Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views • Hacker News Board

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#91

Post by jollybean » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:52 AM UTC

paganel wrote: post #81

udev wrote: post #28

One thing that I observe about how China deals with COVID: leadership assumes that they have perfect control over perfect people. Therefore they try these type of solutions like complete lock-down of a city of 26m people. They assume that they are perfect as leaders, so planning is perfect and takes everything into consideration. They assume that people will execute their orders perfectly, even under extreme hardship…

> I am curious when China will adjust their model/plan for COVID to consider the vast amount of counter-evidence that is accumulating. Probably it will take at least one year and a half - two years, at least that's how long it took the Western authorities to somehow change their discourse. Some people around the Western parts of the world still believe in mask mandates, to say nothing of the vaccine mandates if you w…

Where is this 'vast amount of evidence' anyhow?

So far they've had to have ugly lockdowns in a few cities, but it's a tiny fraction of the overall population.

If it goes on for a long while - this will be a problem, but if they got away with it by having lockdowns - even late into the game - I wouldn't call it a failure.

That said, we really don't know what a lot of the numbers are.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#92

Post by tempestn » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people who test positive.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#93

Post by powerapple » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

earthbee wrote: post #77

fma wrote: post #54

So...how can we trust the writings of the author? Can the data be validated elsewhere? A video posted 8PM with ...11PM it has 30 million views...midnight 100 million, 1:05AM, 300 million. There were 200 million WeChat users up between 12AM and 1:05AM who viewed it? And with all those views - the Chinese government did not hold a conference call till 12:30PM? 12 hours later? I'm no dictator, but I would have circuit b…

They did take it down, and people reuploaded it, flipped or rotated or with minor edits, and those got deleted too, and more people uploaded it, and those got deleted, and even more reuploaded it

I assume the 400M view is with the original, rather than adding up all views from different uploads.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#94

Post by jollybean » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Why isn't this being called a humanitarian crisis by our illustrious Western leaders?

Because it's not a humanitarian crisis?

It's one form of response to a deadly disease.

If people were literally starving in the streets, then yes, but that's not what's happening.

It's 'very authoritarian' - but we already all know that.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#95

Post by hollerith » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:55 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #92

Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people…

Peter Zeihan says that they never secured a supply of mRNA vaccine. Instead, (partly because of national pride) they created their own non-mRNA vaccine, which does not work as well.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#96

Post by jollybean » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:56 AM UTC

robonerd wrote: post #27

nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Why isn't this being called a humanitarian crisis by our illustrious Western leaders?

My guess is there's too much money on the table for those in the western establishment (corporate media and government) to call a spade a spade. If official criticism of China becomes too strong then the public might start asking for the sort of economic sanctions that would hurt western business interests as well. Basically, a manifestation of that old theory about international trade preempting wars.

No, the simpler answer is that lockdowns, especially in response to a pandemic, are possibly authoritarian but it's not a humanitarian crisis.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#97

Post by jorblumesea » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #92

Does anyone understand why China is willing to implement these extremely draconian lockdown measures, but not to mandate vaccination? As I understand it the main reason why the virus is still so dangerous there is due to the low vaccination rate among the elderly population. I'm not saying I personally support forced vaccination, but I'm surprised that the CCP doesn't, given they're willing to forcibly detain people…

Home made vaccine isn't as effective against variants as thought, so mandatory vaccinations would expose its ineffectiveness. Importing Western made mrna vax (Moderna, Pfizer) runs contrary to years of CCP propaganda where China has outsmarted capitalist Western ideas. China's response has been nationalist in nature, a "China strong, rally around the CCP" world where they painted themselves as the only ones in the world who had it figured out.

Xi is also up for a historic 3rd term after removing most of the checks on his power. The thrust of his campaign has been give more power to Xi, because authoritarianism solves your problems.

Anything that runs contrary to these narratives is not going to happen, even if it benefits the nation.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#98

Post by wasmitnetzen » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

roenxi wrote: post #71

readthenotes1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"For all its failures, democracy at least has taught us to incorporate the human imperfection into the process and the decisions." which is why all democracies defeated COVID with the three-week lockdown in which no one left home unless they had to and took proper precautions to ensure that they did not dare transmit any disease to anyone else No, I would say that modern democracies and enshrine human imperfections i…

It is difficult to name a country that has "defeated" COVID. This video is from one of the best responses if you believe the lies the Chinese government pumps out about their COVID case counts. The situation today remains the same as the situation in March 2020 - anyone who doesn't die quickly of other causes is going to get COVID. The only surprise the entire way through the pandemic is they managed to rush a vaccin…

> then letting individuals make decisions for better or worse

That sounds a lot like anarchy to me. I believe we invented laws (and religion before that) exactly because individuals can't be trusted to make informed decisions in certain cases.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#99

Post by powerapple » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

kalleboo wrote: post #6

blisterpeanuts wrote: post #4

I wonder whether the Shanghai situation will be what finally catalyzes real political reform. The people have put up with a lot from this regime over the years. Shanghai has historically been where anti-government movements get going. It will be interesting to see what transpires over the next few months.

I dunno, one of the stronger sentiments seems to be "the Shanghai government is fucking this up, we need the central government to take over and fix this".

It is my opinion as well. If you look at other cities, they all followed the zero-covid policy while Shanghai's official was declaring the city will not lock down for a few days or a week to get over the virus, instead, she insists there has only been one severe case, ignoring the numbers from all other countries (0.1% death rate). That's why I believe if they have acted properly at the beginning, the lockdown can start a week earlier and finish 4 weeks earlier.

Re: Shanghai video overwhelms Chinese censor, gets 400M views

#100

Post by Closi » Mon, Apr 25, 2022, 7:06 AM UTC

nathanaldensr wrote: post #3

Why isn't this being called a humanitarian crisis by our illustrious Western leaders?

The lockdowns might be useful from a strategic perspective for western leaders (ie undermining faith in Chinese leadership within Shanghai residents), while also actively calling it a humanitarian crisis would hurt the relationship with China which is already extremely fragile because of Russia/Ukraine (ie official criticism of the Chinese government may result in additional support for Russia).