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Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

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Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of experience in Hong Kong, this is exactly what happened. People weren't afraid of testing positive, they were afraid of being taken away to a poorly maintained quarantine facility for two weeks. Even your close contacts would be quarantined for two weeks, making it so that many people (unsurprisingly) lied about who they met, or where they went. For people, who live paycheck to paycheck, this would essentially…

Indeed, that was exactly the issue in Hong Kong and when the likelihood of having this happen in HK with the mandatory tests and rising cases started to skyrocket, that's when I left to go take refugee outside the madness. Ironically, I promptly got covid in Europe and it was no big deal. The disease itself is no big deal, the real risk is authoritarian governments who have gone mental. All of my friends who have got…

> The disease itself is no big deal

Well, not for you personally I guess.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades. > For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions. Since we’re talking counter evidence: - Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizen…

"China" didn't do that. The Chinese people did that after Deng Xiaoping got into a position where he could stop the government actively destroying all progress in the country. And whilst I used to be impressed by this "lifted a billion people" take, the reality is that lots of countries industrialized, modernized and huge numbers of people left behind agrarian poverty. This isn't unique or special and in fact when ra…

> Taiwan, Korea, Japan

Japan has less than 1/10th China’s population. Taiwan has less than 20% of Taiwan.

Japan was far richer than China per capita before WWII. Japan was the superpower that believed it could take on the West. Until recent, did China ever try to expand and attack the West?

Japan was never occupied by a resource colonizer, while China had the opium war.

Right now, both Japan and Taiwan’s economy are at stagnating. How do I know? I’m a permanent resident of one, and have a passport from the other. The argument that democracy exists, and let people do whatever they want will lead to prosperous is false. Otherwise America wouldn’t be at risk of slowing growth, potentially civilization decline.

Also, what are your thoughts on Singapore which is a one family dictatorship ?

> Japan had two of its major cities leveled by atomic bombs.

Have you been or is this armchair philosophizing from intro to WWII? I’ve been to the monuments at both, but the fact of the matter is those were military cities. Those cities by themselves are not what crippled the Japanese economy post WWII.

> There's really nothing impressive about China beyond the sheer number of people the government has managed to hold back.

Is that why India and Africa with a billion people are in poverty still?

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes if you ignore all the times when it doesn't work, then lockdown works. It's an irrelevant tautology with no intellectual or scientific merit. There is no Shanghai exception for lockdown as a scientific policy, just like there is no Swedish exception. To decide if a policy advertised as based on universal biology is working you need to evaluate all the evidence, and cases where it doesn't work either disprove the…

Agree and disagree. Lockdown can work until it does not work. Science can evaluate the speed of spread, does not dictate what's happening. My city had a short lockdown a few month ago, Shenzhen and Guangzhou just finished lockdown. It is fair to say 9/10 worked. It is more difficult to contain Omicron, science can say that. Also virus won't spread when no one is moving, science can also say that. It is just a trade o…

Unfortunately for some, whatever “science says” will be ignored next time.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#134
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is difficult to name a country that has "defeated" COVID. This video is from one of the best responses if you believe the lies the Chinese government pumps out about their COVID case counts. The situation today remains the same as the situation in March 2020 - anyone who doesn't die quickly of other causes is going to get COVID. The only surprise the entire way through the pandemic is they managed to rush a vaccin…

> then letting individuals make decisions for better or worse That sounds a lot like anarchy to me. I believe we invented laws (and religion before that) exactly because individuals can't be trusted to make informed decisions in certain cases.

I don’t know what your culture claims, but freedom isn’t a privilege, and the only good social contract is a voluntary one. Things are never going to work otherwise in the US.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#137

I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.

I hope it doesn’t, political reform in China is dangerous and may cause chaos - call me selfish but let my younger sister out first

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#138
post #28

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship…

> They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades. > For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions. Since we’re talking counter evidence: - Singapore is a benevolent dictatorship - Japan’s schooling system prepares its citizen…

>China has also taken 1 billion people out of poverty in just 3 decades.

Capitalism took them out of poverty once Mao died and the Chinese government mostly got out of the market's way

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#139
post #23

I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.

Repost from somewhere else: --- What bothers me in the past few days is to make sense of what’s happening in Shanghai. There are quite a bit of rumors, but nothing makes sense. However, now I think that I have arrived at a reasonable explanation of what happened. First, let’s establish some facts: 1. Once you have more than 10k cases in a city with Omicron (R0 ~ 9), true zero-covid policy (as opposed to zero-covid in…

The numbers provided for "asymptomatic" cases are meaningless, since cases are only considered "symptomatic" if they are exhibiting the severe symptoms associated with the Alpha and Delta versions. By the time most people get back a definitive positive PCR test report, most have already gotten over the sore throat and fever phase and are left with mere coughing. Some only get the coughing and nothing else. Regardless, these are objectively speaking also symptoms, but they don't get counted that way.

Today's article mentions this: https://austrianchina.substack.com/p/beijing-lockdown-rumor

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#140
post #2

What really grates at people’s nerves? Uncertainty. Not knowing when you will end up testing positive and be whisked off by one of the commissar’s white costumed goon squads in the middle of the night. If you don’t agree, that’s when they typically come, like the NKVD secret police back in the Soviet Union. And not knowing what will happen to your children, your elderly parents and your pets if / when that day comes.…

People have more pressing issue I imaging: food shortage is not a matter of incertitude, it's already there, lack of space is another. If you have enough propaganda to put some people, who happen to live in very comfortable homes, with gardens etc, food coming from the outside as anything else and they still get payed as usual probably only few will revolt.

That's indeed the Great Reset/World Economic Forum model https://www.forbes.com/sites/worldeconomicforum/2016/11/10/s... only they imaging to been able to substitute large homes with garden with a Virtual Revolution alike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_Revolution capsule homes with metaverse-alike seats. A modern version of the classic panem et circense.

IMVHO China want to change it's demography quickly so they have to manage some justified enormous amount of "elderly" deaths to lower their mean population age. They need more young and they can't even nourish actual adults. A pandemic as excuse, with proper "cures" (not to cure but to kill), pushing people to suicide, ... is a mildly effective technique. In the meantime they can test countless of things and nearly no one will spot them. Some might see this as a so extreme theory that follow some flat-earth believers, and that's exactly why it might be a "good" one: the classic Goebbels "kill 100 children and the entire world will be against you, kill 100M and no one will believe, almost anyone will remain silent or even criticize those who speak".

I suggest a small reasoning in the end:

- did we agree that Earth is overpopulated?

- did we agree that IPCC/GIEC reports on climate might be realistic enough to be called true?

- did we agree that any human being rightly want to live better and so no demand of real, tangible "food rationing, lifestyle changes" can happen and be effective without some enormously real or mocked emergency (cfr. the classic Capitalism and Freedom)?

That what you think it can be done from here to 2030, a VERY short period of time in social changes terms, to completely transform the society? In the past we used wars, but with nukes it's not much a good idea AND wars tend to kill more young that old people...

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