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Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

bloomberg.com

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

#301

Post by sweezyjeezy »

DiogenesKynikos wrote: post #233
sweezyjeezy wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't read the article - I thought parent comment was suggesting this is based on excess mortality?

Not based on any actual measurement of excess mortality. They're citing a machine learning model that tries to correlate various other measures (like GDP/capita, unemployment, etc.) with mortality in some countries, and then extrapolates to every country. That model spits out ridiculous numbers for China. A normal statistician would look at that and say, "This model doesn't generalize well," not, "1.7 million people…

Got it, thanks for this

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

#302

Post by Ancapistani »

zardinality wrote: post #216
markus92 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sinovac is effective to omicron but only with the third booster. In contrast, Pfizer is almost as effective as sinovac with merely two shots in preventing the COVID. So the problem there first is not why they don't import Pfizer, it is why they do not even have sinovac booster. The answer here is simple: the government do not enforce anybody to get vaccinated. No one. If you missed a corona test at 7am you might be g…

> You probably don't have to right to travel freely, but you have the right to not get an injection in China. FWIW.

It sounds like you're either Chinese, or have close ties there.

For context, I live in the Southern US. I've not been vaccinated due to a medical concern that's shared with my doctor. My normal doctor is aggressively anti-COVID-vaccine, so I got a second opinion just in case, and concluded that while it probably wouldn't hurt me significantly... there is a chance of side effects that is within an order of magnitude of the chance that I will eventually develop a very severe case of COVID. I've already had COVID once - almost certainly the Delta variant - so the chances of my developing a severe case are very low anyhow.

I'm able to travel freely, and until very recently no one around me has any idea whether or not I've been vaccinated. The only change to that is that I'm taking a trip across the country for work in the next couple of months, and I had to get a doctor's note for my employer to release them of liability should I catch COVID and die as a result of that trip.

In short, I don't see this as a choice between being able to travel freely or being forced to take the vaccine. It's more nuanced than that.

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

#303

Post by tinus_hn »

minsc_and_boo wrote: post #286
tinus_hn wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s known to happen and there is absolutely no way to test how often it happens, so this kind of handwaving is opinion masked as science. And it doesn’t really matter, because the lockdown tactic only works with COVID-zero, not with COVID-one. So even if only one infection spreads from wildlife, you’re back at square one and you can start your lockdowns all over again. And don’t think you can just detect the infecti…

Again, there is no evidence to suggest that COVID transmission from wildlife happens other than in rare cases. Suggesting that it does happen because we just don't know is considered an argument from ignorance. It's important to make these evidence-based distinctions because there are a variety of people looking to grab on to whatever they can to support their biases wrgt science and COVID.

How can there be evidence-based distinctions if there is no evidence either way? There is no evidence for nor against widespread transmission from wildlife, so handwaving statements about biases and evidence-based distinctions are no more than demonstrations of a prejudice about sources. Your prejudice is that it must be incontrovertible science because the CDC mentions it. In reality nobody knows either way, and the CDC merely states they think something is unlikely, and there is no evidence for it. But there is no evidence against it either.

And no matter how widespread it is, it only takes one infection for COVID zero to fail. So it doesn’t matter if it is widespread or not. That is the major flaw of COVID zero policies. Sure, you can test everyone every two days and hope no infections fall through the cracks. Are they going to keep that up for the next decade? Because COVID isn’t going anywhere, it’s endemic.

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

#304

Post by david_allison »

abeppu wrote: post #164
_fat_santa wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been following the situation and it's absolutely wild. It all stems from their Zero covid policy, they are the only country still perusing it, to the absolute detriment and destruction of everything else it seems. With how fast Omicron spreads, zero-covid is simply untenable these days but China is trying... The basic report is that people are starving. The government has provided food but the food situation is…

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…

> Why _doesn't_ an ultra-strict lockdown for this long prevent spread (and allow existing cases to resolve)?

It works, but 3 weeks is too optimistic. You need to deal with noncompliance, spread within apartments, and essential employment which adds additional time to achieve to 0-COVID.

I live on the Isle of Man, which successfully introduced a 0-COVID policy in 2020 (imprisonment for breaching restrictions) and subsequently removed all COVID restrictions once 0-COVID was achieved.

> Throughout 2021, I had sort of told myself that most of the harms of the pandemic were optional ... evidently that's not true. Why not?

Since it's infeasible to enforce a 0-COVID policy globally, strong border restrictions are required. With strong border restrictions, 0-COVID isn't economically viable long-term as it permanently affects any industry relying on tourism or travel which causes structural unemployment if left unchecked; very few visitors are going to accept a 2/3 week quarantine on arrival unless there's a large incentive.

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

#305

Post by mormegil »

ctoth wrote: post #201

Whenever I think about the situation in China it makes me wonder why the Chinese government is spending so much political capital to keep people from getting infected by such an incredibly transmissible disease. I had this idea that China was run by engineer types who were fairly rational. From the initial denial that there was any disease at all, to later saying it wasn't transmissible between humans, to the obvious…

There is a Nature preprint evaluating the Chinese situation and coming to the conclusion that:

> We find that the level of immunity induced by the March 2022 vaccination campaign would be insufficient to prevent an Omicron wave that would result in exceeding critical care capacity with a projected intensive care unit peak demand of 15.6-times the existing capacity and causing approximately 1.55 million deaths.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-022-01855-7

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

#306

Post by slaw »

lamontcg wrote: post #195
whimsicalism wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't doubt some deaths are underreported, but if they had seen anything close to the death rate & spread & hospital influx as in the US, it would have been obvious from outbound traveler antibody tests as well as just social media reports. The Economist "model" your article relies on is seriously, seriously flawed. It is laughable to see it reported on as if it is ground truth. I highly encourage you to look into…

There's also a "Schroedinger's China" problem here with the argument that China is covering up a massive number of deaths. If they'd already been hammered by coronavirus and covered it up, then they'd have high levels of natural immunity and wouldn't need to be pursuing this zero covid policy.

They can have high levels of natural or vaccines given immunity and still pursue zero covid policy.

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

#307

Post by slaw »

whimsicalism wrote: post #103
_fat_santa wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 4 million excess deaths is a ton no matter which way you look at it. You have to take the size of China into account, with 1.5B people, 4M is 2% of their population, it would be similar to 700k deaths in the US. While yes it is a ton, think about what effect the lockdowns will have. Some have speculated that more people have died thus far in Shanghai from the lockdowns than from Covid itself.

> Some have speculated that more people have died thus far in Shanghai from the lockdowns than from Covid itself. Which only shows how few covid deaths China has had.

Which shows how benign covid is.

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

#308

Post by diogenescynic »

cyberlurker wrote: post #224
diogenescynic wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They moved on to Ukraine and inflation.

Are these not important issues? Although I will add inflation is exacerbated by belief in inflation, which can make over reporting a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there are other causes and I don't think it is over reported.

>Are these not important issues?

I didn't take any position at all and I wasn't judging. Just look at articles and what's covered more frequently on cable news. COVID is self-evidently lower priority at the moment to stock market volatility, inflation, Ukraine, abortion, mass shootings, etc.

It's been 2+ years, people are burnt out of COVID--and I say this as someone who tested positive for it yesterday and is sitting in my spare bedroom to quarantine myself from my family.

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

#309

Post by pell »

Kranar wrote: post #244
CogitoCogito wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I had this idea that China was run by engineer types who were fairly rational. Why did you have this idea?

Almost every member of the State Council of China consists of people with STEM degrees (mostly engineering), followed by some with an economics/finance background.

STEM degrees != rational politics

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

#310

Post by steveylang »

elsonrodriguez wrote: post #281
ctoth wrote: post #201

Whenever I think about the situation in China it makes me wonder why the Chinese government is spending so much political capital to keep people from getting infected by such an incredibly transmissible disease. I had this idea that China was run by engineer types who were fairly rational. From the initial denial that there was any disease at all, to later saying it wasn't transmissible between humans, to the obvious…

One of many possible reasons they are doing this is to practice for a deadlier disease and develop a playbook of what works, what doesn't, how to feed people, how to quell unrest, etc.

They are definitely succeeding at figuring out how not to do it then.
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