Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

storiesfromthestateofexception.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 295 posts

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#151

Post by ccbccccbbcccbb »

ccbccccbbcccbb wrote: post #138
jaqalopes wrote: post #8

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit. I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhap…

> an out of touch, or perhaps even uncaring, government Perhaps even actively malicious, with "perhaps" converging to "definitely".

No post body was provided.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#152

Post by mmcnl »

xster wrote: post #130
dougmwne wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As near I can tell it is an arbitrary decision of an authoritarian government that is too deep into sunk cost to reverse course.

What's the sunken cost of this policy?

Perhaps afraid that backtracking would be seen as a confirmation of policy error?

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#153

Post by jsiaajdsdaa »

cryptonector wrote: post #87
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn'…

I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai. I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China. Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

They definitely do not prep in that city. Maybe you can survive a year on a sack of rice and potatoes, if your utilities aren't cut off.

But without guns and land, prepping becomes "hiding until the situation hopefully goes away"

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#154

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

wonnage wrote: post #140
Retric wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of studies showed lockdowns worked. The long term impact on COVID in vaccinated vs unvaccinated populations has eroded how deadly people perceive COVID. Estimates vary especially around secondary effects like hospitals being overcrowded, but cumulatively lockdowns in the US saved in the low millions of lives. “The study found that from March through August 2020, implementing widespread lockdowns and other miti…

It's frustrating when anti-lockdown folks don't differentiate between lockdown now , when the disease is basically endemic and vaccines make COVID a non-issue for healthy/abled individuals, vs. in March 2020 when there was no vaccine, a mask shortage, a ventilator shortage, no consensus on transmission (the whole aerosol vs droplets shit), and just general pandemonium.

In my experience, the reason they don't differentiate is because they're implicitly arguing against the subset of pro-lockdown folks who don't differentiate. It's easy to forget, because most of us are understandably excited to memory hole the entire debate, but as recently as last fall there were mainstream voices arguing that it wasn't safe for kids to go to school.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#155

Post by [deleted] »

uxp100 wrote: post #80
whimsicalism wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the obvious response and I am confused every time I see an article criticizing these lockdowns. They all seem to be written from the American herd immunity point of view, neglecting that we paved the way to herd immunity with the bodies of a million of our own citizens.

I mean, I think people believe that there would not be that many deaths because China has a heavily vaccinated population and a less strict lockdown could still be stricter than anything the US did, perhaps something closer to Australia. On the first point, I think that the Chinese vaccine is much worse than the mRNA vaccines against Omicron, but I'm not sure what that would mean for death rates. On the second point,…

[deleted]

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#156

Post by phatfish »

sharken wrote: post #147
munk-a wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly my concern too - right now China's response looks great on the world stage... but the pandemic isn't over yet and China rolled out an extremely ineffective vaccine that leaves their population quite vulnerable. If this disaster spreads to other Chinese metropolitan areas it would be devastating.

Exactly this, the Chinese developed vaccine Sinovac is the primary cause of the poor COVID results. It simply doesn't do the job well enough, but good luck trying to make the Chinese leader choose an American product. So the stubbornness of the regime is at fault, but with no limits on terms anymore, i see only bad things for the future of China.

Or a German product ;) Although it seems they have recently gotten round to some extensive testing for an mRNA vaccine. Makes you realise how advanced the Biontech and Moderna vaccines were.

https://www.channelnewsasia.com/asia/china-walvax-says-has-m...

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#157

Post by chiefalchemist »

jaqalopes wrote: post #8

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit. I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhap…

> Your experience of life, even in the best of times, varies greatly by neighborhood, industry, income level, and more. So I guess what I'm trying to say is, definitely don't buy the CCP propaganda, but equally don't take the (truly grim) videos all over social media as representative of the whole situation. This crisis is unfolding on a bell curve.

In general, isn't this true everywhere? For example, drive by shootings don't happen everywhere. Or even with Covid in the USA, the non-white underserved had more deaths and more hospitalizations. This was mentioned, by always in passing.

I'm not sure about Western governments, but at least in the USA, the media is very good at using emotions to sway perceptions of the actual underlying data / statistics.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#158

Post by chiefalchemist »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #95
cryptonector wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai. I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China. Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.

Interesting. A form of the supply chain crisis if you will.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#159

Post by djrogers »

whimsicalism wrote: post #46
gyf304 wrote: post #16

We must protect human lives at all costs, even at the cost of human lives. Jokes aside, what we really want to know is that - what are the human lives lost lockdown v.s. no lockdown, maybe also factor in the possible economic downturns. The government did a not-so-good job convincing people that doing a lockdown is indeed better than the alternative - "We ran the numbers, it seems like doing a lockdown at this stage…

I mean, any crunching of the numbers shows that China has effectively averted 3 million dead of their own population due to covid - assuming equal quality of care with the US. I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?

Any crunching of what numbers? You and I have no idea how many Chinese people have been infected or died of COVID.

As recently as earlier this week the Chinese Gov’t was claiming 130k infections in Shanghai with zero deaths. Are those the numbers you’re trusting, or were you counting the pyres visible on satellite photos from areas that had ‘no COVID’ according to the CCP?

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#160

Post by kharak »

bllguo wrote: post #54
kharak wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is certainly an important factor. I think it goes even deeper. China doesn't recognize human rights as we know them. The collective, represented by state interests (CCP), is above all. Hence any individual right can be sacrificed for the greater good. Aka state interests. And that's why situations like this shutdown in Shanghai can unfold. It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite a…

> It's a deeply philosophical problem that China hasn't resolved, despite ample opportunity to learn the lesson. What a bizarre statement. How can you simultaneously think it's a deep philosophical issue and also that there is an obvious solution?

I didn’t say it was obvious? Even in the western world, it’s sometimes contested.

Still, the consequences of having and not having human rights have been observed often enough by now. Including in Chinas (recent) history.

Post reply on HN