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).
It is real, the country has been covid free since late 2020. How can you under report virus being covid free? The title is very misleading. It is not China locks down, it is a few cities will have affected communities locked down. Mostly massive testing, contract tracing and then resume to normal once cases are back to normal. My parents are in affect areas, people are less worries about the cases due the minor effec…
Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
301–310 of 319 posts
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#302I find this fascinating in comparison with the situation here in the UK where about 70% of the population are triple vaccinated. Omicron is everywhere, literally. Anecdotally I would say 80-90% of households with school aged kids have had Omicron since the beginning of January and it’s still doing the rounds. We now have no restrictions and even during the peak in Jan/Feb it was very very minimal. There will be no mo…
There's already a notable new variant circulating. It's called Omicron BA.2, sometimes "Stealth Omicron" because it is not as easily identified as Omicron BA.1. Looking at the UK figures, although there was a Jan/Feb peak, it's not clear that wave is mostly in the past. All the headline figures are currently rising - infections, hospitalisations and deaths - and the infection rate has risen again to nearly where it w…
Restrictions absolutely do reduce the rate of spread. But that's not the debate at hand.
It's accepted by all experts Covid is here to stay, like cold and flu viruses. With or without lock downs. The debate is whether we still need to "flatten the curve" to relieve hospital resources.
Eradication of Covid is not the goal or even realistically possible.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#303Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's already a notable new variant circulating. It's called Omicron BA.2, sometimes "Stealth Omicron" because it is not as easily identified as Omicron BA.1. Looking at the UK figures, although there was a Jan/Feb peak, it's not clear that wave is mostly in the past. All the headline figures are currently rising - infections, hospitalisations and deaths - and the infection rate has risen again to nearly where it w…
> looks like strong evidence that something about the restrictions was really working. ...in stark contrast to the government's prior "follow the science" line. Restrictions absolutely do reduce the rate of spread. But that's not the debate at hand. It's accepted by all experts Covid is here to stay, like cold and flu viruses. With or without lock downs. The debate is whether we still need to "flatten the curve" to r…
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#304Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's already a notable new variant circulating. It's called Omicron BA.2, sometimes "Stealth Omicron" because it is not as easily identified as Omicron BA.1. Looking at the UK figures, although there was a Jan/Feb peak, it's not clear that wave is mostly in the past. All the headline figures are currently rising - infections, hospitalisations and deaths - and the infection rate has risen again to nearly where it w…
> looks like strong evidence that something about the restrictions was really working. ...in stark contrast to the government's prior "follow the science" line. Restrictions absolutely do reduce the rate of spread. But that's not the debate at hand. It's accepted by all experts Covid is here to stay, like cold and flu viruses. With or without lock downs. The debate is whether we still need to "flatten the curve" to r…
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#305Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is real, the country has been covid free since late 2020. How can you under report virus being covid free? The title is very misleading. It is not China locks down, it is a few cities will have affected communities locked down. Mostly massive testing, contract tracing and then resume to normal once cases are back to normal. My parents are in affect areas, people are less worries about the cases due the minor effec…
Unless Mainland China is doing something drastically different to what we're doing here in Hong Kong, I wouldn't be so sure.
I don't know how long China can continue this zero-covid policy, that's a question, people are less worried about the virus now, I hear the same from my parents. At least it is working now. Maybe not in Hong Kong.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#306Earlier quoted context omitted.
How you are able to have such cognitive dissonance in believing that China is an authoritarian government that locks down entire buildings because someone tested positive for a mutation of a cold virus but also not believe they have had few covid cases is beyond me.
They also have a ridiculously huge and dense urban population.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#307Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Prejudice. The current number of COVID cases in China is real. BTW, I think, in HN and reddit, sometimes we demonize the Chinese government too much and live in an "Information Cocoon Room" more or less.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#308Earlier quoted context omitted.
Omnicron in particular is so low impact that the response is primarily political, especially when you have vaccines and some pre existing immunity. Countries can choose to pretty much ignore it or go crazy over it as the politicians and Twitter demand. We just got bored of it in the UK and moved onto Boris’s parties and now Ukraine.
Omicron could be the best thing that happened -- a mild, very infectious variant that gives everyone NATURAL herd immunity to the entire coronavirus family. Why are politicians so afraid of it?
Omicron is slightly less deadly than Delta, but it's much more transmissible. That, combined with a lack of preventive measures, made this winter's Omicron wave the second most deadly wave in the US since the pandemic began.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#309Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prejudice. The current number of COVID cases in China is real. BTW, I think, in HN and reddit, sometimes we demonize the Chinese government too much and live in an "Information Cocoon Room" more or less.
Do you really believe the measures of China lead to 1000 times less infected people than what we see in the rest of the world?
Chinese society has been largely open for the last 2 years, yet hospitals have not been overwhelmed, and hardly anyone even knows anyone who's gotten CoVID-19.
The measures that public health authorities in Chinese cities take to squash outbreaks are highly visible. If there's a single known case in a city, the building where the person lives will be locked down, the neighborhood (or even the entire city) will be PCR tested, and everyone who's been near the infected person will be quarantined. These measures work.
Re: Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown
#310Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is real, the country has been covid free since late 2020. How can you under report virus being covid free? The title is very misleading. It is not China locks down, it is a few cities will have affected communities locked down. Mostly massive testing, contract tracing and then resume to normal once cases are back to normal. My parents are in affect areas, people are less worries about the cases due the minor effec…
Unless Mainland China is doing something drastically different to what we're doing here in Hong Kong, I wouldn't be so sure.