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China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

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Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#301

Post by cactusplant7374 »

jahnu wrote: post #70
rippercushions wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a 87% COVID vaccination rate, which is higher than the US (79%). However, the Chinese-made vaccines are not very effective, and many of the unvaccinated are elderly. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1279024/china-coronaviru... vaccination-rate/

It's really bad, only 65% of 80+ are vaccinated [1] As you mentioned their own vaccine is not very effective but they have also approved no foreign vaccines yet [2] They have far too few ICU beds to manage the surge if restrictions are dropped to, say, average EU levels [3] They seem to be trapped [1] https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202211/22/WS637c2416a3104917... [2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/11/25/c…

China is authoritarian without civil liberties. They could force all of the 80+ to vaccinate just as they force people to stay inside their apartments for months.

There are three reasons they probably don't do this:

1) Their vaccines don't provide high enough protection to prevent overwhelming the healthcare system.

2) They have fostered mRNA conspiracy theories and pushing an mRNA vaccine would be a huge embarrassment to the communist party.

3) Beating the US by a wide margin on Covid deaths is a point of pride.

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#302

Post by [deleted] »

dumb1224 wrote: post #195
DriftRegion wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Comments like this wouldn't pass the chinese Turing test: after the first sentence it would be reduced to white noise in most people's eyes.

[deleted]

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#303

Post by potatochup »

bee_rider wrote: post #192
zarzavat wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

NZ was pretty successful I thought. Didn’t they make an active decision to stop worrying so much about it after getting vaccines?

NZs isolation policy couldn't keep out omicron. The upside was, by the time omicron showed up and started spreading around the population, most people were vaccinated, and deaths due to the original strain were very low (I think it was like 50 deaths? 150 maybe?). The country also had most of 2020 and early 2021 totally COVID free, so businesses like cafes, retail, didn't have as much of a shock

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#304

Post by MagnumOpus »

nradov wrote: post #294
wongarsu wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That could just be due to a failing strategy. China always tried to completely contain and destroy the virus, and had good success with that early on. Many other countries instead went with "let it spread at a rate our health care system can handle". China's approach had a better chance at bringing it to a fast end early on, but with greater risk if it doesn't end quickly. Now that it is a multi-year affair, they hav…

China's approach never had any chance of bringing the pandemic to a fast end. No contagious respiratory virus has ever been stopped through such means. Once the first infected carriers left Wuhan in December 2019 any possibly of containing the virus was completely lost.

>No contagious respiratory virus has ever been stopped through such means

It worked for both SARS and MERS. Even though more contagious, it might have worked for Covid until it escaped to Europe in early Feb 2020.

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#305

Post by sidewndr46 »

smcl wrote: post #263
sidewndr46 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am reasonably certain that a country well known for sending in the troops to crush rebellion would count as a dictatorship.

Ok so you're going to have to resist all-caps replying "WHATABOUTISM!" but you realise by that definition both the USA and the UK could be "dictatorship" for sending in troops to crush both rebellion (the UK did in Northern Ireland) and protests (like USA did in Kent State)? I said in another comment that I don’t wanna get into a debate on the subtleties of what is/isn’t a dictatorship, but THIS is an odd place to dr…

We're not arguing about the US or the UK here. Mainland China is the topic.

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#306

Post by ilyt »

DriftRegion wrote: post #143

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…

Honestly if every single one aside maybe from the last turned out to be true I wouldn't be even slightly surprised

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#307

Post by codealot »

Filligree wrote: post #135
yreg wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their behaviour is not that weird for an authoritarian regime and easily explainable without this theory imo. (As you say as well.) What would be an example of a piece of knowledge which they could have about the virus and which would warrant (in our eyes if we knew) 0 covid policy forever? Maybe I lack the imagination. Edit: Please don't downvote replies to this comment with fabricated not-real scenarios. That's exa…

“99% lethality at five years” is something you could conceivably engineer. I find this extremely unlikely, but that’s the sort of thinking being pointed at.

If that was what it is going to do, wouldn’t we know that by now? Hasn’t it been the most funded r&d ever for multiple years now due to the entire planet combining its strength to understand the virus?

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#308

Post by sempron64 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #285
vkou wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the US is ruled by a government that will start a war with a nuclear power for any reason other than an attack against it, we need to do everything possible to replace that government. Because doing that is insane, and we cannot let madmen in charge of a nuclear football. Taiwan isn't worth ending the world over.

> doing that is insane, and we cannot let madmen in charge of a nuclear football Zero nuclear is failed policy. It’s lead to war in Ukraine and encourages appeasement with China. We need more flexible doctrine. I’m not sure what it is, but it can’t be no war at all ever with a belligerent nuclear power at all costs. (Conventional only, no sinking capital ships and no strikes on core territory or any civilians would s…

It’s hard to say it’s a failed policy when we have no evidence against the null hypothesis, which is global nuclear war.

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#309

Post by mindslight »

apostacy wrote: post #220
tlogan wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might be a Ceausescu moment for Xi. I just do not understand why he did not “declare that China won against COVID and how CCP is great”. (If there is a problem with vaccination rates, the CCP has tools to make that happen. Yes Sinovax vaccine is not very effective but with 3 doses it will cut death rates by 90% or so.) So the question here is really why Xi decided to keep zero-COVID. Maybe he is not so smart? Or…

It is obvious at this point that China's "zero covid" policy has nothing at all to do with public health. What many of us do not want to admit, is that our leaders have taken advantage of the crisis for their own benefit. I think most western media is reluctant to report on what is happening in China, because it would start uncomfortable conversations at home. Seeing the Chinese government so nakedly use what's left…

You don't get to point at perverse bureaucratic incentives years later, in another country even, as validation for general pandemic denial.

In the US, stay at home suggestions are over. Industry shutdowns are over. Mask mandates are over. They've been over for a long time. The scaremongering of "what if these temporary conditions become permanent" has now been demonstrated as fallacious. Our society has basically made it through, thanks to the natural evolution of the virus combined with the technology of vaccine development (plus a lot of people who aren't with us any more). Go watch a World Cup game at a bar, lick a subway pole, move on to another simulation of protest - whatever you want.

Bureaucratically, local healthcare systems seem to still have mask requirements, Covid testing policies, the Doctor Who -esque custom of squirting goop on your hand as a greeting, etc. Will these ever disappear? Mask requirements might even make sense independent of Covid, given that most healthcare settings are high concentrations of people with half of them sick and the other half immunocompromised. But in general, all of these latent results are certainly not more of a problem than the longstanding administrative bureaucracy that grinds doctors and nurses into overworked dust. (I say this even taking into account the effect of masks on the hearing impaired, which needs to be addressed).

People in positions of power will always act for their own selfish interests - one of the very first things the federal government did was give away six trillion dollars to prevent the stonk market from reflecting reality. But that everpresent banal observation doesn't invalidate that there was also a legitimate response to a real problem. We can debate how effective facets of the response are, the accountability of our leaders, etc, but implying that the whole "narrative" is primarily bureaucratic self interest is just nonsense.

Re: China state CCTV avoids crowd close ups at the World Cup

#310

Post by JumpCrisscross »

sempron64 wrote: post #308
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> doing that is insane, and we cannot let madmen in charge of a nuclear football Zero nuclear is failed policy. It’s lead to war in Ukraine and encourages appeasement with China. We need more flexible doctrine. I’m not sure what it is, but it can’t be no war at all ever with a belligerent nuclear power at all costs. (Conventional only, no sinking capital ships and no strikes on core territory or any civilians would s…

It’s hard to say it’s a failed policy when we have no evidence against the null hypothesis, which is global nuclear war.

> against the null hypothesis, which is global nuclear war

That’s not the null. Null would be engagement as usual. Nuclear war can occur in both the null and zero nuclear policy states.

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