211–220 of 319 posts
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This is not about whether we should trust COVID case numbers by the US govt, this is about whether we should trust COVID case numbers by CCP. Although it does not strike me as a bad analogy. The US government thought there were WMDs, but there were none in reality (wrong data, whoops). CCP thought there was no COVID in China, but there was in reality (wrong data, whoops).
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)
Why are they locking down for a variant that is less severe? Why aren't they accepting this is the best we'll get, and the sooner omicron becomes endemic the better. Rip off the bandaid.
If there is no case in your region, then strict measures means life as usual. If you have a case, then you and your contacts need to quarantine. Contact tracing is extremely effective for Corona. Also remember that most people don't infect anybody, but few people are very contagious. This is to an extent still true for Omicron. The calculation for China is: inconvenience a small fraction of people, save thousands of…
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The 3rd shot of the mRNA vaccine clearly does reduce infection from Omicron somewhat (I would call it more than useless for that effect, you can call it whatever you want). They also are still very effective at preventing severe disease (against Omicron). This is the opposite of useless.
Kudos and my personal thanks to the vaccine developers.
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I think it's the opposite. Chinas economy was quickly back to normal in 2020 while other countries suffered. But it's going to be costly this time, for little return.
It's such an absurd tradeoff for the Omicron variant, which is less deadly than the flu[1]. COVID isn't ever going away. China seems to be willing to pay a giant recurring cost, eternally, for an infection less harmful than the flu. Insane. 1. https://twitter.com/EricTopol/status/1501773203261165570
Apparently the data is only applicable for England, which has already achieved herd immunity
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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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Which works ok if you're an island in the middle of nowhere, but it works a lot less ok if you're an EU county with people used to the idea of travelling anywhere without even having to show an ID. We've been through some pretty rough two years, but most of restrictions are now lifted or lifting. With the amount of people being either vaccinated or recovered from covid infection we should be over the whole pandemic d…
EU countries have been incredibly incompetent in their handling of covid. What you're saying about expecting to travel freely is just copium. Pretty much all EU leadership should be fired and possibly prosecuted. I'm European myself btw.
I don't know what copium is supposed to mean. However freedom of movement is one of the basic principles of EU. Or at least it used to be.
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Omicron is not "so mild". It appeared to be mild in many other countries due to high vaccination rates and/or prior infections/deaths. This is not the case in China, where prior infections are very rare. And although the headline stats for the initial 2-dose vaccination rates are good, they didn't use the more effective mRNA vaccines, probably don't have a high recent booster rate, and most crucially, the vaccination…
Hong Kong and mainland are totally different. Vaccination rate is very high here and you have been able to get booster shots for months. I agree with your second paragraph though.
On the assumption that sinovax vaccination works. Which as far as I am aware. It doesn't.
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What country doesn't have an incentive to lie about all of this? I don't disagree with the conclusion that the stats are likely more controlled (if only by having more data) but you need to be precise about the incentives and the means. In countries where things get super bad, you have massive tents outside hospitals, people dying everywhere. There are 1.3 billion people, loads of which _do_ have VPNs and ways of com…
The incentive for citizens is a threat of their entire city block or rural area being literally locked; possibly social karma consequences (your fault for not complying with PPE measures). For local officials, the threat of losing their jobs because there is no telling if upper management will decide you should be replaced if you report unpleasant facts that violate national point of pride (zero COVID), and everyone…
But I think you are confusing China for North Korea a bit here. Loads of people (including people who have basically zero interactions with foreigners) have VPNs, and access to outside information (if only just to have access to certain websites including just for work or cuz they want to look at Youtube). I'm not talking about activist types, just people who want to use the internet without too many issues.
And locals do post about what is going on, protests and the like, for various things all the time! Now it's stuff that gets deleted pretty quickly in many cases, but it's how information travels! And people save videos, it gets passed around on the open web...
There are also, of course, all the Chinese natives living outside of China, who all have contact with relatives and can be discussing things constantly. Of course people within the country might have a skewed vision, but at one point you would have enough people connecting the dots to have a real story.
China is not sitting around listening to every video call happening between relatives, holding the finger over the "cut communications" button like they are with CNN! I would not be surprised at them applying a lot of evil stuff at all outbound communications for their reasons, but it's not 1984-style magic!
I don't want to be too definitive about this because everything can be surprising, but at the end of the day if a bunch of people around you are dying that will affect you in a material way and I doubt you would keep it secret.
I wouldn't be surprised about a bunch of people having minor cases, and maybe hospitalizations can be kept more under wrap if there is a recovery there. But the idea that "we lock down entire areas when we find cases" works feels almost like a null hypothesis to me.
Now with Omikron it appears that there is no limit anymore. Currently they have more than 350000 new cases per day, the highest in any country.