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An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

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Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, they could, but could they keep everyone in a city of millions in their houses though?

Easily. It's just a matter of running through the streets at random and punishing the people they caught badly enough.

Pretty much. In the Uyghur concentration camps they regularly gather up the victims of the camps and have them watch beatings and brutal rapes. I've read that in the testimony of several escapees from the camps. That plus everyone gets "minorly" tortured for not learning Chinese fast enough or minor transgressions like looking away/closing eyes/crying when told to watch a beating.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#442
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we need to stop calling MRNA solutions vaccines because they are gene therapies. You need regular administration for them to be effective on a public health level which is not logistically feasible as we found out. They know this but they’re playing along as a matter of publicity and politics. We got incredibly lucky with Omicron.

The mRNA vaccines literally expose your immune system to a foreign antigen, the longstanding definition of a vaccine. They use a nice trick to get your own body to manufacture the antigen, but it's not gene therapy, they don't go anywhere your genes, they give ribosomes some extra instructions. The boosters have been extremely effective at preventing severe infections, which is plenty useful for public health even if…

Not quite. There’s a good reason why efficacy falls off sharply after just 2-3 weeks. Again, it’s a “vaccine” not a vaccine. They just call it that because they want the public to buy-in. I say this as someone who’s been in biotech for a decade plus.

Edit: I am not antivax. I believe you should get all the shots even a second booster despite all its shortcomings.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#443

I posted a Tell HN about lockdowns coming before they were announced, about two or three weeks ago. I'm currently in lockdown, not sure when we're getting out. And then after that someone in the compound will probably be infected pretty soon and it all starts over. Feel free to AMA.

Why didn't you leave?

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#444
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you feel the "choice" with vaccines was? So even if they overlooked the politics/"optics", I don't think they could go to the Western pharmaceutical companies and just ask for 3 billion doses. With boosters it's looking like there isn't enough vaccine capacity for the world as it is. I don't think there was ever a real alternative other than a "zero covid strategy" What seems strange is that they haven't been…

> I don't think they could go to the Western pharmaceutical companies and just ask for 3 billion doses. I wonder if they could license the technology then produce it themselves. I believe this is what India has been doing?

Nobody would blink an eye if they just used the technology without licensing either. It's not like other countries could stop them.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Complaining is against the party. China makes use of people who complain to much https://nypost.com/2022/04/07/researchers-claim-chinese-surg...

That's terrifying :( and incredibly sad for anyone who ends up in that position and China as a people. Can someone explain the downvotes? This is HN not the CCP, we demand action to be backed up with reason. The article suggested "political prisoners" to be included in those ending being killed by organ harvesting, so it seems relevant to the parent's comment: > Robertson claims surgeons operated on death-row prisone…

you do not complain against hn voting system.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#446
post #125
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Keeping everything locked down has a huge human cost too. Quite possibly even bigger than “wishing the virus away”.

> Keeping everything locked down has a huge human cost too. That really depends on what's your personal definition of "keeping everything locked down". European countries like Spain and Italy showed that lockdowns work quite well in quickly halving infection rates with negligible externalities, but their lockdown focused on non-essential work and everyone was allowed to do basic provisioning things such as going to t…

Look, I’m in Barcelona right now. A huge chunk of the population here would be deeply offended by your “negligible externalities”. In fact, I’m not sure who wouldn’t be.

Almost half the restaurants are just gone, other sectors are absolutely devastated too.

The hospitality industry is absolutely fucked, while most hotels still operate they usually have less than half the staff on payroll they used to have before lockdowns.

Because of the economic damage, the security situation in the city has gone to hell. Violent robberies are way up, it’s now normal to get robbed at knifepoint while driving your car. Cars with broken windows are everywhere.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#447

Kind of crazy how sentimental and emotional the response is with barely any actual discussion going on about the merits of this on a grand scale. Yes, stories about people's dogs and temporary economic depression are awful. The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going. It's w…

Kind of crazy how someone is calling this "sentimental and emotional". And claiming that, at "grand scale", "millions of deaths" and "probably tens of millions of cases" are prevented and the economy still going(, so it's fine?).

Yeah.... it's not really a big deal, just few dogs and stories such as:

- Hospital refused to rescue their own nurse who had an asthma attack, leading to her death (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220329/20220329A02CZK00.html)

- In another an asthma death case, an ambulance (carries another patient) drove away while refusing to offer any help to the person who was having an asthma attack (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220331/20220331A0DFA900.html)

- Here is a video of an elderly man crying in front of a hospital, because the hospital refuse to take in his daughter: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tz74vk/%E4%B8%8A...

- The "neighborhood committee" (a community level management department) refuse to let a heart attack patient go to hospital. The patient dead as result: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tztiu0/%E5%B1%85...

Those were all caused by the lockdown.

Let me teach you a Chinese word here, called 理中客, which is an abbreviation for 性 (Rational), 立 (Neutral) and 观 (Objective). This is not a positive word, instead, 理中客 is a derogatory term describes people who disgusts their excuse under layers of reasoning that looked Rational, Neutral and Objective at first, but starts to break down upon deeper inspection.

For example, someone might apologetically claim that "Yes, there are pains, but in the end, most people will survive, so it's all good", which is rational, neutral and objective. But is it though? Why the pain essential? Have you tried something else? Have you learned anything from the good instances in the past two years?

I'm not an emotional person as well, nor sentimental. But if a policy is leading to such massive destruction, then objectively speaking it's a bad policy, especially when there are many safer and better ways to implement such lockdown. Using word such as "sentimental and emotional" to describe people who's currently suffering through this disaster is, logically, at very least, "weird".

I hope you learned something today.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I click the links and see nothing topic related. I don't have an instagram account.

Ok, maybe don't click Instagram links if you don't use Instagram and then complain because the links don't work? lol Millions of people do (and I assume many HNers do) and given this post, may be interested in seeing some videos from people first hand in Shanghai. There are many other comments in here with awesome info that you can easily scroll past this one that's irrelevant to you and consume info in a way that wo…

I wasn't aware that I have to actively use Instagram to click on Instagram links. Also I didn't complain. I stated something.

I also stated explicitly that this is my consideration.

> and I assume many HNers do

I actually assume that most HNers do not.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't get is, China has more than enough money to buy a vaccine that is more effective, and more than enough research capability to develop something against omicron if it's that bad there. Why don't they? (Also, why didn't we scale the vaccines with the confidence we had, instead of waiting months doing nothing just because the complete results weren't available?)

Because all 4 China made vaccines' pharmaceutical companies are backed by higher ups in the CCP. Every Chinese vaccine injected is money to these officials(or their relatives') wallets

Well, so adapt them for the omicron. It's something every other vaccine producer did at some point, but didn't move forward because it was not the best policy outside of China.

Re: An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

#450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this guy who's a rabid anti-vaxxer who thinks the COVID vaccines are a bioweapon engineered to kill people as part of a shadowy conspiracy to lower the world population by a billions. He claims that vaccinated people are dropping dead of heart attacks left, right and centre and it's all being covered up. Recently he sent me some "evidence" of this claim which was a compilation of clips (many taken from live TV…

Did you point this out to the 'rabid anti-vaxxer' who sent it to you? What was his reaction? My guess is the reality of it doesn't matter one bit to that person.

You guess correctly.

This person isn't my friend, and I consider him beyond help.

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