights have been observed often enough by now. Including in Chinas (recent) history.
      - bllguo 5y ago
        Oh please, spare me. So what did "ample opportunity to learn the lesson" mean? "Observed often enough by now," we don't need to talk any specifics, _obviously_ Western ideals are superior! End of history and all that jazz, huh? I was hoping for more critical thought when you rightly mentioned this to be a "deeply philosophical problem."
        5y ago
godelski 5y ago
> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution when it comes to things like viruses but I think our natural tendency is to believe things are more uniform. Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.
- whimsicalism 5y ago
  > Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. It worked for original SARS, no?
  - godelski 5y ago
    Not really. There's also a lot of differences, like SARS didn't escape to be a global pandemic. I'd say that's a big difference. At this point zero covid is like trying to create a zero flu policy. That's very different from a zero measles policy.
    - whimsicalism 5y ago
      Why? It's worked for them for a few years now and they have successfully mitigated what would have been millions of deaths. Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.
      - batch12 5y ago
        I don't think it has worked until they have zero covid. Maybe a silver lining from this will be people resisting anything happening they perceive as mistreatment from their government.
SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago
Many calamities are unevenly distributed, so I would suppose Covid and lockdowns are just the same. (Even natural disasters- some homes are flooded, some homes are not…) the problem is in aggregate how much loss and suffering is acceptable. Especially in a case like this, arguably man made.
ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
> an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government Perhaps even actively malicious, with "perhaps" converging to "definitely".
- ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
  - s5300 5y ago
    Bag em up @dang
- tootie 5y ago
  This shouldn't be a controversial opinion. This is the evolution of a government that never faced any consequences for the Great Leap Forward, the Tiananmen Massacre or their concentration camps in modern Xinjiang. The CCP is actively malicious and very willing to kill it's citizens by the thousands in further an of their political goals.
chiefalchemist 5y ago
> 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. In general, isn't this true everywhere? For example, drive by shootings don't happen everywhere. Or even with Covid in the USA, the non-white underserved had more deaths and more hospitalizations. This was mentioned, by always in passing. I'm not sure about Western governments, but at least in the USA, the media is very good at using emotions to sway perceptions of the actual underlying data / statistics.
tootie 5y ago
Not to harp on a secondary point but term limits was your breaking point?
nradov 5y ago
The lesson I take away from this is that governments with the power to enforce lockdowns are far more dangerous than any virus.
user_named 5y ago
The issue is the indefinite timeline and the shutdown of grocery deliveries. You can get food now via wechat more easily, but it's been a huge amount of uncertainty the past 14 days.
ricardobayes 5y ago
Shanghai has always been a mixed pot. I have seen people selling live turtles for food at the door of a skyscraper in the business quarter. Gave off major cyberpunk/Blade Runner vibes.

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.
- seanmcdirmid 5y ago
  Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Interesting. A form of the supply chain crisis if you will.
- jsiaajdsdaa 5y ago
  They definitely do not prep in that city. Maybe you can survive a year on a sack of rice and potatoes, if your utilities aren't cut off. But without guns and land, prepping becomes "hiding until the situation hopefully goes away"
  - lampshades 5y ago
    That'd have to be a big fucking sack of rice and potatoes.
  - cmarschner 5y ago
    The body also needs some other nutrients than the carbs you‘d find in potatoes and rice…
    - inglor_cz 5y ago
      Potatoes are actually the better option. IIRC there was a long experiment in pre-war Poland (University of Lwow, now Lviv in Ukraine) to demonstrate that potatoes consumed with milk, sour cream etc., while very being a very monotonous diet, can nevertheless sustain adults without causing them nutritional deficiencies. Of course, you need to be able to tolerate milk, which many East Asians aren't.
user_named 5y ago
Correct. I'm in Shanghai.

dougmwne 5y ago

Thank you for your take on this. My reaction is that you are of course right that this is not affecting everyone equally. Certainly the CCP is not starving out all 26 million people in Shanghai. But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.

whimsicalism 5y ago
- rrsmtz 5y ago
  "We" didn't kill anybody, they died of a highly transmissible and novel disease for which there was no cure and no vaccine for over a year. There was no possible way that death could have been completely averted. Yes, there were policy choices that could have been made differently, that would have potentially slowed the spread. We implemented many, decided not to implement others, and had a difficult time enforcing the policies we did enact. But using the language of murder when talking this, and arguing using an implied base rate of zero, is hardly good faith.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    > There was no possible way that death could have been averted. Respectfully, I disagree. If there was no possible way to avert it, how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths? The action/omission distinction is for judging who started a fight in a schoolyard, not for judging the actions of nation-states.
    - QuikAccount 5y ago
      I'm not taking a side on whether or not deaths could've been averted but I would be very skeptical of data coming out of China.
      - 5y ago

dqpb 5y ago

> An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government The inevitable result of centralized control.

kharak 5y ago
That is certainly an important factor. I think it goes even deeper. China doesn't recognize human rights as we know them. The collective, represented by state interests (CCP), is above all. Hence any individual right can be sacrificed for the greater good. Aka state interests. And that's why situations like this shutdown in Shanghai can unfold. It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson.
- bllguo 5y ago
  > It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson. What a bizarre statement. How can you simultaneously think it's a deep philosophical issue and also that there is an obvious solution?
  - kharak 5y ago
    I didn’t say it was obvious? Even in the western world, it’s sometimes contested. Still, the consequences of having and not having human rights have been observed often enough by now. Including in Chinas (recent) history.
    - bllguo 5y ago
      Oh please, spare me. So what did "ample opportunity to learn the lesson" mean? "Observed often enough by now," we don't need to talk any specifics, _obviously_ Western ideals are superior! End of history and all that jazz, huh? I was hoping for more critical thought when you rightly mentioned this to be a "deeply philosophical problem."
      - 5y ago

godelski 5y ago

> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution when it comes to things like viruses but I think our natural tendency is to believe things are more uniform. Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. Even zero deaths. I understand the want to minimize (especially in an area with high population densities), but zero is an impossible number.

whimsicalism 5y ago
> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. It worked for original SARS, no?
- godelski 5y ago
  Not really. There's also a lot of differences, like SARS didn't escape to be a global pandemic. I'd say that's a big difference. At this point zero covid is like trying to create a zero flu policy. That's very different from a zero measles policy.
  - whimsicalism 5y ago
    Why? It's worked for them for a few years now and they have successfully mitigated what would have been millions of deaths. Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.
    - batch12 5y ago
      I don't think it has worked until they have zero covid. Maybe a silver lining from this will be people resisting anything happening they perceive as mistreatment from their government.

SamoyedFurFluff 5y ago

Many calamities are unevenly distributed, so I would suppose Covid and lockdowns are just the same. (Even natural disasters- some homes are flooded, some homes are not…) the problem is in aggregate how much loss and suffering is acceptable. Especially in a case like this, arguably man made.

ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago

> an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government Perhaps even actively malicious, with "perhaps" converging to "definitely".

ccbccccbbcccbb 5y ago
- s5300 5y ago
  Bag em up @dang
tootie 5y ago
This shouldn't be a controversial opinion. This is the evolution of a government that never faced any consequences for the Great Leap Forward, the Tiananmen Massacre or their concentration camps in modern Xinjiang. The CCP is actively malicious and very willing to kill it's citizens by the thousands in further an of their political goals.

chiefalchemist 5y ago

> 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. In general, isn't this true everywhere? For example, drive by shootings don't happen everywhere. Or even with Covid in the USA, the non-white underserved had more deaths and more hospitalizations. This was mentioned, by always in passing. I'm not sure about Western governments, but at least in the USA, the media is very good at using emotions to sway perceptions of the actual underlying data / statistics.

tootie 5y ago

Not to harp on a secondary point but term limits was your breaking point?

nradov 5y ago

The lesson I take away from this is that governments with the power to enforce lockdowns are far more dangerous than any virus.

user_named 5y ago

The issue is the indefinite timeline and the shutdown of grocery deliveries. You can get food now via wechat more easily, but it's been a huge amount of uncertainty the past 14 days.

ricardobayes 5y ago

Shanghai has always been a mixed pot. I have seen people selling live turtles for food at the door of a skyscraper in the business quarter. Gave off major cyberpunk/Blade Runner vibes.