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An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

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Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#521

Post by netsharc »

marcosdumay wrote: post #400
hans1729 wrote: post #295

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?)

Sibling commenter says money, but I fear it's more to do with ego, admitting the Made in China vaccines are ineffective against Omicron and having to import Western-made vaccines would mean a loss of face for the government. It's sad how a lot of China's actions are rooted in their feeling of insecurity.

But my instincts tell me some higher ups in government probably have taken a Western vaccine because they know they're effective against Omicron, they just can't admit that publicly.

On the topic of "research", I wonder why they haven't just "pirated" one of the mRNA vaccines and claimed it a Chinese invention.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#522

Post by jefftk »

threatripper wrote: post #90
jefftk wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect the gap to continue to narrow because it has been narrowing: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

Besides the statistical anomaly at the end (probably a one time correction for some past cases) the US death rate has always been higher. So the gap has been widening until now. Look at cumulative cases. Only the derivative of the gap, the daily deaths per capita, has been narrowing. I agree that the daily numbers should become similar when prior immunity due to vaccination or infection becomes similar (all else bein…

Good point! In cumulative deaths per million:

                  US   AUS  delta
    2022-01-01  2477    87   2360
    2022-02-01  2673   141   2532
    2022-03-01  2852   204   2648
    2022-04-01  2948   247   2701
I didn't look closely at the graph and I misread the recent apparent spike, which I agree with you is likely some kind of correction.

I'm sorry I can't go back and edit my comment!

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#523

Post by Drblessing »

moistly wrote: post #504
Drblessing wrote: post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. Also, he gives no evidence of claims. Lockdowns don't work [1]. [1] https://weartv.com/news/local/study-from-johns-hopkins-univ-...

Christ, this misrepresentation once again. All y’all need to get caught up: that is not a John Hopkins University study, the researchers are not epidemiologists they’re g.d. economists, the thing is not peer-reviewed, and it does not support your claim. Quit being a sucker propaganda that encourages you to get sick.

Call me when you get some evidence

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#524

Post by urthor »

Noumenon72 wrote: post #190
0des wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> as a percentage Buddy I don't even know where to start here, while being polite.

This is basic numeracy. Looking at several instances of something and asking "Is that a lot?" It was many more suicides than you have seen on an average day but it may be a surprisingly small number given the situation. Percentage is a tool to help you ask "did the many incidents I heard about represent what most people there experienced, or not?"

I should've have had "this is a symbolism for how wonderful human beings are" at the start

These were my exact thoughts. Even in a tragedy, most people tried their hardest until the very end.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#525

Post by stjohnswarts »

gruez wrote: post #341
xienze wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ Find me another country on earth whose numbers look even remotely like this.

Seems like the reasonable position to hold is that china may not be telling the truth, but it's also probably true that they have very low death rates (eg. in line with taiwan/south korea/japan). The parent post did say "broadly accurate", after all.

The CCP could not exist if they were transparent about what all the don't tell the people of China. The would be overthrown inside of a year.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#526

Post by stjohnswarts »

chasd00 wrote: post #285

With omicron isn’t a zero Covid policy a fools errand? As the virus mutates into ever more infectious variants a zero-Covid policy becomes impossibe.

There is a limit to how infectious it can get. I guess they are trying to play the long game on that.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#527

Post by mstaoru »

ailun wrote: post #431
mstaoru wrote: post #405

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

As far as I understand (unconfirmed directly), as soon as you have an ARC or a Gold Card (my plan), you can bring in your spouse (regardless of nationality) and children (I don't have any).

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#528

Post by ImaCake »

School-Cotton wrote: post #391
jefftk wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Australia: 6.6k deaths, 25M population, 0.03% dead US: 1M deaths, 300M people, 0.3% dead. On the other hand, Australia's had most of their deaths recently and is still going, while the US deaths were mostly earlier. So the gap will likely narrow over time.

I think living in the relative freedom of the US rather than Australia for the last two years has been worth way more than an 0.27% chance of dying.

We spent most of 2020 and half of 2021 living with no fear of the virus because it wasn't here. No one I know has even been hospitalised by COVID. It is hilarious to me (and most Australians I know) that Americans think we had a hard time or our strategy didn't work. It did. We came as close as possible to "winning" the pandemic. Now if you lived in Melbourne life kinda sucked. But everywhere else was fine. Perth and Adelaide had about ~2 weeks of lockdowns between them after May 2020.

Also a 2 in 1000 risk of death is frankly awful. I wouldn't take those odds.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#529

Post by ImaCake »

0xy wrote: post #293
ImaCake wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well Australia is open and has been for a while. As far as I know there were no novel variants that were found first here because the lockdowns suppressed case numbers and besides, there is only 25 million Australians. We have the same variants as the rest of the world, except most Australians don't know anyone who has died from COVID.

All you had to do to 'achieve' this was sacrifice the education of the young, decimate small business, prevent citizens from leaving the country (you know, against the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia signed and violated) and unleash police on the citizenry for peacefully protesting. Australian police fired rubber bullets at peaceful assemblers [1], violently threw a compliant man to the ground causing…

Oh yeah Melbourne screwed up badly. But the rest of the country didn't. Don't conflate Melbourne's bad contact tracing and subsequent lockdowns with the quality of life elsewhere in Australia. We spent most of the last two years COVID free and without lockdowns. Even Sydney contact-traced their way out of multiple outbreaks before July 2021 without lockdowns.

It is genuinely pretty funny seeing Americans think they know more about what happened in Australia than the people who lived here. We still live up to our "The Lucky Country" moniker.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#530

Post by daemoens »

pmlnr wrote: post #379
techolic wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Are people really finding that out only now? I thought that this was generally accepted knowledge even in China, despite the constant fear and propaganda they live with. Yes and no. You see, 2 decades ago probably half of my peers had that knowledge, that was when the internet was pretty much uncensored compared to how it is today. Over the years they get converted by the narrative and now it's probably 5% or even…

This is interesting to hear, because distrust got so deeply embedded in Hungarians in the previous and the current system, that at this point, barely anyone believe anything, and the ones that do follow after the conspiracy lunatics.

That's interesting, what I've read mostly says Orban took over most of the media, especially TV and that's been a big reason for why he won reelection. I'm guessing you're Hungarian, is that true?
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