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Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

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Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#181

Post by limoce »

imiric wrote: post #57
elric wrote: post #36

Only a thousand daily cases in a country with a population of 1G? That's either very impressive, or very impressively underreported. For comparison, Belgium currently has 10 times as many daily new cases, with a population that's 100 times smaller (and no lockdown).

And 8K deaths since 2020: https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn How the WHO can report these numbers with a straight face is beyond me.

I found two interesting points after comparing numbers from WTO and China CDC (https://2019ncov.chinacdc.cn/2019-nCoV/):

1. The death toll is the same, but the number of confirmed cases reported by China CDC is much smaller than WTO (380k vs 710k). I guess people caught covid with no symptoms are excluded by China CDC.

2. After subtracting death toll in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there're only 4.6k deaths in China mainland since 2020.

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#182

Post by sokoloff »

jspash wrote: post #142
RobertRoberts wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many people who will die from many common diseases that are communicable, including the standard flu. This argument doesn't hold up under scrutiny. At risk people (the vast, vast minority) need to self quarantine instead of having the unrealistic expectation that the everyone should instead of them.

I see you are planning to spend your golden years sheltering entirely indoors with others of the vast vast minority? ie. the over 60-70's.

Would you rather the “over 0s” do that instead?

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#183

Post by tchoff »

simonhorlick wrote: post #147

Over time, the effects of covid19 on heart, brain, lungs, vascular system, sensory system, kidneys & more will become better understood. Until then, any reassurance that massive levels of infection are ‘ok’ for society is a gamble—a gamble with unknown long-term costs. (quote from stanford infectious disease doctor Abraar Karan)

No post body was provided.

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#184

Post by mkl »

garbagetime wrote: post #107
mkl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I didn’t envy the likes of New Zealand or China throughout because they really have no exit strategy other than eventually losing the war after multiple years of damage and hardship. I'm in NZ. It's more like multiple years of mostly normal life, while we got vaccination rates up high. The exit strategy has always been opening up again, after delaying and preparing, and that's in progress as we've now given up on c…

>The exit strategy has always been opening up again, after delaying and preparing Does anyone know of solid evidence to back up this statement?

What else could it possibly be? The country can't keep the borders closed forever, which means opening up again, and pursuing Covid-zero until vaccination happened is obviously going to save lives. I think we would have delayed a bit further if possible, to get more people boosted, but Omicron has forced this timing.

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#185

Post by bjourne »

user_named wrote: post #84
elric wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily disagree with that statement, but it'd be nice if you backed it up with some actual examples.

Quoted post unavailable.

Belgium's total excess mortality for 2020-21 is actually quite low: https://i.redd.it/pqr32tp3yfi81.jpg

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#186

Post by garbagetime »

mkl wrote: post #184
garbagetime wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The exit strategy has always been opening up again, after delaying and preparing Does anyone know of solid evidence to back up this statement?

What else could it possibly be? The country can't keep the borders closed forever, which means opening up again, and pursuing Covid-zero until vaccination happened is obviously going to save lives. I think we would have delayed a bit further if possible, to get more people boosted, but Omicron has forced this timing.

I can think of various alternatives but I'm not interested in getting into that discussion. I'm interested in when the earliest point in time was that the NZ government communicated (either internal communication or external communication) that its plan was to prepare as best as possible and then open up.

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#187

Post by bigDinosaur »

y7 wrote: post #138
throwaway4good wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrt. mRNA boosters, I know it is a common talking point that China is in trouble because it doesn't have mRNA-vaccines but I believe the vaccines that China have is of the type as the AstraZeneca vaccine, that is commonly used in the UK which now is free of COVID-restrictions. In other words; if is China is willing, it can go down the same path of vax-and-let-it-rip.

For a booster (3rd shot), the UK only uses mRNA vaccines. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-vaccinat... Edit: changed my ambiguous wording

Minor thing, but that'll probably be expanded to include Novavax in a relatively short amount of time. Not that it matters much for the progression of the pandemic (it's far too late to make a big difference, and will only mop up a few vaccine hesitant people).

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#188

Post by limoce »

roenxi wrote: post #179
elric wrote: post #36

Only a thousand daily cases in a country with a population of 1G? That's either very impressive, or very impressively underreported. For comparison, Belgium currently has 10 times as many daily new cases, with a population that's 100 times smaller (and no lockdown).

China is engaging in some combination of not measuring/not reporting/lying on the subject of COVID infections. Ourworldindata claims [0] that their case counts are comparable to New Zealand. There needs to be a much, much more powerful argument than "they've got CCTV and powerful bureaucrats!" before anyone can take those figures seriously. [0] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-cases

Why the number of confirmed cases shown in [0] is even smaller than that reported by China CDC? It doesn't make sense.

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#189

Post by odiroot »

user_named wrote: post #90
hutzlibu wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In my opinion china's policies have been the best" Interesting, but could you really express any other opinion without fear of repression of some kind, while living in china?

Yes. I can say anything I like about Xi Jinping when I'm on HN. HN is blocked in China btw.

That must be great for productivity!

Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown

#190

Post by bigDinosaur »

refurb wrote: post #106
petesergeant wrote: post #86

> can't quarantine and hospitalize people for omicron when it is not dangerous There are enough people it’s dangerous for, especially in a population not widely exposed to it and who haven’t had mRNA boosters, that it can cause hospitals to jam up and pictures of grandma dying on a stretcher outside a regional hospital. This is a political big deal when you’ve spent 2 years mouthing off about the decadent West’s poor…

Indeed. I’ve been somewhat amazed at how China has handled it as of late. I get the short-term goal - stop Covid from taking hold by isolating new outbreaks. They have the manpower and the organization to isolate entire cities, do mass testing and lockdown neighborhoods. But: 1. It’s pretty clear with Omnicron the higher infectivity is making that task harder and lockdowns longer 2. The lockdowns have real economic i…

Gradually they'll start the propaganda engines to normalise its spread, and at some point they'll drop all restrictions while somehow spinning it as a success. They can't do it suddenly, like was done in the West, as that'd contradict their entire strategy far too violently.
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