161–170 of 353 posts
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
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lab leak is just a red herring. The CCP has botched the response by 1. insisting on a zero COVID policy and 2. Refusing "western" MRNA vaccines.
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> Even without vaccines, the current covid strain is not even that harmful. Among the unvaccinated (of which there still exist a shocking amount), it absolutely is harmful. Even amongst the triple or quadruple vaccinated, it can be dangerous. My s/o's sense of smell was impacted for months, we were out of work for two weeks - but a friend of ours for six months and she's still not at the performance mentally that she…
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Might be better stated: "[Please] Stop spreading Chinese Communist Party propaganda."
The rest then makes sense.
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The problem is that once they lift it up / fail to contain an outbreak, it will be a devastating one since their population isn't immunized.
I'm stumped they didn't consider buying other vaccines. Maybe they don't want to be reliant on the west. They're indeed doing a mistake keep the lock strategy...
What is the CCP’s exit strategy? Could they feasibly claim to have eradicated covid?
I think that it's misunderstanding that dictatorships need any.
However in this case a badly managed change in their Covid strategy doesn't collapse the country or cost the CCP their control over China, but it could cause a bit of a power struggle within the party as factions jostle for position and attempt to shift blame and some higher-ranking politicians will probably lose their position or go to jail for reasons. If you're one of those people, you probably want some kind of plan.
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My understanding is that the additional piece of the jigsaw is the refusal to import more effective vaccines as it would reflect poorly on Sinovax and the prounouncements around it. No idea how significant this aspect is but I thought it was worth mentioning for completelness.
The vaccines in use in China are already highly effective. The best data on this comes from Hong Kong, which uses both Pfizer/Biontech and Sinovac. Three doses of either vaccine is roughly equally effective at preventing death. The problem isn't what vaccines they're using. The problem is that many old people don't want to get vaccinated, period.
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I don’t buy that. No other country was able to completely arrest the spread of COVID through lockdowns, even Australia and New Zealand which are islands surrounded by giant oceans were not able to stop the flood of infections. China borders 14 countries. If there’s “no COVID” it’s because it’s being suppressed, with or without Beijing’s knowledge.
Consider what happens to peoples’ immune systems when you box them up in quarantine and spray them with disinfectant every day for a few years. It won’t be only COVID-19 popping when that artificial suppression ends. RSV, influenza, etc.
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do we know what the Party line is about this? Do they, for example, blame western propaganda, involvement etc?
A whole lot of covid outbreaks in China have been blamed on "contaminated goods" coming from abroad
Yeah. When people in mainland China saw all the unmasked foreigners at The World Cup it spawned a lot of ideation. I'll summarize the ideas I've seen floating around the Chinese internet: - It's a money-making scam by the COVID test manufacturers - It's a money-making scam by the temporary quarantine center manufacturers - It's a failure of bureaucracy ”层层加码” - It's a ploy to increase the depth of state surveillance…
Here's a recent commentary from a WeChat group (translated via deepl): > The current situation is that Western water forces, through insidious and poisonous means such as the Internet, have created a very dangerous atmosphere of public opinion and incited the people to rebellion. If we are deceived and held hostage by these rumors, what China will end up with will only be a disaster. We have to believe that the count…
That must be propaganda because it should be obvious to a lay person that it started in late 2019. China government has been trying for 3 years to “have an early end”
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
What is going on with China's continuing zero-covid policy? Either it's the most expensive face saving exercise the world has ever seen, or they know something about it that we don't.
Or, more likely in my opinion, they're having issues keeping people under control with the economic downturn, and covid lockdowns are the tool they're using to quash dissent. Seems like an irrational strategy, but totalitarian regimes often become victims to their own lies. The USSR showed us that enforcing lies on your own people eventually leads to bizarre, irrational behavior from the government when it tries to o…