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The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

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Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#91

Post by stone-monkey »

ejb999 wrote: post #66
whimsicalism wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There was no possible way that death could have been averted. Respectfully, I disagree. If there was no possible way to avert it, how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths? The action/omission distinction is for judging who started a fight in a schoolyard, not for judging the actions of nation-states.

>>how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths? Do you really believe they 'averted 'the deaths? or is it more likely they hid the truth. I vote for the latter; they don't have a good track record.

It should be obvious at this point that China doesn't have hundreds of thousands or millions of covid deaths the same way other non lockdown countries do. We can definitively say that based on this specific outbreak in Shanghai - There's no possible way the Chinese government could have hid outbreaks at this scale for two years now. That doesn't mean their approach didn't have problems. But whenever I see comments like this about them hiding the true covid numbers it seems in in bad faith, especially because we're looking at direct evidence in this specific case that it wouldn't have been possible for the government to do so. Are the Wuhan numbers fudged? Probably. But it's pretty clear based on the failure of zero covid to contain omicron that it more or less worked well to stop the spread against Covid zero, alpha, and delta.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#92

Post by kccqzy »

whimsicalism wrote: post #43
dougmwne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your take on this. My reaction is that you are of course right that this is not affecting everyone equally. Certainly the CCP is not starving out all 26 million people in Shanghai. But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.

Quoted post unavailable.

There are so many news reports of people dying of non-Covid, treatable diseases because of lockdown. Something as simple as not getting prescriptions filled (can't leave your home to get prescriptions, delivery services also shut down), or not being allowed to go to the hospital for routine procedures like dialysis. Starvation is but one way people die in a strict draconian lockdown. The article is full of harrowing stories unrelated to starvation.

China has successfully used this lockdown to make sure no one dies of Covid in Shanghai; but no one is keeping track of the deaths caused by lockdown.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#93

Post by chefandy »

whimsicalism wrote: post #43
dougmwne wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for your take on this. My reaction is that you are of course right that this is not affecting everyone equally. Certainly the CCP is not starving out all 26 million people in Shanghai. But I think this is the exact fear most of us have of authoritarian governments, that minority voices get silenced or worse and that justice is not equally distributed.

Quoted post unavailable.

Yeah— examples of centralized authority being very bad at some very important things doesn't automatically mean centralization is the the problem, that those defects aren't present or worse in power structures that form in less centralized systems, or that the drawbacks of decentralization don't outweigh the benefits. Doesn't mean the opposite, either. Politicization has a way making complex problems appear to have simple solutions.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#94

Post by tacocataco »

godelski wrote: post #29
jaqalopes wrote: post #8

I lived in Shanghai for 5 years and have many friends and business connects there. I would never, ever want to be seen as carrying water for the CCP--the day they abolished term limits for Xi was the day I started planning my exit. I've been following this situation for almost a month now and in one sense it's every bit as bad as it looks. An inadequate and inhumane policy being enforced by an out of touch, or perhap…

> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution wh…

I was under the impression that there was a animal reservoir of covid out in the wild. Is that not true?

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#95

Post by seanmcdirmid »

cryptonector wrote: post #87
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But on the other hand, my friends who are quarantined and didn't get it are just bored to death, drinking and gaming and working from home, just treading water until this "ends." From what I've been hearing, the big problem for lots of people stuck under lockdown is simply getting groceries/food deliveries at all. The government isn't letting delivery people work, and the military response to distributing food isn'…

I wonder if there were many preppers in Shanghai. I wonder if how many new preppers there are now throughout China. Of all the reasons people prep, "long lockdowns" was never one until very recent times.

Chinese tend to grocery shop daily or bi-daily for food they need for a day or two, they don't have space to store a bunch of canned goods (especially in Shanghai). They might have a stockpile of fangbianmian (instant noodles), but that's about it.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#96

Post by bllguo »

qwytw wrote: post #64
sva_ wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it fairly amusing that people who believe in the "lableak-hypothesis" seem to usually also be in the camp of people who don't think the virus is too bad. If the virus really came from the lab, then presumably the Chinese know more about its (long term) effects than the rest of us. And looking at the fact, that they have this zero COVID policy, that should absolutely terrify anyone believing in the aforemention…

I find it more amusing that someone can think that the could CCP be seriously concerned about the long term wellbeing of the Chinese people. Surely if it disportionately affects older individuals, especially in the light of the demographic crisis China will being facing in not to distant future (and with no social security or widespread private pension schemes and limited immigration it would be reasonable that it wi…

So if the CCP truly cared about the people they'd cull the elderly. This is the quality of discussion on China these days on HN. The idea that "hey, obviously they wouldn't consider that, maybe they're not the comic-book villains I've been led to believe!" doesn't even cross your mind.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#97

Post by hedgehog »

While China's approach is heavy-handed it also has saved a lot of lives, even assuming some fudging of the data their death rate is the lowest of any large country. Countries like Japan and Thailand have managed to avert nearly as much death as China with very different approaches so there's a good argument that there are good alternatives. Countries like Sweden, England, or especially the US have done so much worse that they probably shouldn't be trying to give anyone any advice on the topic.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#98

Post by [deleted] »

whimsicalism wrote: post #46
gyf304 wrote: post #16

We must protect human lives at all costs, even at the cost of human lives. Jokes aside, what we really want to know is that - what are the human lives lost lockdown v.s. no lockdown, maybe also factor in the possible economic downturns. The government did a not-so-good job convincing people that doing a lockdown is indeed better than the alternative - "We ran the numbers, it seems like doing a lockdown at this stage…

I mean, any crunching of the numbers shows that China has effectively averted 3 million dead of their own population due to covid - assuming equal quality of care with the US. I generally attribute that to the lockdowns, do people have another explanation?

[deleted]

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#99

Post by munk-a »

whimsicalism wrote: post #51
godelski wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That said, as far as I can tell it's a very unevenly distributed disaster. I think this is one of the big issues with covid overall, especially how we discuss it over the internet. It is very possible that there is a person where everyone they know around them got covid as well as another person may only know one or two people who got it and only had mild cases. There's an extremely disproportionate distribution wh…

> Also, I am highly confused by China's zero coivd policy. Just by the nature of how viruses work, that seems impossible. It worked for original SARS, no?

I think if the world had been on board with a zero covid policy we probably would've weathered the pandemic much better - but convincing western nations to adopt that approach and their populace to actually accept the approach would have been a job and a half. My feeling through most of COVID (as someone in BC, Canada) is that the government is trying their best to minimize the amount people leave their homes while avoiding significant open protests. People marching in the streets is the last thing you want during a pandemic, it will cause an absolutely explosive number of cases - especially if those marches are done by people refusing vaccination and not using masks. And, to be honest, what's a government going to do - if Bonnie Henry declared a full lock down and tried to patrol the streets the number of law enforcement officers would be stretched to a breaking point - if people in a Condo building decided to storm the street they'd easily overwhelm the police...

So I think the zero covid policy is a decent idea if you can contain the disease before it spreads overseas but that a lot of western democracies are no where near well positioned enough to follow suit and, if you are the only country with a zero covid policy then there's going to be a really big tidalwave if the virus stays alive long enough to mutate and spread back into your country.

It sucks but this thing was global before lock downs were taken seriously so focusing bureaucracy on containment instead of preparing for the eventual return wave seems unwise.

Re: The silenced deaths of the Shanghai 2022 lockdown

#100

Post by tjs8rj »

whimsicalism wrote: post #67
ejb999 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>how did China avert the vast majority of equivalent deaths? Do you really believe they 'averted 'the deaths? or is it more likely they hid the truth. I vote for the latter; they don't have a good track record.

> Do you really believe they 'averted 'the deaths? or is it more likely they hid the truth. I vote for the latter; they don't have a good track record. They would not be able to hide infection on the level that the US has had it - antibody tests from travelers from China would show it trivially, social media would show it. The idea that China has secretly had 3 million covid deaths and widespread infection without an…

It’s hard to give China credit for anything on Covid when their decisions led to it being a world wide pandemic in the first place.

You’re saying the firefighters (WHO and the Western response) didn’t do enough to put out the fire burning down their houses (western countries), while simultaneously praising the neighbor (China) who found the fire, lied about the fire, “disappeared” people who attempted to report the fire, delayed response to the fire, spread the fire, but FINALLY at the eleventh hour made sure their own house didn’t burn from the fire.

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