Let's talk about China
- Thread starter not-bono-ever
- Start date
Serge Forward
Just enjoyin' my coffee.
Don't tell me... you wore a yellow star as well. Wot a prick
8ball
Merr xmas...
Yeah it is, but the way they handled it was pretty surprising to me at the time.
I was totally behind a lockdown early on (earlier than they did it), but lots of stuff was handled really badly with nary a peep from people I’d have expected to chirp up.
Hey ho, you live and learn…
I think the lockdowns were a good idea until the UK had vaccines come through. That definitely saved lives.
I admit I haven't read this thread but suspect antivaxx loons are now hypocrisy hunting.
I admit I haven't read this thread but suspect antivaxx loons are now hypocrisy hunting.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Yeah I think 2 years on from the pandemic it's probably about the time to start asking whether lockdowns were necessarily the right thing (early on I think they probably were tbh, but beyond that, not sure - but then imo Russia had a total covid disaster in the beginning of 2021 because it didn't have them) and what should be done to avoid them in future pandemics.
I still don't think anything in Europe or the US is remotely comparable to the zero covid stuff tho, although there was a lot of overreach and racialised policing etc in many cases.
8ball
Merr xmas...
Not sure to what extent that is or isn’t aimed at me, but early on I think we should have closed borders and locked down a few weeks sooner.
I mostly rankle about the conversations we didn’t have, the denial in some quarters about the inevitable costs of lockdown, the tribalistic battles over masks and the abject failure to properly protect people in care homes.
Very much mostly about the first of those, though. We didn’t handle things like a democracy should (not that we are one).
And yes, the vaccines have saved a great many lives. I have colleagues who worked on them and I have worked on trials involving acute treatments myself.
Anyway, I agree with FW - enough of a derail and let’s get back to China.
None of it aimed at you. Just aware of what is going on in China and what kind of arguments it might throw up amongst the various debate practitioners.
FWIW I don't think the Conservatives imposed lockdowns and furlough etc to save lives. They did it to protect industry, and profits. But they could easily then portray this action as a heroic one, ast it definitely did save lives.
8ball
Merr xmas...
I think they did it because they feared the potential consequences of not doing so.
The consequences for them, their ideology, definitely. They aren't state interventionists unless they feel threatened. And then we pick up the tab.
8ball
Merr xmas...
Agreed. Though I think it came easier to Johnson than it would have done to most Tories because he believes nothing whatsoever.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
Spyware targets Uyghurs by ‘masquerading’ as Android apps – report this is how this Huawei stuff may be working if true
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah I think 2 years on from the pandemic it's probably about the time to start asking whether lockdowns were necessarily the right thing (early on I think they probably were tbh, but beyond that, not sure - but then imo Russia had a total covid disaster in the beginning of 2021 because it didn't have them) and what should be done to avoid them in future pandemics.
I still don't think anything in Europe or the US is remotely comparable to the zero covid stuff tho, although there was a lot of overreach and racialised policing etc in many cases.
In regards zero covid, the 'zero covid until vaccine uptake reaches a certain level' was adopted in some other countries too, we arent stuck with only Chinas version of zero covid (featuring zero workable exit strategy so far) as a real world example. New Zealand and Australia are examples where they came to terms with an exit strategy that involved a certain amount of death later on.
As for lockdowns, theres not much new that would make a discussion about this any deeper now than it would have been a number of years ago.
And it wasnt just a question of needing lockdowns early on, they were needed for subsequent waves pre-vaccine too. UK attempts to dodge this reality without a sufficient replacement only led to a longer winter lockdown in the end.
Ways to avoid lockdowns and other restrictive responses, roughly in sequential order:
Stop the new virus getting into humans in the first place, by reducing the risks from animal-human interfaces and also to cover all bases things should be done to reduce the risk of lab accidents.
If you fail to do that, then at least have systems that offer a better chance of detecting the outbreak early, and limiting the human to human spread at or near ground zero. If that fails too, then at least have systems to stop it spreading rapidly around the entire country, and then around the entire globe.
If all those lines of defence fail then at least do stuff that slows down the spread and buys more time. Including having the ability to test way more people from an earlier stage. Put pressure on authorities not to get stuck behind the curve at every single step during the crucial early period.
If all of that fails then you still dont end up with lockdowns in every single pandemic, that level of response has tended to be the exception not the rule. Because the strength of response required depends on properties of the virus including its transmissibility, uniqueness of symptoms, what rate of hospitalisation and death it causes, age-risk profile, whether any treatments and vaccines are available, and what sort of hospital capacity a particular country has. Then depending on how all those things balance out, there might be plenty of room to deal with the issue via standard health responses, pharmaceutical methods etc. Work is being done on a broad influenza vaccine that it is hoped will offer protection against a bunch of strains that have future pandemic potential, to give one pharmaceutical example of something that can change the equations in some scenarios without people having to resort to lockdowns.
If things are still considered a close thing, with margins that are too tight to call with high confidence, then you do all you can to buy time every step of the way, increasing the chances of success, and give the masses the right information and the right impression of the situation so that they can voluntarily make some changes to behaviour early on rather than falling for inappropriate reassurances from the authorities. Ultimately there are a whole range of non-pharmaceutical interventions, lockdowns and closures of things are at one end of the spectrum of these non-pharmaceutical interventions and if the numbers add up better then you wont find authorities feeling the need to go as far as closures and lockdowns. And if authorities get too far out of step with basic reality, a fair chunk of the population will take matters into their own hands.
This virus was a bad one and many mistakes were made. If a virus with similar potential to cause severe illness etc came along in future, and authorities made the same sort of mistakes, and we didnt have treatments or vaccines or a wonderful new quantity of spare healthcare capacity or a big difference to the underlying health of our populations, then we would end up in a similar position and very strong responses would be required again. We could fiddle with some of the detail of restrictions and decent timing of a strong response could help, eg act early to reduce size of outbreak in the first place thus making periods of lockdown shorter, but the basic hospitalisations numbers game would still be where the action was, would still lead to trigger points where tough shit was required if certain levels were breached. There are a whole bunch of factors which affect quite how much wiggle room particular countries end up with, and quite how far they have to go with restrictions. When we get into this level of detail and variations between nation, the blanket term lockdown may be too simplistic to do the detail justice. And there can be infinite quibbling to suit some peoples preferences for avoiding certain actions, for choosing to believe what they feel like in regards how much good masks and lockdowns etc do, but that sort of discussion doesnt usually lead to useful alternative choices that UK authorities could actually rely on if we faced a similar virus threat in future.
People learning the obvious via the experience of this pandemic, that lockdowns were not much fun and have downsides really does not change the fundamentals. Not unless people are proposing that we develop new lower standards in regards peoples expectations of being able to receive healthcare at all during a pandemic of this sort, as opposed to being overtly sacrificed. And even when such cold calculations are made use of, the UK demonstrated that there are still limits to how far such a thing can be pushed, they still ended up having to go much further with restrictions than they originally had the appetite for. Even with their heavy handed use of rather cold calculations in the early months they still couldnt make the numbers add up. Because this particular virus sucks too much and we were starting from almost nothing in terms of pharmaceutical options, and because they resisted doing various tough but sensible things at the earliest opportunities, compounding our plight.
Being able to reduce spread of the virus in care homes, reduce the spread in hospitals, and being able to genuinely shield the most vulnerable can affect the equations and buy more wiggle room that could alter the balance to the extent that you then dont have to go so far with measures in other settings and other aspects of peoples lives. These things are tricky to achieve though, and likely require us and authorities to adopt a different sense of priorities as a nation during normal times, and there appears to be a lack of appetite to bother.
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Thesaint
Active Member
And back to China...how many would they tolerate as an inevitability?
Maybe 0 to save face, in which case how long can they maintain there existing strategy and what lengths will they go to?
JimW
支那暗杀团
We had a one month lockdown in the village I used to live in and it was handled pretty well; you could go out to stroll about and exercise but obviously expected to steer clear of neighbours; village committee provided various food supplies and even some goodies, got several rather nice bluetooth phone speakers somewhat bizarrely, think Xiaomi must have made a donation. Obviously the logistics of supplying a village are somewhat more straightforward than one of the world's major metropolises. By a stoke of bad luck one of the grandads was visiting for the weekend and got caught up in it with not much beyond his toothbrush and a spare pair of pants but he got counted for a share of supplies too. He's even been brave enough to visit again since. The more recent lockdown in the new village was less sever and only a couple of days, no big barriers at the village entrance just the regular checkpoint and you could go out if you really wanted to.
gosub
~#
CBDC's (currently undergoing piloting in a number of Countries) allow for this to be done far more easily
skyscraper101
0891 50 50 50
So predictable. The pivot begins and the CCP now citing 'a new phase' downplaying the severity of covid without mentioning “dynamic Covid Zero”
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-01/china-starts-to-loosen-covid-grip-three-years-after-first-case?srnd=premium-uk
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-12-01/china-starts-to-loosen-covid-grip-three-years-after-first-case?srnd=premium-uk
elbows
Well-Known Member
They already have some deaths, including a spike in late April/early May that peaked at 71 in a single day, and there have been a few reported in recent days too as well as at various other times. I cannot say to what extent the officially recorded covid deaths are an undercount.
elbows
Well-Known Member
They had already started changing the rules in recent months, but it is certainly true that this appears to be a new chapter in terms of how quickly they are changing the rules and a very large change to the rhetoric.
BBC version of the story:
China signals ease in Covid policy after protests
Dozens of districts in major cities have now begun lifting lockdown measures despite high case numbers.
www.bbc.co.uk
In reality is is unlikely that there have been recent changes to the pathogenicity of the virus or to vaccination levels that match the timing of the change of rhetoric.
But there is a difference between what has actually changed with the virus recently, and what the authorities and Chinese media are suddenly ready to reveal to their people. And sure enough, look what I just found, an article with todays date on it:
The article then goes on to mention previous Omicron research in some other countries.
"Omicron is mild' was a sentiment that was very useful in many countries, speeded up a change in attitudes towards the virus in populations all over the place. So not too surprising that China is now making heavy use of it. A more nuanced version of the claim is probably a better fit with reality, eg Omicron is certainly mild compared to Delta and it does seem to affect certain parts of the body less even compared to the original strain. The amount of death it can still cause means I cannot call it mild overall, but risk is judged in a relative way compared to what we've experienced before, so I do understand the sentiment. And Delta was a real shit of a strain, so the contrast between Delta and Omicron is not so subtle, as shown in intensive care figures all over the place. Levels of population immunity are part of the picture too though, some of what people attribute to Omicron reflects other changes to the situation, changes to us rather than the virus.
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gosub
~#
They had already started changing the rules in recent months, but it is certainly true that this appears to be a new chapter in terms of how quickly they are changing the rules and a very large change to the rhetoric.
BBC version of the story:
China signals ease in Covid policy after protests
Dozens of districts in major cities have now begun lifting lockdown measures despite high case numbers.www.bbc.co.uk
In reality is is unlikely that there have been recent changes to the pathogenicity of the virus or to vaccination levels that match the timing of the change of rhetoric.
But there is a difference between what has actually changed with the virus recently, and what the authorities and Chinese media are suddenly ready to reveal to their people. And sure enough, look what I just found, an article with todays date on it:
The article then goes on to mention previous Omicron research in some other countries.
"Omicron is mild' was a sentiment that was very useful in many countries, speeded up a change in attitudes towards the virus in populations all over the place. So not too surprising that China is now making heavy use of it. A more nuanced version of the claim is probably a better fit with reality, eg Omicron is certainly mild compared to Delta and it does seem to affect certain parts of the body less even compared to the original strain. The amount of death it can still cause means I cannot call it mild overall, but risk is judged in a relative way compared to what we've experienced before, so I do understand the sentiment. And Delta was a real shit of a strain, so the contrast between Delta and Omicron is not so subtle, as shown in intensive care figures all over the place. Levels of population immunity are part of the picture too though, some of what people attribute to Omicron reflects other changes to the situation, changes to us rather than the virus.
The Omicron story does make me chuckle a bit, remember when it first showed up, and the scepticism with which it was initially treated - though it has been good news .... what makes me chuckle though ...having already moved away from the old system of naming an outbreak after where it was first identified for fear of upsetting China, they switched to Greek alphabet and got as far as mu before they named the next one. Omicron is Omicron coz Nu sounds like new so could have caused confusion and they didn't call it Xi cos again it could have upset the Chinese (again).
Thank fuck for Omicron! Because Xi corona looks like a nightmare (edited to add hadn't read Jessie's post in HK thread about even Omicron being a nightmare out that way) but at least the west doesn't have to thank XI for some sort of return to 'normalcy
....
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Thesaint
Active Member
Yeah a funny turn up that. Also omicron almost sounds like "oh Macron" so offending the french president is ok
The Russian alphabet has even more letters to choose from so would allow for more variants, but by 2022 would have been a faux pas too.
Sasaferrato
Super Refuser!
Omicron may be milder but it isn't nothing. An ex colleague was whipped into hospital last night with Covid, she hasn't needed to be ventilated, but is on high flow oxygen. This is her third Covid infection, she wasn't nearly as ill with the other two.
I'm still semi-shielding, and will continue to do so.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes and although its pretty tedious that I feel the need to point out we've had over 20,000 Covid deaths in England & Wales so far this year, I cant help it. Partly because this sort of figure also offers clues about why lockdowns were needed in the pre-vaccine era. If we still end up with over 20,000 deaths when well into the vaccination era, and when dealing with the Omicron strain, and in a population with a significant amount of prior exposure, then it shouldnt be too hard to contemplate what earlier phases of the pandemic would have been like if everyone carried on as normal instead of making large changes to behaviour.
I wont have a great idea about what to make of Chinas official statistics for the next period with their changed approach, I dont know how much of the picture they will try to suppress.
I wont have a great idea about what to make of Chinas official statistics for the next period with their changed approach, I dont know how much of the picture they will try to suppress.
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
How much is that compared with other respiratory infections out of interest? It sounds like it's still a lot compared with flu etc
Yuwipi Woman
Whack-A-Mole Queen
It amazes me how oblivious people can be to so many people dying, even people who have been sick or lost family. I was talking to a Republican neighbor, and he mentioned how "people don't want to work anymore." I said that some of the labor shortage was due to over a million people dying. He looked at me like I was from Mars. He had no idea that the US had that many deaths.
elbows
Well-Known Member
How much is that compared with other respiratory infections out of interest? It sounds like it's still a lot compared with flu etc
We dont do a very good job of counting flu deaths properly due to lack of routine testing. In normal times the authorities and experts have to resort to trying to figure it out using estimates, things written on death certificates, broader categories of death, overall death rates and excess death amounts measured over each winter. And there is a lot of variation in what estimates different people come up with, some doctors like to believe the numbers are relatively modest but that sort of view isnt actually supported by the broadest forms of death data. But just to give some vague numbers, in 2018 authorities listed 29,516 'influenza and pneumonia' deaths and in 2019 they listed 26,398 (figures are for England & Wales since thats what the ONS covers). I wont bore on at great length about how many there actually are in bad flu years, but if we study a season like 1999-2000 when there was a really bad flu wave, the official figure was 'only' 19,000 compared to 48,000 excess deaths that winter. This range of numbers is likely where Vallance plucked his '20,000 would be a good result' from early in this pandemic, never mind that flu is a poor guide to covid. Increased vaccination campaigns against flu in recent decades has certainly changed the overall death picture compared to last century, so there are some broader clues there, flu can be quite nasty, especially the H3N2 version of it.
Certainly in recent years we havent had the normal quantity of flu deaths, lockdowns and behavioural changes stopped the normal flu waves from happening at anything like their usual scale, flu was largely absent (though not completely gone in reality). This winter it is expected that we will get a flu wave more like those seen before the pandemic, and indeed one has already begun. And such waves vary each year in terms of how much death they cause. And we tend to get a large proportion of those deaths in a relatively short space of time over winter, whereas this years Covid deaths that I mentioned have happened over about 4 waves throughout the year. About half of them happened by mid April, so it was worse earlier this year than later. Some of those earlier deaths were from Delta rather than Omicron. The extent to which we are undercounting isnt so easy to ascertain, but if we include deaths recorded as 'involving' covid then the figure is more like 30,000 than 20,000. If we look at deaths from all causes, 2022 so far for England & Wales has seen about 11,000 less deaths than there were in the same period of 2021, which isnt an amazing result given how large a covid death wave (and lockdown) we had in early 2021, and that 2021 featured pre-Omicron strains and the vaccine rollout took time to take maximum effect back then.
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What the fuck makes you think the CCP don't?
Dozens of Hong Kong activists have had all their assets seized, including their pensions, and their passports cancelled.
What are you, a Tankie or a Wumao?
Hmmph!
Woof
elbows
Well-Known Member
On a related note:
This sort of thing is part of the reason why I think people that insist on viewing things only in terms of 'the cost of lockdown' are missing the point.
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