Shanghai's Chaotic Covid Lockdown Puts Other Chinese Cities on Edge (cnn.com) 103
As Shanghai's Covid-19 lockdown leaves residents struggling to access food or medical care, citizens elsewhere in China fear similar stringent measures are heading their way -- even as officials seek to assure the public they are well prepared. From a report: In the southern port city of Guangzhou, where all 18 million residents faced mandatory testing after a handful of infections were found last week, officials stressed that food and other supplies were well taken care of -- despite one local paper reporting shortages at supermarkets due to "panic buying." Meanwhile, online posts and articles about preparing for outbreaks circulated on Chinese social media -- including tips on how to store vegetables to make them last and what to prepare for stays in quarantine. Other articles talked about how cities were ensuring there would be enough supplies to cover lockdown periods.
The signs of public concern come as China enters a difficult phase of its fight against the virus. Shanghai's outbreak and another in northeastern Jilin province have seen the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant spread to levels never seen before in China. While the vast majority of cases in recent outbreaks have been in Jilin and Shanghai, infections have been found in some 29 provinces and municipalities. This poses a significant challenge for China's Communist Party as it remains steadfast in its "zero-Covid" commitment to eradicate the virus. And Shanghai's experience could set a precedent for increasingly harsh measures rolled out elsewhere to control Omicron, experts say.
The signs of public concern come as China enters a difficult phase of its fight against the virus. Shanghai's outbreak and another in northeastern Jilin province have seen the highly transmissible Omicron BA.2 variant spread to levels never seen before in China. While the vast majority of cases in recent outbreaks have been in Jilin and Shanghai, infections have been found in some 29 provinces and municipalities. This poses a significant challenge for China's Communist Party as it remains steadfast in its "zero-Covid" commitment to eradicate the virus. And Shanghai's experience could set a precedent for increasingly harsh measures rolled out elsewhere to control Omicron, experts say.
Schadenfreude (Score:2)
To be clear (Score:4, Interesting)
This poses a significant challenge for China's Communist Party as it remains steadfast in its "zero-Covid" commitment to eradicate the virus
To be clear, it poses a significant challenge for Xi, since it was his choice to keep holding on to the zero-Covid strategy. Other people in the CCP wanted to loosen up.
Re:To be clear (Score:5, Insightful)
They were bragging about how great their "zero Covid" strategy was. But in fact it's merely delaying the inevitable. The West in general had a "throttling strategy" where enough lock-down was done to keep from overwhelming the hospitals but not fully shut down everything. Because of this we are reaching a kind of herd immunity due to both infection and vaccines. True, they may have a lower death rate in the end, but the West generally values freedom over life, for good or bad.
It's hard to know what works best ahead of time, but throttling appears to have been the right strategy so far.
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"They were bragging about how great their "zero Covid" strategy was. But in fact it's merely delaying the inevitable. "
They have less total deaths than the UK had the last 3 weeks.
Re:To be clear (Score:4, Insightful)
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"They have fewer *officially reported* deaths. "
Yes, that's what everybody uses.
Re:To be clear (Score:4, Insightful)
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"They have fewer *officially reported* deaths. "
Yes, that's what everybody uses.
There's a difference between countries who official record tries to be accurate and China.
Re: To be clear (Score:3)
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Try again:
Its official statistics understate the Chinese Covid death rate by 17,000% (according to The Economist’s model). [forbes.com]
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* I know people that live there: the "[...] significant suffering among 25 million people, including starvation and suicide [...]" is just propaganda, dude...
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For the record, I have friends who live in China, as well. They tell me not to believe anything anyone says coming from there without actual evidence because the reality is always hidden from the people and the world.
Your comment is like somebody standing in Manhattan in the middle of the day and saying "Look, see? There's no crime," expecting people to reject the reality of the crime statistics that demonstrate a strong uptick in crime rates there.
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If China's COVID death rate was anything like Europe's or the States' there would be no way to cover it up. We know about the "re education" camps because we can see them on satellite imagery and because people on the ground have taken photos and video. Disposing of that many bodies without it being noticeable would be impossible.
I'm sure the figures are somewhat unreliable, but the point that they are still at least orders of magnitude better than the West is very likely true.
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According to the study by The Economist, their official numbers are underreported by 17,000%. If you have statistical evidence to the contrary, please present it.
Keep in mind that during the current lockdown in Shanghai, they have reported over 200,000 cases and they still have no covid deaths there. [arstechnica.com] Does that sound reasonable to you?
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Under reporting by 17,000% implies that they have had nearly 800,000 deaths that have somehow been covered up. That seems extremely unlikely.
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No it doesn't. That's what communist regimes do. They conceal the reality from their own people and the rest of the world to maintain a fake version of their ongoing competence, and the CCP is no different. It's why they have an extreme-authoritarian control on the availability of information online.
Interesting that you have no response to the lack of deaths in Shanghai among over 200,000 cases reported in the last few weeks. They can simply assign the cause of death to something else, like pneumonia, hear
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I'm sure there have been some deaths in Shanghai over the last few weeks. In they did report at least one, an elderly man with underlying health condition, and I'm sure he wasn't the only one.
How exactly do you hide 800,000 deaths? They couldn't hide what they were doing in those camps or any number of other things they would rather keep secret. 800,000 corpses would require a lot of burials or incinerations, and people would notice that so many people had disappeared.
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China has mandatory mass testing any time there is an outbreak.
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Really? You believe a word the Communist Chinese say? You are an idiot.
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You're in a terrible position. You have no evidence to support the claim that China is lying about their reported deaths.
All you can do is wave your arms around shouting that you don't trust China and call other people names.
Why bother posting anything at all?
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Kettle, meet Pot.
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How so? I've not made any claims.
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How so? I've not made any claims.
Sure, I'll break it down.
You're in a terrible position.
You seem to be in an equally terrible position.
You have no evidence to support the claim that China is lying about their reported deaths.
That was a straw man, as you offer no counter evidence that China is not lying, Not yet a faux pas, but...
All you can do is wave your arms around shouting that you don't trust China and call other people names.
You forgot to call them stupid or similar, but you might as well have since you attacked their credibility without any evidence to the contrary. Like them, you're assuming the reader will immediately take your side just because you pointed out a potential logic-hole, rather than offering up any sort of evidence.
Why bother posting anything at all?
And here we complete
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Wow, you're bad at this.
That was a straw man, as you offer no counter evidence that China is not lying, Not yet a faux pas, but...
1) That's not a straw man. 2) I'm not the one making any claims about China's honesty. My only claim was that he has no evidence, which he does not.
Pathetic.
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Because we only have an untrustworthy government reporting those numbers.
It's like getting "the Russian viewpoint" on the Ukrainian-Russian conflict from Russian news. You just aren't going to get it because the government (both Russia and China) control the media and disallow a free press, such that the only thing they are allowed to report is what the government allows them to report.
Sure, in many western nations you
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remember Rebecca Jones I think?
Rebekah Jones had access to inside information. This guy ... well, he's got even less credibility than the Chinese government.
the likes of FOX News and OAN and such also keep things like the CDC numbers honest
You've got to be kidding.
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Their official data is clearly impossible.e
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/
Do they even have a lower death rate (Score:1)
True, they may have a lower death rate in the end
The thing Is we'll never know if that is even the case, because many people had evidence China was greatly suppressing death toll numbers reported near the start of the pandemic.
So I don't think they'll wind up with any benefit at all from the stricter lockdowns. As has been shown anywhere that tried harsh lockdowns, and eventually had pretty much the same results as places that didn't lock down much at all.
The only approach that really seemed to help was tr
Dictator lying versus democracy lying (Score:2)
That's true. With dictatorships, all official stats should be taken with a big grain of salt. Lying happens in democracies also, but there are more checks and balances on average because there is political competition and multiple branches of gov't.
Those who live in dictatorships will often reply, "oh, you think you are better human beings than us". No, we are not, we just have more checks and balances in place than you do. Our system has competing eyeballs, not necessarily better eyeballs.
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Do you know what happened in Tennessee when Omicron hit?
The government officials just stopped reporting the number of cases, instead switching to a "new cases this week" metric, which totally hosed Worldometers.com.
So, no, there's no pandemic happening here, no sir!
So instead of lying, the government has now decided the pandemic is over, because people are tired of precautions. Let's all worry about Ukraine now.
And in order to make sure nobody still thinks about the pandemic, we're going to change
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Do you have any links to this alleged Great Taiwan Covid Reporting Scandal?
Re: Dictator lying versus democracy lying (Score:2)
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Do you know what happened in Tennessee when Omicron hit?
The government officials just stopped reporting the number of cases, instead switching to a "new cases this week" metric, which totally hosed Worldometers.com.
So, no, there's no pandemic happening here, no sir!
Tennessean here, and I don't believe what you are saying.
Here [tn.gov] is the state's COVID information page, here [tn.gov] is a nice overview of COVID cases in the state by time and demographics, and here [tn.gov] are downloadable datasets (including daily cases) that you can do your own analysis on. Note the data is not perfect and the numbers are a bit noisy due to reporting delays (particularly weekends). I'm curious where this "no sir, no pandemic here" denialism you're talking about is?
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Yes, the first link is the one I was referring to. It used to list active cases, now it doesn't. Yes, you can dig through the data yourself, but most people won't do that, which is the point. They're not lying, they're just not telling the truth like they used to.
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You said "The government officials just stopped reporting data" and "they made it impossible to do an apples-to-apples comparison." Since you are now saying "there's no point because people don't actually look at the data" you either misspoke, were misinformed, or were simply lying. There is no need to dig. Immediately beneath the information you are complaining about (which seems fine to me for what most people would care about, what's lacking there?) is a large button that says "COVID-19 data" which tak
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So I don't think they'll wind up with any benefit at all from the stricter lockdowns.
The Party stayed in power. Any possible protests were suppressed along with the virus. For a regime of control freaks, that's a net benefit.
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Zero covid arguably made sense before vaccines. Now that everyone is vaccinated (if they want to be), it's hard to see a purpose of that strategy. As you say, it is delaying the inevitable.
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Well, to be fair..the Chinese vaccines apparently suck in comparison to the West's, like the Pfizer and Moderna.
Even with the Chinese trying their best to steal the secrets of the good mRNA vaccines, they couldn't quite get it and hence their shots really don't work all that well.
Re: To be clear (Score:3)
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China's vaccine is not very effective. If they weren't so arrogant, maybe they could make a deal with Pfizer or Moderna.
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China's vaccine is not very effective
I looked for a citation for this, but I couldn't find one.
Re: To be clear (Score:2)
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And yet it was still killing about 2000 people a day in the USA until relatively recently
It's 'mild' like the previous strains caused some people to have no symptoms. Absolute luck of the draw. But if you want to reduce your risk of death or serious illness, the vaccines are pretty clearly the way to go.
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I currently live in HK. We can choose between Pfizer and Sinovac. There is plenty of supporting evidence that the traditional vaccine Sinovac works less strongly and will wear out quicker.
No, there is no such evidence.
In fact, the roughly 9:1 death/serious illness rate between unvaxxed and vaxxed population, along with roughly 50:50 spread between the two vaccines pretty much shown that there is no significant difference between the two vaccines. Otherwise, we would have death rate like 7:2:1 for unvaxxed:vax A:vax B ratios, rather than simply 9:1.
Re: To be clear (Score:4, Informative)
https://hongkongfp.com/2022/03... [hongkongfp.com]
Pfizer does protect better than Sinovac, though indeed Sinovac already offers a tremendous improvement vs not vaccinated.
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> shown that there is no significant difference between the two vaccines.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news... [bloomberg.com]
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Zero covid arguably made sense before vaccines. Now that everyone is vaccinated (if they want to be), it's hard to see a purpose of that strategy. As you say, it is delaying the inevitable.
It would be great if it worked. And with Chinese style lockdown, it worked for quite a while, until Omicron arrived. With Omicron, it seems that even a brutal lockdown doesn't _quite_ work.
Re: To be clear (Score:2)
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They were bragging about how great their "zero Covid" strategy was. But in fact it's merely delaying the inevitable.
Everyday you are living, you are also simply "delaying the inevitable". Yes, you will die one day. So why don't you just die now instead of dying later? Aren't you also merely delaying the inevitable?
For me, delaying the inevitable of death is a good thing.
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Literally all medical care is just "delaying the inevitable." You're going to die, period, so why not get it over with and die today?
Re: To be clear (Score:2)
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These CCP party members are insane. The west should get together and sanction every asset these people, friends families and oligarchs have in the west. CCP is like Russia 100x.
That's such a total nonsense. Not that I would want to live in China, but they are _trying_ to do what's best for everybody. While Putin is intentionally destroying another country, and terrorising the population of Ukraine through rape and murder.
And so far, the Chinese strategy has worked better than any strategy the west has used. The jury is still out what's overall best.
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They are also cheerleading the Russian invasion of Ukraine and their continued support of Russia makes them complicit in the slaughter currently taking place.
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but they are _trying_ to do what's best for everybody.
Unless you live in Taiwan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, or happened to join the wrong exercise group.
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Indeed, and note the subtle conflation in the summary that makes it sound like the government is lying about food availability.
In fact what they are referring to is the fact that the government provides food for free during lockdown. They literally go round every residence and drop off supplies so that the residents don't have to do their own shopping. It's a massive effort.
Mandatory testing sounds a bit authoritarian, but it's also why their lockdowns usually last weeks instead of months. I think given the
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Re: To be clear (Score:2)
Re: To be clear (Score:2)
I'm not a conspiracy whackjob... (Score:2)
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Different priorities.
Like killing pets, starving people and racking up preventable deaths from inability to seek medical attention. I won't even get into the suicides and screams in the night.
China has a death rate of ~3 per million. The USA? 2,960. What's the USA's priority?
China is likely to end up doing way better than the US in population adjusted deaths however boasting at this point is premature.
Nobody in China has yet to even be infected. Once that changes and nearly everyone in China is infected the same as nearly everyone in most other countries are infected then and only then can deaths be compared
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Re: To be clear (Score:2)
Lockdowns being weaponized (Score:1)
Re:Lockdowns being weaponized (Score:5, Insightful)
and I hope to never see another "lockdown" in Canada again
I was nodding along with you until your asinine last sentence.
Where I live (Toronto) had the longest, most extensive lockdown in North America. Even then, it was *nothing* compared to what is being experienced in Chinese cities, and to somehow link the two together is preposterous in the extreme.
I was still walking the dog, ordering restaurant takeout, going to the grocery store.... Could I go to the barber? No, but to suggest that is analogous to people being forcibly sent to quarantine centres after testing positive is nonsense.
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What a bunch of god damn crybabies! We were all mildly inconvenienced. Meanwhile in China people are opting to jump off their damn buildings because they are starving under a real tyrannical lockdown.
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I'm hearing they welded people into their apartments. Right now they're killing pets. Someone said they saw a bag full of live cats being collected.
IMHO, that's insanity. Even if it is Covid as long as it's an Omni or later variant - so what? It's a cold or flu at the worst. Unless they know something we don't.
They don't know something we don't... do they? Anyone feel free to reply.
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Point in case, look at Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore. They all managed to keep covid from spreading into their general population until just the last few months. They went all of 2020 and almost all of 2021 keeping preventing the mass population from being e
Not sure how reassured I'd be after watching this (Score:2)
https://www.reddit.com/r/China/comments/tyevbn/今天不来地狱笑话_来点天堂悲剧家人们/
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OMG. I hear they were welding people into their apartments. Maybe it shows that in the beginning?
Over here in Hong Kong (Score:2)
- only 213 deaths on 7M people until January 2022, without a real lockdown.
However what was bad:
- So much time wasted: despite a big campaign, only 10 percent of the 80+ aged were vaccinated by start of the year. Largely a false sense of security, partly fear due to antivax misinformation, sometimes also a matter of boycotting the government. Result is now around 9000 deaths in 2.5 months, the large majority being unvacced and especially elde
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Apparently, because we have been social distancing so much, often having zoom classes, little playing outside with other kids, causing childrenâ(TM)s natural immunity not to be as âoeexercisedâ as normal, which made omicron more dangerous here for kids. T
I'd like to see some evidence of that particular claim. It sounds like complete nonsense.
Re: Over here in Hong Kong (Score:2)
https://amp.scmp.com/news/hong... [scmp.com]
âoeWhy [Hong Kong] children under five years old infected with Omicron seem to have such unexpected severity could be due to the lack of exposure to seasonal human coronaviruses in the past two years, resulting in a lack of cross-reactive immunity,â
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So it's just speculation then. You probably ran into this somewhere that turned that from "possibly" to "definitely".
though it does not seem unreasonable
A lot of nonsense seems reasonable. That's why we have science. It's pretty good about telling us when our ideas are wrong.
Re: Over here in Hong Kong (Score:2)
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That's fine, but you should be careful when you repeat it as though it were an established fact.
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The zero Covid policy is mimicking the mainland.
No, HK's covid policy is the exact opposite of "mimicking the mainland" while claiming to do zero covid. In fact, the HK govt did everything to *NOT* learn from the mainland, including:
1 - dismantling the cabin hospital mainland helped to build last year so there is a lack of quarantine beds for the infected
2 - adamantly NOT do mass PCR tests so virus continues to spread in the community
3 - never expand the PCT testing capacity throughout the 2 years of pandemic, so getting PCT test results took over a wee
Understatement by a mile (Score:2)
The summary/article is a huge whitewash of the present lockdown severity.
Chinese largely consume fresh food, so the weeks of lockdown there have been weeks without anything to eat.
The people are literally screaming throughout the city [twitter.com] and committing suicide [nypost.com] by jumping from their balconies.
big government is a big risk (Score:2)
As in
This restricting people from food thing is exactly why government should have less control and do less.
Power struggle (Score:1)
Shanghai's "Coviid Lockdown" is actually cover for a power struggle between President Xi Jinping whose political base is around Beijing, and former President Jiang Xemin, whose base is around Shanghai. Many people believe power has become too concentrated in Xi.