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Not a single car was sold in Shanghai last month

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

#261

Post by twic »

lamontcg wrote: post #183
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…

Data from Hong Kong shows that three shots of Sinovac is still 98% effective against severe outcomes with Omicron: https://fortune.com/2022/03/22/china-covid-vaccine-data-reop... And it doesn't make a lot of sense that the different vaccines would be substantially different against different variants or would wane quicker once the same level of vaccination was reached. Once you've got the T-cells and B-cells they're…

> And it doesn't make a lot of sense that the different vaccines would be substantially different against different variants or would wane quicker once the same level of vaccination was reached. Once you've got the T-cells and B-cells they're permanent and they aren't going to remember what kind of vaccine they came from. The differences in the vaccines should just be in overall effectiveness.

Not quite. Subunit (Novavax) or inactivated virus vaccines (like the Chinese ones) do not cause synthesis of viral proteins, so they do not stimulate killer T cell immunity [1]. That's a whole arm of the immune system which is not getting primed.

[1] Except to a limited extent via cross-presentation, i know

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

#262

Post by krageon »

_fat_santa wrote: post #82
yalogin wrote: post #43

I did not realize there is such a strict lockdown even now. Somehow missed that news cycle. However that makes me wonder if the other countries in the world like India and major parts of the US even test now. I mean unless it’s absolutely clear it’s covid they probably don’t test and go on with their lives.

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…

> there is plenty on TikTok

On one hand, sure. That can be indicative of reality. On the other hand, look at the times we live in. I would hesitate to just point at evidence on TikTok and call it a day.

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

#263

Post by usrusr »

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…

The safe minimum dose for exposure with absolutely guaranteed non-infection is zero virions and the theoretical maximum duration a virion can stay infective is basically infinite, just with an infinitesimally small chance. It's more like a half-life than like a TTL counter.

It's not impossible to get infected from someone a hundred miles away, just very, very unlikely. Early variations were sufficiently unlikely to successfully take root in a new host from small exposures to make it quite easy to push that R value below one, but omicron pushes the threshold for "good enough" far out.

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

#264

Post by WalterBright »

flumpcakes wrote: post #247
WalterBright wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. Perhaps the difference is the highly vulnerable people have already died.

I think it would go to far to say all vulnerable people have died. Having the required two shots and a booster (mixed or otherwise) seems to not only reduce the likelihood of getting COVID but also reduces how severely you are affected if you do catch it.

I didn't say all.

What I'm saying is the overall death rate can decline while the risk for each individual remains the same, because there are fewer people in the high risk category.

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

#265

Post by CogitoCogito »

krageon wrote: post #260
CogitoCogito wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry I was a bit unclear. I don't take much issue with "run by engineer types", but really I'd question the assumption that they "were fairly rational". Why do people hold that assumption? Is it because "engineer types" must be rational? Personally I haven't been struck by the rationality of the PRC government.

You cannot get a STEM degree if you are incapable of thinking logically. The same is not true for other degrees. Therefore, it makes sense to connect the two.

> You cannot get a STEM degree if you are incapable of thinking logically.

I'm not really sure what you're basing this off of. I've worked in prominent universities teaching math classes and would definitely not make such a claim.

> Therefore, it makes sense to connect the two.

No it doesn't. What does STEM have to do with running a country anyway? Would you say that McNamara's policies were correct in Vietnam? I'm not sure you could come up with a more "rational" approach to foreign policy anywhere.

Personally instead of round about arguments claiming the PRC is rational due to the degrees held by the ruling class, I'd personally just look at the resultant policies. Watching the PRC for a long time, they don't really strike me as very rational at all. Their current handling of covid is only one example.

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

#266

Post by Animats »

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…

Because it works. Shenzhen is not locked down, but they test everybody several times a week. Singapore is down to 5 of 16 districts with COVID.

China's zero-COVID policy worked quite well against the pre-omicron variants, with R around 3. It's a tough struggle against omicron, with R around 7.

The US just passed one million COVID deaths. The US's "declare a victory and go home" policy is not working. The US case rate is more than double what it was at the beginning of April, and it's climbing. Death rate lags case rate by about a month.

Wear an N95 mask. No excuses. That alone seems to be enough to keep Reff < 1, so the case rate declines. The US is squishy-soft on masking. More masks means fewer body bags.

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

#267

Post by manquer »

raulgalera wrote: post #66

In Spain we had a very strict lockdown (not as strict as the Chinese but still) between March-May 2020 and still over 4k cars were sold that month. Which at the time I thought it was an extremely high number considering everything that was going on (link in Spanish): https://noticias.coches.com/noticias-motor/ventas-de-coches-...

Chinese lockdowns are more like martial law style curfews . You cannot go out for almost anything at all.

There are no customers who can go to the dealership, no employees who can sell cars and manage dealerships. Non essential business are not allowed to run at all.

This article title is written to imply that demand has fallen, that is not the case, it is operationally near impossible to make a purchase and take delivery. People still want /need cars and many can still afford to get them .

The pent up demand (with losses due to changing economic conditions) will come back when things return to normal.

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

#268

Post by throwaway_1928 »

manuelabeledo wrote: post #236

All car dealerships are closed, and the city is not issuing license plates at all, so of course no cars have been sold in the last month. This is a very odd take on a potential humanitarian crisis.

The humanitarian crisis is caused by the communist dictatorship there.

Chinese vaccines do not work, but the dictatorship insists on China made vaccines.

The brutal lockdowns in Shanghai are their expertise and only a shadow of their recent accomplishments in Xinjiang and Hong Kong.

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

#269

Post by dmix »

I wanted to visit China this summer but I discovered you can't even buy tickets into China. I was planning on just avoiding Shanghai and hoping Bejing got better by August but I guess I'll have to keep waiting another long time to finally visit China.

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

#270

Post by scarface74 »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #205
jstrong wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

if masks work so well, why didn't they work? how did omicron get around the world in like two weeks flat when everyone was wearing masks on planes? at what point does covid making an utter mockery of our mitigation efforts start to dent your faith in them?

Why not one week? Masks aren't perfect, and they don't make sense in every context but a plane IMHO is actually reasonable. Not every context is the same. I'm willing to acknowledge that the data is not great, but I think the action is more or less "plausible" and IMHO the suffering is small.

Yes, the suffering is small. But so is the payoff. My contention is that the people who statistically got seriously sick by the time Omicron became a thing in the US were the ones that decided to not get a vaccinated. I feel not an ounce of pity for them.

The knock on affects is that the Democrats were not doing themselves any favors in the election. It’s bad politics.

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