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

161–170 of 295 posts

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#161

Post by munk-a »

version_five wrote: post #149
munk-a wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh, mostly because I'm a Canadian and the Canadian response to everything is dictated by its citizens determining what the government does in reaction to various stimuli. I'm not going to execute a violent coup to overthrow the Canadian government to force my personal ideals on everyone else but me expressing my ideals and trying, within the system, to tilt the responses to what works for me is, in fact, the Canadian…

Fair enough, I'm canadian and the same reason I haven't moved to Florida is because I'd rather stay and try to fight people like you than just give up and move somewhere else. I think the difference is that all I want is to be left alone, while a you want is for the government to force people to do what you want (because anything else would somehow harm you and your fellow citizens), but that's a pretty classic strug…

I think there's a problem with assuming that basic libretarian thinking is about freedom though. I personally value my and others' freedom to not be murdered over the freedom to murder people. There are an awful lot of unjust laws that can color people's view on acting as a society - but there are also quite necessary forces in there to make sure that people have the ability to live good lives.

My central philosophy in life is basically to strive to have a positive net impact on those around me - and it's why I find that old Franklin quote "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." so problematic - it comes from a good place (basically it can, IMO be read as a scathing indictment of America's response to 9/11) but it gets taken so far overboard so often. Everyone just wants to live, when we're threatened with an existential (for some of us) threat like a pandemic, we need to coordinate an appropriate group response to sanely respond to it. When the threat is minor we can delegate that to the individual and let folks do as they will - but when we're talking about a pandemic group action is required to overcome the issue.

I'm fine seeing wide ranging debates on the political stage over national drug care and the like - but this pandemic is a very serious threat that has killed a lot of Canadians. I don't think it's fair to paint pretty reasonable quarantine restrictions as authoritarian when that word, to so many people, draws up the image of Stalin or Hitler.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#163

Post by catchclose8919 »

Covid is endemic now and it was probably obvious from close to the beginning that it would become so. Even if vaccines curb spread a bit and reduce deaths a lot, vaccinated people still get and transmit it.

We should focus on iterating vaccines faster, probably making cocktail-mRNA-vaccines with multiple strains and formulas updated every ~6 months, and helping all countries get access to the best vaccines, like open-source mRNA-vaccine tech and all the others that showed promising (compensate patent holders a couple billions etc.)

We're so incredibly dogmatic in our thinking with this, just like it took >1 year to figure out that most of the time ventilators don't help (those that can be helped can so with only oxygen), we still have this lingering belief that COVID isn't here to stay.

We should accept death as part of life and just iterate faster on things...

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#164

Post by spookthesunset »

whimsicalism wrote: post #60
godelski wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really. There's also a lot of differences, like SARS didn't escape to be a global pandemic. I'd say that's a big difference. At this point zero covid is like trying to create a zero flu policy. That's very different from a zero measles policy.

Why? It's worked for them for a few years now and they have successfully mitigated what would have been millions of deaths. Your claim that it doesn't work because of the "nature of viruses" seems belied by the facts on the ground.

I don’t think it matters at all if it works or not. It shouldn’t be done. It’s basically a violation of basic human rights. I’d like to think even in our worst of times, we’d respect basic human rights…

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#165

Post by catchclose8919 »

hedgehog wrote: post #97

While China's approach is heavy-handed it also has saved a lot of lives, even assuming some fudging of the data their death rate is the lowest of any large country. Countries like Japan and Thailand have managed to avert nearly as much death as China with very different approaches so there's a good argument that there are good alternatives. Countries like Sweden, England, or especially the US have done so much worse…

The only real measure of success is "customer satisfaction", and I'd dare to say that the majority of the people of Sweden, UK and US are quite satisfied and some would have preferred even less measures to be taken...

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#166

Post by spookthesunset »

munk-a wrote: post #116
version_five wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Whether or not global lockdowns would have worked, I prefer a world in which you can get covid to one in which the government can confine you to your house. You're welcome to move to China if you prefer the latter approach - or just confine yourself to your house yourself...

In fact I have mostly confined myself to my house. I can work remotely and we have an income sufficient to rely on instacart and delivery for food. We go out for walks in the neighborhood but we avoid going in stores or restaurants except on rare occasions. We've taken one vacation (during the lull before omicron became a thing) and we'll try and take another vacation this summer but, otherwise, we're trying our best…

It requires a lot of privilege to live the kind of Covid lifestyle you describe.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#167

Post by sanderjd »

diebeforei485 wrote: post #31
memish wrote: post #15

Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?

I mean, the US has had a million covid deaths. China presumably doesn't want 3 million deaths?

They could (have) vaccinate(d) people more effectively.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#168

Post by catchclose8919 »

gpm wrote: post #44
memish wrote: post #15

Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?

Because it's been working, both from an economics and health perspective, and the locals seem to be in support of it, except for in Shanghai Here's a well known person in Shenzhen discussing it. Obviously be aware that any source in China can't speak too directly against the government, especially the central government. However I feel rather confident that this thread is a pretty good representation of her actual op…

"working" ? ...as in just pushing some deaths a few months in the future while being extremely inconvenient for everything and everyone and damaging to the global economy to an extent that might be more than the price of those lives

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#169

Post by danlugo92 »

wonnage wrote: post #129
jacktribe wrote: post #102

I've been trying to understand CCP's reasoning for these draconian measures. Even if you haven't seen the Twitter videos showing bags of live cats and dogs being being beaten to death with sticks, the children separated from their parents, the alarms on the doors, the economic numbers, you can tell that this does't make any sense. Some theories: - Strip people of absolutely all rights, make them feel helpless. Later…

The problem is that the reasoning at the top isn't anything near what the drones implementing said policy at the bottom are doing. There's like a hundred layers of people between Xi and the dudes beating dogs. It's like a game of telephone where some medical experts speculate about animal reservoirs, and somebody in the mayor's circle hears about it, and next thing you know they're giving covid tests to chickens. It'…

People here in Venezuela used the same excuse, "Oh Chavez doesn't know about it", it being corruption etc, as if there weren't hundreds of reports/testimonies appearing in newspapers/etc every single day.

What's next, Xi doesn't know about the organ farms? Hah.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#170

Post by rossdavidh »

memish wrote: post #15

Why are they still pursuing Zero Covid? I know the article includes some speculation on this, but what's the best explanation?

The standard rumor is that the Chinese vaccines do not work as well, either at slowing down the spread or at reducing the severity of the effects, as western vaccines (whether Pfizer, Moderna, J&J, or Oxford/AstraZeneca). So, the feared effects of having most people get it are worse than here.

Also, in the US, the CDC estimates that for every 10 people who get it who were confirmed/counted, there were 32 who were not counted. Since many states have had >20% of their population confirmed, that suggests that >85% of many US states have already had Covid-19, vaccinated or not. The ratio of "immunologically naive" in China is probably much higher.

Not saying that makes it a sensible or even moral policy, just that's the most likely scenario as to why they are doing it.

Post reply on HN