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An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

jaapgrolleman.com

431–440 of 559 posts

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#431
post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I will strongly reconsider staying here. It’s fascinating to me how tolerant some people are. After reading your comment (very informative thanks!), I would be well past “considering”. I’d be gone (with family in toe) as soon as humanly possible.

There are other factors at play. For one, I have a Chinese wife who has elderly parents (not in Shanghai), for now they fare well, but we might need to look after them sooner or later. Another factor is that I have a few years contract in a startup I care much about, sure we could do remote, but this would be a blow to them. I will try to solve these and see if we can move to Taiwan or somewhere else relatively close…

I'm in a similar situation, or I will be eventually. How hard is it for Chinese nationals to move to Taiwan, do you know?

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#432

Everyone here is commenting on Covid, vaccines, social policy and whatnot. I can't help but see a different, bigger and human story here. It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Convenient fast food delivery systems that become tools of rationing and siege. News and communications systems turned to propaganda and social control. Meanw…

> It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Historically this is backwards. 小区 existed in the Tang dynasty much as they do today, but the gate was not operated at the direction of the residents - there was a curfew, and if you lived in a 小区 you had to obey it. If you lived in a house that opened directly onto the street, you were exempt…

What is 小区?

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since Sinovac is basically useless (about half as effective against the original virus, much less vs delta and omicron), China seems to come to the conclusion that letting Omicron run through would have worse consequences than the lockdowns. It’s a fucked situation.

What I don't get is, China has more than enough money to buy a vaccine that is more effective, and more than enough research capability to develop something against omicron if it's that bad there. Why don't they? (Also, why didn't we scale the vaccines with the confidence we had, instead of waiting months doing nothing just because the complete results weren't available?)

> China has more than enough money to buy a vaccine that is more effective

You'd think they have enough money to ship in food and distribute it, yet evidently they're failing at even this.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah if you completely shut down private services there, then there's no way the government has the resources to help everyone. They'll end up killing and traumatizing far more people than they're saving from covid. Rather than forcing everyone to get a vaccine they do this--I mean if you're going to be a totalitarian system at least do it logically. Just goes to show you how shit the CCP logic is.

The Chinese-made vaccines barely work.

That's bullshit though. It works, check the statistics.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#435

I'd like to hear from someone in China on why the government still pursues a zero-Covid policy. Is it just face-saving at this point?

Earlier on municipal and provincial officials have lost their job over (perceived or not) incompetent handling of COVID. No one wants to be the next in line, so when the Beijing central gov tells them to do x, the provincial gov will to 2x and the municipal gov will do 8x just to make sure.

And they will tell higher up "everything is going to according to plan."

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I mean if it had a purpose it has been served. Why don't they use all that massive CCP infrastructure to have zero tolerance for not getting vaccinated instead? It's ludicrous.

Their vaccine doesn’t work - forcing everyone to get it would only highlight that fact.

They have the spycraft and resources to steal moderna and pfizer or even J&J if they wanted it. If that fails, they probably have the money to just buy the rights to produce it. I mean didn't sputnik at least prove somewhat effective?

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I mean if it had a purpose it has been served. Why don't they use all that massive CCP infrastructure to have zero tolerance for not getting vaccinated instead? It's ludicrous.

Their vaccine doesn’t work - forcing everyone to get it would only highlight that fact.

No post body was provided.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The shear size of some of these provinces make the logistical challenge of food delivery almost impossibile. This kind of argument sounds like a logical fallacy to me. Sure, if a single person or organization suddenly needs to supply a large area it's a logistical nightmare. For example if the USA would suddenly need to supply hundreds of millions of people in China. But that is not the case. In those areas the log…

The logistical system that grew with the area has been disrupted by the lockdown. The primary final link was probably people going to stores and restaurants to get food, which they currently aren't allowed to do. A logical fallacy isn't a "feeling", it's a short hand for identifying a poor use of logic, you should be able to directly explain the flaw you see in the other posters reasoning.

> The logistical system that grew with the area has been disrupted by the lockdown.

Yes. That's why every other country exempted the food and health-care supply chains from the lockdown. And yes, that reduced the effectiveness of the lockdowns, to the point where they were ineffective against omicron, but were effective enough against the earlier variants (when people actually was locked down, what didn't happen often).

China's government is displaying a very communist point of view, thinking they can plan a huge economy like theirs. They claim it worked well previously on smaller cities (we wouldn't know either way), but it's the nature of central planning that it is limited in scale.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#439

What actually is going on in China, is there some type of economic meltdown in progress ? Like, we can say it's because of covid, but something seems a miss to me. > This is the biggest, richest, most international city of China and people are starving, without medicine, and without freedom. What?

Western lockdowns were absolutely tame compared to the Chinese government's version. Additionally, ordering cooked food can be extremely cheap in China, and convenient if all the adults in a household are working long hours. Some may not cook at all, or have sufficient supplies to do so for long periods of time on short notice.

Shanghai also has a population of 26 million people. Organizing a super-strict lockdown while also organizing the importation and accurate delivery of food and medicine to all of these people on very short notice is a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#440
post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better was the government statement “TraceTogether is used for infection control and isolation only”. Then a year later they used it to solve a crime. When called out on the prior statement said “oh, well, we’d only use it for serious crimes”. They then pass a bill legalizing using it for criminal investigations.

Sounds good to me. Singapore is the only country you could walk around with 10k hanging out of your back pocket and no one will touch you. Friend left their phone in mall bathroom and 4 hours later when she went back it was still there.

You can even do that in Montréal.
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