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> Private enterprise was caught as unprepared as everyone else, and has subsequently struggled to produce a tenth of the innovative counter-virus workarounds th

by toolz 3y ago

> Private enterprise was caught as unprepared as everyone else, and has subsequently struggled to produce a tenth of the innovative counter-virus workarounds their Chinese counterparts managed to dream up (and that under much greater time pressure). It's absolutely mind-boggling that the first 3 countries hit hard by covid were China, Korea and Italy. China and Korea appeared to keep it contained and given everything we know about trusting these two countries, we chose to trust the Chinese model? In Feb of 2020 the U.S. committee of foreign affairs was posting documents detailing some of the lies China has told[0], but we chose to trust their data in one of the biggest crisis of our lifetime? Meanwhile, Korea was being pretty open with their approach and while I don't think it would've been effective in the U.S. it was certainly the more palatable approach and less damaging to the poor and most vulnerable population. We also saw Italy using the Chinese model for containment and it failed miserably, yet the U.S. stood firm in following their failures. Insisting that we protect the middle and upper class while demanding the lower class keep the "important" jobs running and giving the poverty class nowhere to turn. [0] https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Lies-Spread-by-the-Chinese-Communist-Party-CCP-V2-2.pdf https://foreignaffairs.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/...

chongli 3y ago
This piece hasn’t aged well. What worked for China in the beginning of the pandemic had the opposite effect later on. While the West was opening back up and getting on with life, China was in the throes of a second wave while at the same time battling serious internal resistance to “Covid Zero” policies. In the end, the government relented to the pressure.
- toolz 3y ago
  Indeed, and that was always the logical conclusion. We've never made perfectly effective vaccines that fast and we knew the virus was global. It was always going to find its way into China and run rampant to everyone without immunity whenever society opened back up and all of that is assuming their isolation actually works to begin with. There was no other option and I struggle to understand how that wasn't plain to see even in early 2020 when we had confirmed cases all around the world. Were we really banking on making a perfect vaccine before the world couldn't sustain lock-downs? If not, what was the "real" plan? I believe it was probably all just political game-theory, but it's hard not to wonder if there were people at the top hoping poor people could take the brunt of the contagion and die off before the rich people started going back into public.
  - svnt 3y ago
    In most places policy seemed to be dictated by preserving the essential function of the health care system and to a lesser extent the sanity of the health care workers. When ICU beds filled or looked like they might, we optimized for not having excess people drowning in cytokine storms in the waiting rooms. It doesn’t seem very nefarious to me.
    - toolz 3y ago
      That was the goal of both Korea and China, both of them early on appeared to reach this goal. That goal is not nefarious, but choosing the Chinese model when we watched it fail in Italy does appear to be gross incompetence since we did know without question that the Chinese model would have drastic consequences whether it succeeded or not.
      - svnt 3y ago
        I guess I’m not sure what your implied alternative is to the “Chinese Model” which I don’t think anyone can credibly say we accurately emulated — what would you have preferred we do and whose model would that have been? Sweden’s?
        toolz 3y ago
        Today? It should go without saying we shouldn't have locked down. Somehow there are still people holding onto the idea it was a justified measure, but what we know today simply makes that option look absurd in hindsight. Sweden in particular? Sure, despite what the media was trying to sell, all of the scandanavian countries had similar strategies and (including sweden) ended up faring better than the average european country. So I wouldn't say Sweden specifically, because that's just a political hot topic. Norway, which also didn't actually lock down (just look at oxfords covid stringency index if you don't believe me) did very well. I suspect you're asking what would I have done at the time, though, and I think at the time the most practical approach was Korea's contact tracing and just like we've done for as long as I've been alive, staying at home would be something recommended for the sick. Lock downs were at no point in the pandemic a reasonable strategy, not even explicitly in the context of saving our healthcare system. Just look at how many hospitals have gone bankrupt and had to lay off huge amounts of staff. Our hospital system suffered the most because of lockdowns, not because of covid.
aragonite 3y ago
> In Feb of 2020 the U.S. committee of foreign affairs was posting documents detailing some of the lies China has told[0], but we chose to trust their data in one of the biggest crisis of our lifetime? Have you actually read the document you linked to?[1] Are you seriously arguing China is not to be trusted because it "lied to us" about "Xi Jinping being the President of China", about it "lifting its citizens out of poverty and improving their lives", about it "not being a threat to Americans’ way of life"? Almost every single "lie" listed in there is an assessment, a normative statement/conclusion, something you may agree, disagree, criticize as irrational, reach the opposite assessment etc., but for which the concept of "lying" is simply inappropriate. [1] 1. Lie: Xi Jinping is the President of China. 2. Lie: The CCP is lifting its citizens out of poverty and improving their lives. 3. Lie: China is a benign power, not interested in territorial expansion. 4. Lie: The CCP is not interested in spreading its digital authoritarian system to other countries. 5. Lie: The CCP is not a threat to Americans’ way of life, including our education system and personal freedoms. 6. Lie: China’s rise is inevitable 7. Lie: China is a champion of multilateralism and the “global south.” 8. Lie: China is a market economy 9. Lie: China remains an unmissable opportunity for businesses. 10.Lie: China is a leader in the response to climate change.
- toolz 3y ago
  Does it matter if the document is incorrect? It's an official document from the committee of foreign affairs showing that the U.S. stance on China is that they lie about various things. I don't care how substantial those things are, I care that the official stance was one that China lies a lot and then we proceeded to mimic their covid response while we had other options from more reputable sources (i.e. Korea).
  - aragonite 3y ago
    I fail to see any inconsistency between the two. One of the most often repeated cliches regarding China is "don't listen to what they say, watch what they do." Let's assume, hypothetically, that we genuinely (and not as a matter of political rhetoric) believe that everything China says is a lie. This skepticism towards their words simply doesn't logically extend to their actions — especially when those actions (i.e. how they responded to their own Covid situation) were in their own self-interest and could be independently verified. This is just a logical observation: Unless you believe that China intentionally responded to Covid in self-destructive ways in the hopes that US might copy their responses, there's simply no inconsistency between the "official stance" you linked to and what you referred to as the subsequent "mimicking".

by toolz 3y ago

chongli 3y ago

This piece hasn’t aged well. What worked for China in the beginning of the pandemic had the opposite effect later on. While the West was opening back up and getting on with life, China was in the throes of a second wave while at the same time battling serious internal resistance to “Covid Zero” policies. In the end, the government relented to the pressure.

toolz 3y ago
Indeed, and that was always the logical conclusion. We've never made perfectly effective vaccines that fast and we knew the virus was global. It was always going to find its way into China and run rampant to everyone without immunity whenever society opened back up and all of that is assuming their isolation actually works to begin with. There was no other option and I struggle to understand how that wasn't plain to see even in early 2020 when we had confirmed cases all around the world. Were we really banking on making a perfect vaccine before the world couldn't sustain lock-downs? If not, what was the "real" plan? I believe it was probably all just political game-theory, but it's hard not to wonder if there were people at the top hoping poor people could take the brunt of the contagion and die off before the rich people started going back into public.
- svnt 3y ago
  In most places policy seemed to be dictated by preserving the essential function of the health care system and to a lesser extent the sanity of the health care workers. When ICU beds filled or looked like they might, we optimized for not having excess people drowning in cytokine storms in the waiting rooms. It doesn’t seem very nefarious to me.
  - toolz 3y ago
    That was the goal of both Korea and China, both of them early on appeared to reach this goal. That goal is not nefarious, but choosing the Chinese model when we watched it fail in Italy does appear to be gross incompetence since we did know without question that the Chinese model would have drastic consequences whether it succeeded or not.
    - svnt 3y ago
      I guess I’m not sure what your implied alternative is to the “Chinese Model” which I don’t think anyone can credibly say we accurately emulated — what would you have preferred we do and whose model would that have been? Sweden’s?
      - toolz 3y ago
        Today? It should go without saying we shouldn't have locked down. Somehow there are still people holding onto the idea it was a justified measure, but what we know today simply makes that option look absurd in hindsight. Sweden in particular? Sure, despite what the media was trying to sell, all of the scandanavian countries had similar strategies and (including sweden) ended up faring better than the average european country. So I wouldn't say Sweden specifically, because that's just a political hot topic. Norway, which also didn't actually lock down (just look at oxfords covid stringency index if you don't believe me) did very well. I suspect you're asking what would I have done at the time, though, and I think at the time the most practical approach was Korea's contact tracing and just like we've done for as long as I've been alive, staying at home would be something recommended for the sick. Lock downs were at no point in the pandemic a reasonable strategy, not even explicitly in the context of saving our healthcare system. Just look at how many hospitals have gone bankrupt and had to lay off huge amounts of staff. Our hospital system suffered the most because of lockdowns, not because of covid.

aragonite 3y ago

> In Feb of 2020 the U.S. committee of foreign affairs was posting documents detailing some of the lies China has told[0], but we chose to trust their data in one of the biggest crisis of our lifetime? Have you actually read the document you linked to?[1] Are you seriously arguing China is not to be trusted because it "lied to us" about "Xi Jinping being the President of China", about it "lifting its citizens out of poverty and improving their lives", about it "not being a threat to Americans’ way of life"? Almost every single "lie" listed in there is an assessment, a normative statement/conclusion, something you may agree, disagree, criticize as irrational, reach the opposite assessment etc., but for which the concept of "lying" is simply inappropriate. [1] 1. Lie: Xi Jinping is the President of China. 2. Lie: The CCP is lifting its citizens out of poverty and improving their lives. 3. Lie: China is a benign power, not interested in territorial expansion. 4. Lie: The CCP is not interested in spreading its digital authoritarian system to other countries. 5. Lie: The CCP is not a threat to Americans’ way of life, including our education system and personal freedoms. 6. Lie: China’s rise is inevitable 7. Lie: China is a champion of multilateralism and the “global south.” 8. Lie: China is a market economy 9. Lie: China remains an unmissable opportunity for businesses. 10.Lie: China is a leader in the response to climate change.

toolz 3y ago
Does it matter if the document is incorrect? It's an official document from the committee of foreign affairs showing that the U.S. stance on China is that they lie about various things. I don't care how substantial those things are, I care that the official stance was one that China lies a lot and then we proceeded to mimic their covid response while we had other options from more reputable sources (i.e. Korea).
- aragonite 3y ago
  I fail to see any inconsistency between the two. One of the most often repeated cliches regarding China is "don't listen to what they say, watch what they do." Let's assume, hypothetically, that we genuinely (and not as a matter of political rhetoric) believe that everything China says is a lie. This skepticism towards their words simply doesn't logically extend to their actions — especially when those actions (i.e. how they responded to their own Covid situation) were in their own self-interest and could be independently verified. This is just a logical observation: Unless you believe that China intentionally responded to Covid in self-destructive ways in the hopes that US might copy their responses, there's simply no inconsistency between the "official stance" you linked to and what you referred to as the subsequent "mimicking".