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Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

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Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#61
post #43

I did not realize there is such a strict lockdown even now. Somehow missed that news cycle. However that makes me wonder if the other countries in the world like India and major parts of the US even test now. I mean unless it’s absolutely clear it’s covid they probably don’t test and go on with their lives.

Quoted post unavailable.

The NY Times has been covering this lockdown for weeks now and I don’t think you get more mainstream than that. Here’s an article from Saturday for instance:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/business/china-zero-covid...

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#62
post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are rumors >Supposedly I'd rather prefer people to have an opinion and share it, instead of sharing rumours and "supposedly" theories without sourcing them.

Obviously I can't source something from inside President Xi's head. But that rumor seems consistent with the observed facts on the ground.

No post body was provided.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally, it's going to take a lot more failure for me to be convinced that averting ~4 million deaths was somehow misguided in the long-term. It's interesting how much American media is trying to convince me otherwise as of the past few months.

About 10 million people die per year in China. At some point when thinking about the value of preventing death you need to introduce QALYs and then you need to think about the the duration, impact and breadth of lockdowns.

But most of China has not been on lockdown for most of the pandemic. Most people have experienced less lockdown than in the US, albeit more intense when it is locked down.

4 million excess deaths is a ton no matter which way you look at it.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#64

Does anybody know what the situation is in the rest of China? I hear there are a couple of strict lockdowns in other cities, and some districts of Beijing. China has in the past justified their harsh measures because the relative majority could live without Covid restrictions (and illness and deaths of course). It would be interesting to see what portion of the population is on lockdown, but it is hard to find good s…

95% of the country is basically fine. I have a few friends in cities like Chongqing and Nanjing and their only issues are travel restrictions between regions.

Just to be clear, 5% of China is 70 million people.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#65

Does anybody know what the situation is in the rest of China? I hear there are a couple of strict lockdowns in other cities, and some districts of Beijing. China has in the past justified their harsh measures because the relative majority could live without Covid restrictions (and illness and deaths of course). It would be interesting to see what portion of the population is on lockdown, but it is hard to find good s…

My inlaws are imprisoned in Beijing suburb in theor own compound already for 2nd or 3rd month with daily testing.

Shanghai is just most visible, but there are many other places, if you just count bunch of the biggest places you quickly came to something like 150M people locked at home, possibly much more, didn't check it for some time.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#66
In Spain we had a very strict lockdown (not as strict as the Chinese but still) between March-May 2020 and still over 4k cars were sold that month. Which at the time I thought it was an extremely high number considering everything that was going on (link in Spanish): https://noticias.coches.com/noticias-motor/ventas-de-coches-...

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#67

This is similar to what happened in Europe at height of our first lockdowns - give a few months and demand will be back with a catch-up.

It's not about demand, though - it's about people being physically unable to leave and buy a car. It's not necessarily comparable to Europe because nowhere in Europe was pursuing the same zero COVID policy that China is, and it's tough to imagine that they'll ever achieve that on any kind of a long-term basis. Given that, who knows how long these restrictions will stay in place.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article is talking about how extreme the lockdown is. As other commenters have pointed out, it's normal to expect some non-zero number of sales, so when there's an exact zero, it's very odd. As an example, notice how they said "almost all dealerships" and not "all dealerships". Non-zero numbers are normal. Absolute zero is a very strange signal.

> As an example, notice how they said "almost all dealerships" and not "all dealerships". There are probably some dealer facilities open because ambulances, police cars and food delivery vehicles still need servicing.

Yep, exceptions are normal. A zero-exception policy is not. Having dealerships open for servicing only is normal. Seems like there would be a similar exceptional need to sell at least one vehicle in the city for official purposes.

Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

#70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

About 10 million people die per year in China. At some point when thinking about the value of preventing death you need to introduce QALYs and then you need to think about the the duration, impact and breadth of lockdowns.

But most of China has not been on lockdown for most of the pandemic. Most people have experienced less lockdown than in the US, albeit more intense when it is locked down. 4 million excess deaths is a ton no matter which way you look at it.

I agree and the strategy makes sense for China.

Since it is now more or less endemic in the rest of the world it will be interesting to see how long they will maintain it.

Ultimately zero covid is a thing you do to buy time for your healthcare system or for better vaccination coverage (or just to kick the can, maybe you get better tech).

The 4 million deaths are inevitable unless you can maintain zero COVID forever or fundamentally change the situation for people who are very vulnerable to COVID-19.

Preventing healthcare systems from being overwhelmed is a big factor.

Otherwise you are just doing "accounting" to choose what year your excess deaths happen in, for political purposes.

All that said, I'd always take an extra year over dying right now.

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