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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

#181

Post by klysm »

soperj wrote: post #174
jader201 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Sure, for some folks in the city, moving towards a car-less world may be ideal, but it’s not practical for every single person on the planet.

> Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Cars have been around for a little over 100. It's not a necessity, it's nice to have.

Therefore anything invented since the very first humans existed is strictly not a necessity. Doesn’t seem like a particularly useful definition to me.

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

#182

Post by sgillen »

jader201 wrote: post #172
CalRobert wrote: post #158

I was hoping this was a story about walkable streets and great urban placemaking, terrible to see it's actually a sign of misery.

Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Sure, for some folks in the city, moving towards a car-less world may be ideal, but it’s not practical for every single person on the planet.

That doesn’t mean we can’t root for more walkable cities!

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

#183

Post by lamontcg »

markus92 wrote: post #148
ttul wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bizarrely, I don’t think they have an exit strategy. They ought to be vaccinating all the holdouts, but I think the government there is afraid of a backlash if they force pensioners to roll up their sleeves.

Do they even have usable vaccines? Their Sinovac/Sinopharm vaccines were reasonably effective in preventing severe COVID in the non-elderly pre-omicron, but they don't seem to be too effective against omicron. Most countries using the Chinese vaccines had the "benefit" of having a ton of natural immunity as well. China obviously does not have this. They might seriously have to consider importing Western vaccines as b…

Data from Hong Kong shows that three shots of Sinovac is still 98% effective against severe outcomes with Omicron:

https://fortune.com/2022/03/22/china-covid-vaccine-data-reop...

And it doesn't make a lot of sense that the different vaccines would be substantially different against different variants or would wane quicker once the same level of vaccination was reached. Once you've got the T-cells and B-cells they're permanent and they aren't going to remember what kind of vaccine they came from. The differences in the vaccines should just be in overall effectiveness.

Mostly they just need to get their elderly population vaccinated, doesn't matter much how. It is really weird to watch China treat them with kid gloves.

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

#184

Post by tormeh »

jader201 wrote: post #172
CalRobert wrote: post #158

I was hoping this was a story about walkable streets and great urban placemaking, terrible to see it's actually a sign of misery.

Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Sure, for some folks in the city, moving towards a car-less world may be ideal, but it’s not practical for every single person on the planet.

The article is about Shanghai, which is known to be a city.

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

#185

Post by coldtea »

klysm wrote: post #181
soperj wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Humans have been around for hundreds of thousands of years. Cars have been around for a little over 100. It's not a necessity, it's nice to have.

Therefore anything invented since the very first humans existed is strictly not a necessity. Doesn’t seem like a particularly useful definition to me.

>Therefore anything invented since the very first humans existed is strictly not a necessity.

Obviously.

>Doesn’t seem like a particularly useful definition to me.

It's just the dictionary one. We can invent a laxer version...

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

#186

Post by twblalock »

electrondood wrote: post #134

How exactly is "zero-COVID" supposed to end? It seems like China are committed to extreme measures like this in perpetuity any time there is a future outbreak, which will happen.

The government spent the past few years bragging that it beat Covid and would lose a lot of credibility if it admitted that actually it didn't and now a new policy is needed.

Of course there is also a limit to what the people will take in terms of lockdowns and that hurts the government's credibility too. But the government is still betting they can persist with the current policy.

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

#187

Post by pshc »

jader201 wrote: post #172
CalRobert wrote: post #158

I was hoping this was a story about walkable streets and great urban placemaking, terrible to see it's actually a sign of misery.

Not everyone in the world lives in a city, and for some folks, cars are a necessity. Sure, for some folks in the city, moving towards a car-less world may be ideal, but it’s not practical for every single person on the planet.

We currently live in a car-infested inferno of a planet, what's the use in pointing out that people outside of urban centers often need cars? We still need to drastically and urgently reduce car dependence.

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

#188

Post by ninkendo »

bowsamic wrote: post #180
abeppu wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone other than the Chinese government seems to agree that a zero covid policy isn't realistic anymore. And empirically, they haven't succeeded. But ... why is that the case? Why _doesn't_ an ultra-strict lockdown for this long prevent spread (and allow existing cases to resolve)? What are the remaining opportunities for it to spread? Throughout 2021, I had sort of told myself that most of the harms of the pandem…

This is just a personal guess but I think it’s because omicron is just so infectious that it’s simply impossible to stop the spread

Also, you have to keep stopping the spread, forever, or until you give up. It’s not going to be eradicated, it will keep coming back. Maybe they can still afford to lock down this time, maybe the next time too, but this is a losing strategy in the long run. Eventually it will go through the population and become endemic like it is in the rest of the world.

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

#189

Post by RektBoy »

yalogin wrote: 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.

What do you expect from China? Oppression on multiple levels is basically their most used tool. I'm curious if Chinese people will fight back somehow, or like always turn their heads down like sheep.

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

#190

Post by swores »

spookthesunset wrote: post #122
whimsicalism wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality aside, there are millions of people in China who are alive today who would not be if they had followed the US' policy. It is far too early to be calling that a failure.

It is a failure no matter what the outcome is. The end doesn't justify the means. You don’t get to rob people of their basic human rights. Ever. That is why they are called “human rights”. It means you don’t get to take them away.

> You don’t get to rob people of their basic human rights. Ever.

Pretty much every country on earth disagrees with such a binary statement, unless you can point me to one that doesn't have prisons.

(I'm not saying prisons are wonderful or arguing for/against them here, nor saying that everyone in each country agrees with the current policies, just pointing out that all of our countries have laws that say you DO get to rob people of their basic human rights in certain situations.)

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