Shanghai lockdown

[frogwoman]

Surprised there isn't already a thread on this, this might be where the 'zero covid' policy of China becomes completely unstuck. This is probably my most controversial opinion lol but now that the danger of covid has receded to some degree in 'the west' (I know it's not gone away) I think it is worth talking about how certain aspects of this crisis have fed into authoritarian state responses, especially in China but in other parts of the world as well.

Anyway thought I'd start this thread with some links. I don't know a lot about China or Shanghai and I know posters like Jessiedog or JimW might be able to provide some insight into it

Public anger mounts in locked-down Shanghai with no end in sight. Here's what you need to know | CNN

Millions of people across China's locked-down financial hub of Shanghai have been desperately seeking medical care and basic supplies like food. Parents have been forcibly separated from young children infected with Covid-19. And public anger is mounting, with no end in sight as China clamps down.

edition.cnn.com

 

[Flavour]

proper Blade Runner shit

 

[cupid_stunt]

Wow, not even allowed out to take a walk or do shopping, that's mad.

Even worst is parents having been forcibly separated from young children that are infected.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

That does seem a crazy, disproportionate response. Is it influenced to a degree by what happened in Hong Kong with omicron? Hong Kong's mess was caused by a failure to vaccinate the old. What percentage of over-75s are fully vaccinated in China?

 

[crossthebreeze]

It does seem crazy - this guy saying he can't get any kind of food delivery

 

[teuchter]

That does seem a crazy, disproportionate response. Is it influenced to a degree by what happened in Hong Kong with omicron? Hong Kong's mess was caused by a failure to vaccinate the old. What percentage of over-75s are fully vaccinated in China?

It seems there's some element of pride in maintaining zero covid while the rest of the world has not managed to do so.

 

[bluescreen]

It seems there's some element of pride in maintaining zero covid while the rest of the world has not managed to do so.

But they haven't, have they?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

It seems there's some element of pride in maintaining zero covid while the rest of the world has not managed to do so.

Maybe. They must know that this isn't sustainable, though.

China isn't the only place with anachronistic zero-covid policies still in place. Japan still has strict quarantine protocols for people entering the country despite the fact that omicron is widespread there now - and they failed ever to establish a mass-testing programme, so don't believe the numbers on Worldometers - the real level in Japan will be quite a bit higher.

A friend over from Japan this week was horrified by the attitude he found here. He's barely taken his masks off since landing (he wears two). Here in Europe, I think most people are fairly sanguine about the idea of catching covid now - attitude being 'it's bound to happen at some point'. In Japan (and no doubt China), it's still far less normalised.

 

[maomao]

My in-laws (in Tianjin) are getting fed up of going for testing every couple of days. There was an article on the outside-China Chinese internet about how in some village group testing (which normally means samples being placed together) had consisted of up to twelve people sharing the same swab. My wife asked her mum about this and got told she wasn't proper Chinese and shouldn't listen to fake news.

It feels like they're using covid as an excuse to ratchet up the authoritarianism. It's now quite normal for people to be 'taken away' even if it's only for two weeks.

 

[Yossarian]

That does seem a crazy, disproportionate response. Is it influenced to a degree by what happened in Hong Kong with omicron? Hong Kong's mess was caused by a failure to vaccinate the old. What percentage of over-75s are fully vaccinated in China?

The numbers don't look any better than Hong Kong - and like Hong Kong, the elderly will have received Chinese-made vaccines instead of mRNA vaccines.

Only 19.7% of people aged over 80 in China have received a COVID-19 vaccine booster as of March 17, and just 50.7% of that age group have completed their primary vaccinations, said Zeng Yixin, another NHC deputy director.

Chinese officials urge elderly to get COVID vaccine, cite lesson of Hong Kong

Older people in China should get vaccinated against COVID-19, senior Chinese health officials said on Friday, adding that deaths among the elderly in the latest wave to hit Hong Kong serve as a lesson for the mainland.

www.reuters.com

 

[Yossarian]

As with Hong Kong, which was acting on orders from the mainland, it looks like the "zero COVID" approach led to complacency in China and a failure to prepare for much more infectious new variants - they're now stuck with the choice between unsustainable lockdowns or an outbreak that could end up killing more than 50,000 people a day across the country, if the Hong Kong death rate is any indication.

 

[Yossarian]

A friend over from Japan this week was horrified by the attitude he found here. He's barely taken his masks off since landing (he wears two). Here in Europe, I think most people are fairly sanguine about the idea of catching covid now - attitude being 'it's bound to happen at some point'. In Japan (and no doubt China), it's still far less normalised.

Britain seems like a bit of an outlier, tbf - I will be back next month for the first time since March 2020 and I expect to be a little horrified to find cases raging out of control and almost nobody wearing masks.

 

[maomao]

killing more than 50,000 people a day across the country, i

Traditionally at least, the Chinese are said to place a higher value on old people's lives than young people's (though the one child policy has nudged that over the other way a little bit) and this would be likely to be considered a much bigger public tragedy than it was in the west.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Britain seems like a bit of an outlier, tbf - I will be back next month for the first time since March 2020 and I expect to be a little horrified to find cases raging out of control and almost nobody wearing masks.

I was in Switzerland last week and it was the same. They scrapped their last rules while I was there, at which point almost everyone immediately took their masks off - it was only on public transport anyway. Was at a martial arts seminar with people from across Europe. Zero covid precautions at the event or venue. Talking to people from various countries, Italy is still enforcing rules strictly, but across much of Europe, covid caution has disappeared. Belgians I spoke to said they were glad Belgium was following Britain now rather than France.

 

[JimW]

My in-laws (in Tianjin) are getting fed up of going for testing every couple of days. There was an article on the outside-China Chinese internet about how in some village group testing (which normally means samples being placed together) had consisted of up to twelve people sharing the same swab. My wife asked her mum about this and got told she wasn't proper Chinese and shouldn't listen to fake news.

It feels like they're using covid as an excuse to ratchet up the authoritarianism. It's now quite normal for people to be 'taken away' even if it's only for two weeks.

That sounds like a garbled version of them testing samples in batches of twelve, which is the common practice, but obviously can't rule anything out.

 

[maomao]

That sounds like a garbled version of them testing samples in batches of twelve,

That's what I said but the article (which I haven't read personally) made the distinction between this and normal batch testing and was said to have happened in one place only.

 

[Yossarian]

I was in Switzerland last week and it was the same. They scrapped their last rules while I was there, at which point almost everyone immediately took their masks off - it was only on public transport anyway. Was at a martial arts seminar with people from across Europe. Zero covid precautions at the event or venue. Talking to people from various countries, Italy is still enforcing rules strictly, but across much of Europe, covid caution has disappeared. Belgians I spoke to said they were glad Belgium was following Britain now rather than France.

Here in Ontario people are a lot more skeptical about the government's decision a few weeks ago to lift mask mandates etc. in most settings while cases are rising - mask-wearing still seems to be at well above 50% and some pubs etc. haven't lifted vaccination requirements.

 

[Yossarian]

Traditionally at least, the Chinese are said to place a higher value on old people's lives than young people's (though the one child policy has nudged that over the other way a little bit) and this would be likely to be considered a much bigger public tragedy than it was in the west.

Yep, I think we will see unusually high levels of public criticism of the CCP if scenes like the ones in Hong Kong emerge of old people being left outside hospitals for days or being placed in wards where the bodies of COVID victims are piled up in body bags.

 

[JimW]

That's what I said but the article (which I haven't read personally) made the distinction between this and normal batch testing and was said to have happened in one place only.

Can't really rule anything out in a country this size but since it is current political task number one would be a bold or exceptionally thick cadre to fuck about with the protocols I'd think.
As it happens I got a phone call from village committee this morning asking me to confirm my vaccination dates, so maybe they have wised up and moved on to that.
They did arrange mass free vaccination for the village but IIRC not the over 75s, so they'll have to get moving on that.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Here in Ontario people are a lot more skeptical about the government's decision a few weeks ago to lift mask mandates etc. in most settings while cases are rising - mask-wearing still seems to be at well above 50% and some pubs etc. haven't lifted vaccination requirements.

tbh I'd judge Switzerland to be even less covid cautious than Britain. I've helped run two UK-only events since November, and we've asked everyone to test before coming. The Swiss organisers didn't care about any of that - and they had people coming from all over the world.

In Japan, by contrast, nobody is allowed inside any dojo without a mask on, and you have to keep it on at all times. But it's really hard to get a test. You have to be symptomatic or they won't give you one.

The whole world has gone slightly mad.

 

[elbows]

Maybe. They must know that this isn't sustainable, though.

China isn't the only place with anachronistic zero-covid policies still in place. Japan still has strict quarantine protocols for people entering the country despite the fact that omicron is widespread there now - and they failed ever to establish a mass-testing programme, so don't believe the numbers on Worldometers - the real level in Japan will be quite a bit higher.

A friend over from Japan this week was horrified by the attitude he found here. He's barely taken his masks off since landing (he wears two). Here in Europe, I think most people are fairly sanguine about the idea of catching covid now - attitude being 'it's bound to happen at some point'. In Japan (and no doubt China), it's still far less normalised.

I would like to appeal for us to keep this thread about Chinas level of policies, and the huge implications and suffering they are leading to, rather than watering this down to a much broader diacussion involving any country that dares to keep certain restrictions in place. Japan never professed to be aiming for zero covid, and the political considerations around policy are not the same as Chinas at all.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I would like to appeal for us to keep this thread about Chinas level of policies, and the huge implications and suffering they are leading to, rather than watering this down to a much broader diacussion involving any country that dares to keep certain restrictions in place. Japan never professed to be aiming for zero covid, and the political considerations around policy are not the same as Chinas at all.

Ok. Japan is still effectively closed, though. It's not simply 'daring to keep restrictions in place'. An attitude that they are somehow better than the places that have seen bad covid is prevalent there.

 

[Yossarian]

The constant rounds of testing might be making things worse, according to the South China Morning Post.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents remain under a citywide lockdown to enable health authorities to carry out a fresh round of mass tests since Sunday to spot every infection and break the transmission chain. The city had already undergone three rounds of tests involving every single resident, from April 3 to 6 ... At the same time, rising infections despite the citywide lockdown is fuelling concern that the mass testing procedures are actually spreading the coronavirus through the gathering and mingling of crowds.

Welcome to nginx!

 

[elbows]

This is how I think we need to set the scene for a start:

Genuine zero-covid as an approach could only ever work if the whole world was on board and had much success early on. That was never really on the cards, so the term has ended up applying to something a bit different.

Whats called zero-covid that a bunch of countries actually pursued should have been a non-permanent measure that was used during the pre-vaccine era, with a plan in place to adjust away from it as protection was established in other ways such as via treatments, vaccinating the right groups in sufficient numbers, boosters at the right time etc. Countries could still vary in the extent and speed at which they relaxed measures, but they absolutely needed some plan that did not assume permanence of the original approach, because global zero-covid was not on the cards.

During periods where the original approach was left in place, care needed to be taken to understand the implications of increased transmissibility of new variants that became dominant around the globe. Because measures that worked with less-transmissive variants would not be expected to be as sufficient when the virus was more transmissible, and so for example the hard lockdowns the likes of China used would always have been likely to end up needing to cover larger areas, for greater periods of time.

Chinas zero-covid rhetoric became a major political feature. And the nature of the rhetoric they increasingly came to rely on left them lacking in wiggle room to transition away from that approach in a way that saved face and maintained any consistency (or rather shifted gradually so as to disguise the inevitable inconsistencies). They could still decide to start shifting on that front, but since they have not done so to date, its hard to make predictions about that and quite how and when they will ever transition. Now there is a risk of disorderly breakdown and of other threats to the population which outweigh the level of threat from the actual virus they should have been facing at this time if they had positioned themselves properly and transitioned appropriately before now.

 

[JimW]

The constant rounds of testing might be making things worse, according to the South China Morning Post.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents remain under a citywide lockdown to enable health authorities to carry out a fresh round of mass tests since Sunday to spot every infection and break the transmission chain. The city had already undergone three rounds of tests involving every single resident, from April 3 to 6 ... At the same time, rising infections despite the citywide lockdown is fuelling concern that the mass testing procedures are actually spreading the coronavirus through the gathering and mingling of crowds.

Welcome to nginx!

That was always my feeling, rarely in a crowd the size of our testing queues these days.
At some level the worst missteps strike me as stemming from the state wishing to serve the people where that is a stage army largely of their own imagining rather than the actual people who live in China.

 

[frogwoman]

What's the vaccine rollout like? I saw 19% of over 80s quoted which seems unbelievably low.

 

[elbows]

The constant rounds of testing might be making things worse, according to the South China Morning Post.

Shanghai’s 25 million residents remain under a citywide lockdown to enable health authorities to carry out a fresh round of mass tests since Sunday to spot every infection and break the transmission chain. The city had already undergone three rounds of tests involving every single resident, from April 3 to 6 ... At the same time, rising infections despite the citywide lockdown is fuelling concern that the mass testing procedures are actually spreading the coronavirus through the gathering and mingling of crowds.

Welcome to nginx!

Yes in theory there has always been risk that even measures which can reduce transmission or disease severity burden may end up causing transmission if they arent done carefully. eg in countries like ours, there was a theoretical risk that vaccination centres introduced a new risk vector at the times when the virus was prevalent, vaccine hubs were very busy, and levels of prior immunity were low. Likewise mass walk-in testing centres. If China is doing mass testing in a way that involves crowds and contact patterns that would not otherwise have occurred, they are indeed likely to be creating new routes of transmission.

 

[elbows]

What's the vaccine rollout like? I saw 19% of over 80s quoted which seems unbelievably low.

The earlier post said that was for boosters, and included a figure for primary vaccinations: Shanghai lockdown

Booster timing and uptake levels certainly matters, as does the effectiveness of the vaccines actually given in a country compared to the ones we've been given, and I am more familiar with the data about how effective ours were than the ones used in China. Hong Kong already demonstrated that the 'Omicron is mild' talk was deeply misleading if the vaccine picture wasnt good in older people.

 

[elbows]

Ok. Japan is still effectively closed, though. It's not simply 'daring to keep restrictions in place'. An attitude that they are somehow better than the places that have seen bad covid is prevalent there.

They are reopening on certain fronts in a much slower manner than many others did, and you dont like their mask policies for all the reasons we've argued about in the past that I really dont want to repeat again, especially not on this thread.

They are not comparable to China.

Here is their latest move to slowly return to normal, a move that still does not include people visiting for the purposes of tourism:

Japan to lift COVID entry ban for 106 countries including U.S.

Japan plans to ease COVID 19-related border restrictions by lifting its entry ban for foreignnationals from 106 countries including the United States, Britain and France on Friday, the government said.

www.reuters.com

As for attitudes, many pandemic attitudes in different countries have been influenced by politics and attitudes from pre-pandemic times, combined with perceptions of each wave and chosen government policy and framing in response to each wave. And yes there are attempts by countries, their governments, media and citizens that involve comparing and contrast themselves with other countries and 'how well they've done', and are performed in ways that may be reasonable or bogus or a mix of both, and are usually driven by the desire to justify policies and timing and come to terms with things. Very much including periods where rules are changing and a new phase is beginning. I am not trying to defend Japan or congratulate them, but they dont belong on this thread because their population is not facing what the populations of some Chinese cities are right now.

 

[l'Otters]

I heard there’s been some major fuck up in food supply for locked down people which will be having a massive impact on the feasibility of this. It was on Twitter n I dunno how to track the tweet down tho.