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Generally those things are helpful but I think China has pretty well demonstrated that there’s no alternative universe where fully locking everything down elimi

Generally those things are helpful but I think China has pretty well demonstrated that there’s no alternative universe where fully locking everything down eliminates Covid.

paulryanrogers 4y ago
Or at least not without perfect worldwide coordination. And assuming there are no animal reservoirs
alex_young 4y ago
China represents 18% of the world's population, yet 0.07% of COVID-19 fatalities. Seems like there is some value in their approach.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
  Like pretending there are no covid deaths?
  - alex_young 4y ago
    Surely they aren't covering up that many deaths right? The US is 4% of the world population, and represents 16% of the fatalities. If China had our rate of fatalities that would indicate that they are hiding 4.3 million deaths somehow.
    - dahdum 4y ago
      Last year the Economist estimated them at about 1.7 million excess mortality. There is extremely strong pressure from the top down to minimize the public death count. The credibility of the party (and Xi personally) relies on their Zero Covid policy being seen as effective. I wouldn't even call it a cover up, there are just no incentives to accurately report and many reasons to downplay aggressively.
    - nephanth 4y ago
      Why wouldn't they? It's not like they aren't used to covering up deaths
- pclmulqdq 4y ago
  0.07% of reported COVID-19 fatalities. There are a lot of incentives to keep the numbers down going up the chain in the Chinese bureaucracy. This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report.
  - makomk 4y ago
    If I remember rightly we even know and have evidence of some of the specific ways in which China did this, such as not counting deaths of people in high-risk groups immediately after being infected with and hospitalized due to Covid as Covid deaths and instead blaming their deaths on some existing health conditions. Whereas the UK for example counted everyone who died reasonably soon after catching Covid as a Covid death.
    - princeb 4y ago
      we don't need to rely on the numbers coming from the CCP to get an estimate of how bad it is in china. what we can do is to rely on the covid count of passengers coming in from China, reported by non-Chinese disease authorities. we have several: south korea, singapore, and taiwan who were taking in chinese travelers at various points of the pandemic. china is a minor contributor to imported cases in these three countries.
  - cratermoon 4y ago
    > This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report. Ahem. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing... https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/01/06/desantis-admits-roughly-1-million-covid-test-kits-did-expire-in-fl/ https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/01/06/desantis-admits-roughl... https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/19/rebekah-jones-florida-covid-jail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/19/rebekah-jon...
    - pclmulqdq 4y ago
      Yes, that's news about Florida and Donald Trump. Now do New York and California. The most populous states were likely over-reporting deaths. By the way, despite the rhetoric, states were getting money from the federal government for reporting a COVID death. There was literally a per-death payment. If that is not an incentive to over-report (despite the usual bloviating from Republicans), I don't know what is.
- nradov 4y ago
  There is no value in the Chinese approach. Protecting people from infectious disease can't possibly justify violating fundamental human rights, such as the right to free assembly?
  - moistly 4y ago
    Do you support the right of the polio-infected resident of Rockland County (a NYC suburb) to attend tonight’s basketball game? Would you be okay with him shopping at your grocery store, standing in line with you at the cash register?
    - spacemanmatt 4y ago
      Yeah, infectious disease beats free assembly every time.
      - nradov 4y ago
        No. There is always some sort of infectious disease going on. Even before COVID-19, thousands of people died every year from influenza and other respiratory diseases (including other corona viruses). This is not a valid reason for imposing restrictions and mandates.
        spacemanmatt 4y ago
        Sure, not rhinovirus but definitely polio. Surely you aren't proposing that anyone ever tried to limit free assembly for run-of-the-mill germs. Point being, your rights exist in tension with public health; they are not absolute.
- andrepd 4y ago
  Data from China is not reliable.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- aurelius12 4y ago
  If people don't like the China example, they can look at New Zealand or Australia, both of which had tiny fractions of our Covid deaths AND experienced less economic decline AND experienced a drop in suicides during the time.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    And are now catching up. New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. Australia 1500. The vaccines didn't keep people from dying, they postponed them to the next flu season. The old and sick will catch covid and die. There is nothing you can do about it. Putting your head in the sand and hoping for a magic bullet to save us - vaccines, masks, lockdowns - just means that the rest of the health system will collapse too. We need to be realistic and prepare for a world in which life expectancy is 10 years lower and we need a lot more hospital beds.
    - DogOfTheGaps 4y ago
      This is 100% false. The COVID vaccines continue to massively decrease the risk of severe disease, including in old people.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        Can you say which of: + New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. + Australia 1500 + The vaccines didn't keep people from dying Were wrong? Because a 100% false rate is a pretty high bar, especially since you already admitted 3 was true.
        guythedudebro 4y ago
        You almost made even me fall for the bait. Congrats.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        That a simple statement of fact is bait ought to tell you how much of a fantasy world people live in. The covid vaccines are shit and don't work. End of story. The mental gymnastics needed to claim they do fall apart when you compare them to vaccines for any other deadly disease. We don't still have small pox running rampant in countries with 90%+ vaccination rates. No one walks around telling you that having only your face paralyzed by polio is a great out come and a reason why we should vaccinate toddlers. If you get the MMR vaccine you're not told to be happy that you only got one of the three. We need to move people's minds to the real world where everyone gets covid during flu season, rename it covid season while we're at it, and build a hospital system to solve that problem.
Nition 4y ago
It worked for us in New Zealand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we tried the same thing a second time it didn't work, but that was due to people not following the rules.
- hunterb123 4y ago
  That's what the government says when they fail, they blame the people. It's your fault for not following orders, not our fault.
  - Nition 4y ago
    Our government was pretty careful not to put blame on the people honestly, it's really me that's blaming the people (I'm not the one that's downvoted you though).
    - hunterb123 4y ago
- thrashh 4y ago
  That’s like saying that your grandma was able to keep per collection of 4 books perfectly sorted 100% of the time so why can’t a public library of 50,000 books?
- incompatible 4y ago
  I think it stopped working once Covid became far more infectious. Before that, it was possible to stamp out the occasional quarantine failure.
  - Nition 4y ago
    I agree, it was definitely harder the second time with Delta. People broke the rules the first time as well, or mistakes happened, but the few breakouts weren't so difficult to contain.
- smcl 4y ago

Generally those things are helpful but I think China has pretty well demonstrated that there’s no alternative universe where fully locking everything down eliminates Covid.

paulryanrogers 4y ago

Or at least not without perfect worldwide coordination. And assuming there are no animal reservoirs

alex_young 4y ago

China represents 18% of the world's population, yet 0.07% of COVID-19 fatalities. Seems like there is some value in their approach.

swagasaurus-rex 4y ago
Like pretending there are no covid deaths?
- alex_young 4y ago
  Surely they aren't covering up that many deaths right? The US is 4% of the world population, and represents 16% of the fatalities. If China had our rate of fatalities that would indicate that they are hiding 4.3 million deaths somehow.
  - dahdum 4y ago
    Last year the Economist estimated them at about 1.7 million excess mortality. There is extremely strong pressure from the top down to minimize the public death count. The credibility of the party (and Xi personally) relies on their Zero Covid policy being seen as effective. I wouldn't even call it a cover up, there are just no incentives to accurately report and many reasons to downplay aggressively.
  - nephanth 4y ago
    Why wouldn't they? It's not like they aren't used to covering up deaths
pclmulqdq 4y ago
0.07% of reported COVID-19 fatalities. There are a lot of incentives to keep the numbers down going up the chain in the Chinese bureaucracy. This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report.
- makomk 4y ago
  If I remember rightly we even know and have evidence of some of the specific ways in which China did this, such as not counting deaths of people in high-risk groups immediately after being infected with and hospitalized due to Covid as Covid deaths and instead blaming their deaths on some existing health conditions. Whereas the UK for example counted everyone who died reasonably soon after catching Covid as a Covid death.
  - princeb 4y ago
    we don't need to rely on the numbers coming from the CCP to get an estimate of how bad it is in china. what we can do is to rely on the covid count of passengers coming in from China, reported by non-Chinese disease authorities. we have several: south korea, singapore, and taiwan who were taking in chinese travelers at various points of the pandemic. china is a minor contributor to imported cases in these three countries.
- cratermoon 4y ago
  > This is the opposite of most western countries, where the incentives are to over-report. Ahem. https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing-slow-down-response/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/22/politics/donald-trump-testing... https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/01/06/desantis-admits-roughly-1-million-covid-test-kits-did-expire-in-fl/ https://floridaphoenix.com/2022/01/06/desantis-admits-roughl... https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/19/rebekah-jones-florida-covid-jail/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/19/rebekah-jon...
  - pclmulqdq 4y ago
    Yes, that's news about Florida and Donald Trump. Now do New York and California. The most populous states were likely over-reporting deaths. By the way, despite the rhetoric, states were getting money from the federal government for reporting a COVID death. There was literally a per-death payment. If that is not an incentive to over-report (despite the usual bloviating from Republicans), I don't know what is.
nradov 4y ago
There is no value in the Chinese approach. Protecting people from infectious disease can't possibly justify violating fundamental human rights, such as the right to free assembly?
- moistly 4y ago
  Do you support the right of the polio-infected resident of Rockland County (a NYC suburb) to attend tonight’s basketball game? Would you be okay with him shopping at your grocery store, standing in line with you at the cash register?
  - spacemanmatt 4y ago
    Yeah, infectious disease beats free assembly every time.
    - nradov 4y ago
      No. There is always some sort of infectious disease going on. Even before COVID-19, thousands of people died every year from influenza and other respiratory diseases (including other corona viruses). This is not a valid reason for imposing restrictions and mandates.
      - spacemanmatt 4y ago
        Sure, not rhinovirus but definitely polio. Surely you aren't proposing that anyone ever tried to limit free assembly for run-of-the-mill germs. Point being, your rights exist in tension with public health; they are not absolute.
andrepd 4y ago
Data from China is not reliable.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
aurelius12 4y ago
If people don't like the China example, they can look at New Zealand or Australia, both of which had tiny fractions of our Covid deaths AND experienced less economic decline AND experienced a drop in suicides during the time.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  And are now catching up. New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. Australia 1500. The vaccines didn't keep people from dying, they postponed them to the next flu season. The old and sick will catch covid and die. There is nothing you can do about it. Putting your head in the sand and hoping for a magic bullet to save us - vaccines, masks, lockdowns - just means that the rest of the health system will collapse too. We need to be realistic and prepare for a world in which life expectancy is 10 years lower and we need a lot more hospital beds.
  - DogOfTheGaps 4y ago
    This is 100% false. The COVID vaccines continue to massively decrease the risk of severe disease, including in old people.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      Can you say which of: + New Zealand had the equivalent of 2000 US deaths yesterday. + Australia 1500 + The vaccines didn't keep people from dying Were wrong? Because a 100% false rate is a pretty high bar, especially since you already admitted 3 was true.
      - guythedudebro 4y ago
        You almost made even me fall for the bait. Congrats.
        thrown_22 4y ago
        That a simple statement of fact is bait ought to tell you how much of a fantasy world people live in. The covid vaccines are shit and don't work. End of story. The mental gymnastics needed to claim they do fall apart when you compare them to vaccines for any other deadly disease. We don't still have small pox running rampant in countries with 90%+ vaccination rates. No one walks around telling you that having only your face paralyzed by polio is a great out come and a reason why we should vaccinate toddlers. If you get the MMR vaccine you're not told to be happy that you only got one of the three. We need to move people's minds to the real world where everyone gets covid during flu season, rename it covid season while we're at it, and build a hospital system to solve that problem.

Nition 4y ago

It worked for us in New Zealand. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ When we tried the same thing a second time it didn't work, but that was due to people not following the rules.

hunterb123 4y ago
That's what the government says when they fail, they blame the people. It's your fault for not following orders, not our fault.
- Nition 4y ago
  Our government was pretty careful not to put blame on the people honestly, it's really me that's blaming the people (I'm not the one that's downvoted you though).
  - hunterb123 4y ago
thrashh 4y ago
That’s like saying that your grandma was able to keep per collection of 4 books perfectly sorted 100% of the time so why can’t a public library of 50,000 books?
incompatible 4y ago
I think it stopped working once Covid became far more infectious. Before that, it was possible to stamp out the occasional quarantine failure.
- Nition 4y ago
  I agree, it was definitely harder the second time with Delta. People broke the rules the first time as well, or mistakes happened, but the few breakouts weren't so difficult to contain.
smcl 4y ago