Earlier quoted context omitted.
Schools are closed, and for good reasons. If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID. The gospel of online education may be coming true? Jokes aside, it's not as miserable as many people may think.
> If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID The risks of missing education, physical activity and socialization are far greater for children than Covid. We have two years of data to show this.
Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
141–150 of 199 posts
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID The risks of missing education, physical activity and socialization are far greater for children than Covid. We have two years of data to show this.
It's not a permanent lockdown... just for a few weeks (so far)
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID The risks of missing education, physical activity and socialization are far greater for children than Covid. We have two years of data to show this.
It's not a permanent lockdown... just for a few weeks (so far)
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
These are rates per 100,000 for vaccinated, boosted and unvaccinated from Ontario (population 14 million). I don't see much benefit against infection to those with 2 or 3 mRNA doses. The most recent datapoints (7 day average): - Not fully vaccinated: 14.86 cases per 100,000 people - Fully vaccinated: 17.39 cases per 100,000 people - Vaccinated with booster: 26.89 cases per 100,000 people https://covid-19.ontario.ca/d…
For infection rates, perhaps there is a bit of a confounding factor of vaccinated people being less careful (eg unmasking) due to confidence in their vaccination status? The deaths by vaccination status stats on that same page are pretty interesting.
This leads to very confusing debates, the "headline" stats used to sell the vaccine demonstrate high effectiveness (they tend to use data from the 4-6 month window where they know it will look good).
The metastudies / long-term studies tell a more nuanced story.
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
Consistency refers to the spread not the mean. For instance, you could have a vaccine performing uniformly poorly relative to a prior infection and that sure would be consistent.
I was implying consistently good. As in, the ~ 90% protection was relatively uniform
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
Don't forget that China still tries for a zero covid strategy even with variants that are unlikely to overload the health system like Omicron. So whether it's Omicron or a new variant, their response would be the same. Sooner or later they'll have to open up like we did (and things are going just fine). But I think it's a PR issue, they've been preaching the zero covid so long.. They care a lot about their reputation…
It’s been reported that Omicron was relatively mild in the West because so many people are vaccinated or have had previous exposure. In a place like Hong Kong, where relatively few people were vaccinated or previously infected, Omicron was much deadlier. https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/04/09/asias-ou...
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
I absolutely love the goalposts for some people seem to have shifted from “this ends when we have a vaccine” all the way to “this ends when we have a newer, better vaccine”. When will people finally accept this is a battle that cannot be won. Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or earthquake.
The vaccines simply don't work as well anymore. If they were still as effective as they were at the start, we wouldn't be here. We could have ensured that by limiting worldwide transmission and distributing the vaccines more homogeneously, but we didn't. Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory viruses. Multiple times.
Ones this contagious and mutative though?
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
the consensus of many people seems to be that Covid 'is over' Personally, I'll reserve my judgement on that until we're past the normal autumn flu/cold wave. Cases declined last year in the summer too.
I agree. Anecdotally, a friend of mine's workplace which canceled WFH a few months ago has had many people out sick with Covid over the past three weeks (more than the entire previous year), but luckily none have them have needed to be hospitalized.
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is a scenario where we have to work from home a couple of times a year for a few days due to a mild infection really such a nightmare? Considering the constant lockdowns we'll need to prevent it, that sounds a lot worse tbh. Of course it's possible a dangerous strain will emerge but I think it's worth the risk.
There is a lot more that can be done besides lockdowns - we can have actually useful contact tracing and testing. There are tons of measures that can be implemented to reduce transmission. We're giving up on all of that. Besides, viral infections are very damaging to the human body. An infection severe enough to knock you out for multiple days multiple times a year, on top of all the other disease we have, each time…
But we have many viral infections we come into contact with on a daily basis. We can't avoid them all :)
> Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school, parents will be in deep shit.
This is exactly caused by the quarantines and lockdowns, not by the virus itself.
> And on a personal preference level, I would much rather have a week or two of lockdown every year on average
But it won't be a week or two of lockdown. The Netherlands had a major lockdown this christmas for Omikron, they took it too seriously as they wanted to wait for confirmation it was not going to overload the health system. After they lifted things, it came right up (though didn't overload the health system, as per experience from other countries).
With the contagiousness at the high level of Omikron, a lockdown will only be effective for its duration. We'll be in a lockdown nightmare.
Re: Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for food
#150One set of friends who live in Shanghai are Chinese. They have complained about lack of food. They didn't have extra food in their house when the lockdown began.
Another set of friends are a mixed couple (European/Chinese). Two days ago when specifically queried how they are going they said they had been in lockdown for nine days and had only received a small amount of vegetables from the government 5 days in. They said the volume of food was clearly completely insufficient for their family of four, and "thank god" they had some extra food in the house. They said while you are allowed to order waimai (home delivery food), the demand vastly outstrips the supply so it is functionally impossible to do so.
In general, compared to the lockdowns experienced elsewhere in China (with the possible exception of Wuhan initially), it seems the suddenness, scale and length of the Shanghai lockdown was particularly extreme and this has caused logistics challenges.