I was hoping this was a story about walkable streets and great urban placemaking, terrible to see it's actually a sign of misery.
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Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
191–200 of 366 posts
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#192Earlier 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…
The end result of Communism is always the same, but the details vary. It’s fundamentally fragile.
Except China isn't exactly communist. They're a "socialist market economy." Yes, the government exerts a lot of control and owns a great deal of industry, but there's also a significant private sector. It's basically state capitalism, closer to fascism with a blending of state and corporate interests.
Communism is not just another word for authoritarian. Totalitarian regimes come in a variety of economic flavors.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#193In other news, North Korea currently has a Covid problem.
Presumably this will be used to disguise the ensuing mass starvation as Covid deaths.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#194Earlier 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…
I imagine the harsh crack down is partly to blame. If you suspected you had COVID but testing positive would mean you, your family, and everyone in your apartment building would get sent to a recovery center.. would you report it? I would bet the inspectors themselves are spreading it.
If in the West we incentivized it however.. a few weeks forced holiday with free groceries..
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#195Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are assuming they are reporting actual death numbers instead of suppressing them, which is an assumption I don't know why anyone would make. https://www.forbes.com/sites/georgecalhoun/2022/01/02/beijin...
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.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#196Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, it's going to take a lot more failure for me to be convinced that averting ~4 million deaths was somehow misguided in the long-term. It's interesting how much American media is trying to convince me otherwise as of the past few months.
So this response is okay? How can you say for sure this response even works? How sustainable is it? How is it not an absolute violation of inalienable human rights? How can you even call human rights “inalienable” when your government is willing to toss them out the window for some respiratory virus? Do people still think Covid is some kind of airborne Ebola or something? People have lost their minds over this. It is…
severity of COVID or the proper response to it makes no difference. Zero Covid Policy is a _policy_ from the authorities. Changing it would mean admitting the authorities were wrong. That's not going to happen. human rights, health, spread of covid, none make any difference. The only thing that will make a difference is when political circumstances arise allowing the Zero Covid Policy to be modified without appearing as weakness.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#197Earlier 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…
> But ... evidently that's not true. Why not?
The problem with lockdown measures is that it will inevitably harm someone. We might all be healthy and safe at home so harm is reduced with respect to Covid, but what about the harm caused by the lockdown measures themselves.
Say you have a town of 100 people. If you went into a hard lockdown to prevent any spread, you might save 10 people from dying of Covid; however, the lockdowns caused 10 people to loose their homes, businesses, some committed suicide, some overdosed. The problem with this line of thinking though, is that it's impossible to quantify that sort of harm. You can look at how many people foreclosed on their homes or went out of business but that really only gives you a partial outlook.
So what do you do? In my personal opinion this is a no-win situation, with some things it's clear what the right thing to do is. In Covid's case it really wasn't clear at all. Do you lock down people to save lives from Covid? How much harm does the lockdown cause? Are the gains we get from locking down enough to offset the harms done by the lockdowns? Everyone will have an opinion on each one of these issues but there really is no good answer.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#198Not even in the private sector?
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#199Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, it's going to take a lot more failure for me to be convinced that averting ~4 million deaths was somehow misguided in the long-term. It's interesting how much American media is trying to convince me otherwise as of the past few months.
So this response is okay? How can you say for sure this response even works? How sustainable is it? How is it not an absolute violation of inalienable human rights? How can you even call human rights “inalienable” when your government is willing to toss them out the window for some respiratory virus? Do people still think Covid is some kind of airborne Ebola or something? People have lost their minds over this. It is…
None of our rights are absolute. The government can and does take them away. The question becomes more of what's a good reason to take them away, and saying no good reason is misguided.
Re: Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month
#200I 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.
cars being a necessity is just a sign of bad design for the living space.
the number of people for whom its actually a necessity is very small, and are pretty well all companies