An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

https://jaapgrolleman.com/shanghais-stunning-fall-from-grace/

by user_named • 4 years ago

419 516 4 years ago

grecy• 4 years ago

The rest of the world seems to have gone all-in with vaccines and are now moving away from lockdowns. Why are China sticking to the lockdown route?

philliphaydon7• 4 years ago

Because it has a zero covid policy. It is trying to project an image of itself as being this ideal society where covid isn’t running wild while america is out of control.

The lockdown they are having is horrible tho. My coworker is based there and what I’ve heard from her is scary. She wants to move out of China when she can.

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

I mean, assuming they can contain it in Shanghai, then China really is an ideal society where Covid isn't running wild. We are yet to see the full burden of disease and disability from (repeated) Covid infections - it may be very serious.

Fronzie• 4 years ago

Their vaccine is not very effective against omicron, and they have far less hospital beds per capita than the west. So a 'flatten the curve' strategy will cause a lot more deads than it has in Europe and the USA.

totetsu• 4 years ago

this is what i read also

threatripper9• 4 years ago

I don't think the number of deaths is the problem now but the speed at which they occur. If we assume about 0.2% death rate for China on average that would almost be 3 Million. Of those 1.5 Million would occur in 4 weeks (assuming speed is similar to Hong Kong and lower medical capacity). That's 50000 dead per day on average. Especially in the first half it's scary because the number just keep on rising to the sky with a peak of 100000 per day (or more? we don't know until they fall again).

The difference in effort between keeping that kind of curve flat and ZeroCovid is small. I would even assume that ZeroCovid is easier than flattening the curve. While ZeroCovid is not an exit strategy in some areas it works better while waiting for an effective vaccine or some other exit strategy. So presumably that's what they do right now.

drumhead4• 4 years ago

Zero Covid policy, their own vaccine isnt very good and many people especially in high risk categories havent been vaccinated and not much natural immunity in the population. But primarily the Zero Covid policy.

phyalow2• 4 years ago

Because covid running rampant poses an unacceptable risk to social stability and therefore to the CCP’s grip on power. This is a function of propaganda they have been pumping out of the last 2 years wrt the effectiveness of the Chinese response & domestic vaccines. The policy response they have been touting as evidence for the superiority of the social contract they impose on citizens (lack of rights in favour of stability and growth) is now shown to be as susceptible as every other countries to the unescapable biological facts/reality of viral spread. This directly calls in to question the CCP’s credibility. Also Xi, needs to maintain the status quo until Q3 when he is up for re-election… It is a horrible situation for the Chinese people.

lvl1023• 4 years ago

Maybe they know something we don’t.

Edit: there’s not a lot being talked about in terms of multiple infections over time. It’s not that the MRNA vaccines are effective it’s that the West pivoted to an entirely different public health policy.

ImaCake5• 4 years ago

Australia and New Zealand tried lockdowns against Delta. They didn't work until vaccination rates got high enough. Then omicron came and not even 90% vax rates were enough to stop the spread. So the vaccines without lockdowns is more a pragmatic move because lockdowns stopped working. Besides, the vaccines work, there just isn't the same need to have lockdowns anymore.

AU and NZ lockdowns were less ugly than this Shanghai description though. I went outside to cycle and run literally every day of the NSW 2021 lockdown.

threatripper9• 4 years ago

Hong Kong had the highest death rate per capita globally in the last weeks when their containment policy failed. Leading to a mortality of over 0.1% in a short time. Hong Kong is a very rich area. Many other areas would fare much worse.

The rest of the world is not "all-in" with vaccines. Vaccines are combined with waves of infection for the unvaccinated and vaccinated which lead to the death of 0.1% to 0.6% of the population in many countries. With each infection the immunity rises - leading to less severe infections in the future. The deaths are a high price to pay but many people think it's worth it to have a somewhat normal life again.

As we know now, China was not very wise with their choice of vaccine and seemingly has no exit plan. Omicron is spreading very fast and due to a low prior immunity it would put an immense load on their medical system for months.

Here's the link to an interactive graph showing the death rate per capita: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explor...

ArchD2• 4 years ago

61% of the deaths are of the elderly (> 70 yo) unvaccinated. 69% of the deaths are of the elderly (> 70 yo) with 0 or 1 vaccination doses. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7115e1.htm Table 2

The numbers you listed may seem scary at face value but viewed in the right context including compared to other mortality risks like flu and inhumane lockdown conditions where some people run out of food and other basic supplies or turn suicidal, the numbers do not support the conclusion that lockdown is the best way forward.

geokon• 4 years ago

What do you feel the "choice" with vaccines was? So even if they overlooked the politics/"optics", I don't think they could go to the Western pharmaceutical companies and just ask for 3 billion doses. With boosters it's looking like there isn't enough vaccine capacity for the world as it is. I don't think there was ever a real alternative other than a "zero covid strategy"

What seems strange is that they haven't been able to quickly make an mRNA vaccine of their own. Supposedly South Africa has managed to pull it off, and I'd guess China has a much more advanced research/production capacity. Though it's also very possible it's happening and I just haven't heard of it :)

csee6• 4 years ago

Only because HK's elderly are not widely vaccinated, and also because Sinovac makes up about half of their vaccinations and this vaccine is not as good at preventing mortality. A very similar situation to Mainland China, actually.

So the question still hasn't been answered. Why is Mainland China insisting on pursuing this inferior strategy? The hard-lockdown zero-Covid low-vaccination approach has been shown to be inferior to the alternative approach of ensuring 99% of the elderly are vaccinated with Pfizer or Moderna, and then allowing society to open up once this is achieved. My understanding is their vaccination rates haven't gone up much since this outbreak started, which signals that they are not intent on changing course.

Reason0773• 4 years ago

"Hong Kong is a very rich area. Many other areas would fare much worse."

Being rich or poor doesn't have too much to do with it. Hong Kong is badly affected because it has a very high population density combined with low vaccination rates.

ATsch• 4 years ago

The market has a lot less strong of a grip on society so it is less urgent to simply wish the virus away by reopening everything at a huge human cost.

rosndo2• 4 years ago

Keeping everything locked down has a huge human cost too. Quite possibly even bigger than “wishing the virus away”.

roca2• 4 years ago

Their vaccination rate among elderly is quite low, their vaccine isn't as good as the main Western vaccines, and their hospital system in rural areas isn't very good. If/when COVID runs rampant they will have a lot of deaths. That's a particularly big problem given the upcoming Party congress where Xi will be crowned as dictator-for-life.

laurent922• 4 years ago

When is the Party congress? Can it happen that, after the congress, they let the Covid run rampant, to get rid of the elderly and have better figures for a few years after that?

magpi32• 4 years ago

This article makes a nice point:

https://www.cnn.com/2022/04/08/opinions/china-xi-zero-covid-...

TLDR: Xi Jin Ping will soon be up for his third term, and he has staked his legacy at least in part on how well China has handled COVID. There will be no changes in China's COVID policy anytime soon.

legacynl2• 4 years ago

Because Chinese propaganda has always tried to shift blame away from the cccp. cccp propaganda continually pushed the message that corona infections were due to contaminated foreign goods (i.e. Not due to the cccp's bad healthcare policies). So to keep in line with propaganda instead of vaccinating the elderly and vulnerable they focused their efforts on vaccinating factory/Dock workers and other that handle a lot of goods. They've basically backed themselves into a corner with their propaganda, and to backtrack now would show weakness and basically admit that they care more about saving face than saving lives.

As long as they can keep censoring angry citizens, and as long as they can keep the cccp in power, as far as they are concerned their covid-policy is working

_Microft• 4 years ago

I think you mixed up your authoritarian abbreviations a bit there.

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

The failure of restrictions to meaningfully contain Covid that became obvious in Western countries ages ago is only now beginning to happen in China.

kungito• 4 years ago

My friend is trying to escape Shanghai to go back home but apparently it's very hard to get to the airport.

drumhead4• 4 years ago

They dont seem to be able to organise a lockdown properly do they?

ArchD2• 4 years ago

More to the point is that they care more about "zero covid" than other aspects of public welfare. The necessity of the lockdown for omicron, which is less deadly than previous variants, is dubious so if they are unable to properly organize a lockdown without unreasonably affecting welfare and livelihood, they should not have unless they do not care about them.

The Leninists have a history of human rights abuse and atrocities. It is always the party before the people. For example, in China's great famine, tens of millions died because of bad central planning and they want people to believe it was just a natural disaster. Also, Tiananmen Massacre. This is nothing new.

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

Omicron has a similar severity to Original Covid. Vax rates are low among the elderly in China, so it would be disaster if they lost control.

Assuming they are successful in containing the outbreak in Shanghai, China will come through this with disease and death rates orders of magnitude lower than the US. Their history may be bad, but in this case they have it right.

csee6• 4 years ago

A hard lockdown being needed at this late stage in the pandemic signals poor decision making more than anything. Why aren't their elderly widely vaccinated, and why are they still relying on their significantly worse domestically made vaccine?

88840-8855• 4 years ago

They are not vaccinated because they did not want.

i am wondering about your question.

barry-cotter3• 4 years ago

It’s bloody awful. From start to now it’s been a clown show. It seems like no one learned anything in the past two years except that medical staff are much better at treating COVID. Thus zero deaths with more than 13,000 positive infected. A large majority are asymptomatic.

mupuff12343• 4 years ago

Why did hong kong have such a high death rate?

phyalow2• 4 years ago

Because information is not censored to the same degree.

barry-cotter3• 4 years ago

From what I've read they used the low quality Chinese vaccines and vaccination rates among over 60s were under 80%. if you're over 80 and you get COVID you're very likely to die if you're symptomatic.

em500• 4 years ago

A combination of the low vaccination rate among the elderly (only 50% or so among the 80+, and a lot of the vaccinated got Sinovac), which is inverted compared to Western countries where the rates are highest among the elderly, and the suppression of all previous waves (they had essentially 0% seroprevalence four months ago). In other countries, a lot of the deaths already occurred in 2020-2021. In Hong Kong, all of that was concentrated in the last 3 months.

Many of these factors are also at play in China, which partially explains their current policies. As for the currently reported 0 deaths in China, probably some statistical manipulation (if not outright fabrication) is at play. There is a lot of discretion as to what you count as a COVID-death.

simonebrunozzi• 4 years ago

This is the biggest, richest, most international city of China and people are starving, without medicine, and without freedom.

Ouch. Seems like a really bad situation.

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

The article provides no direct evidence of people starving, only that 'We cannot freely choose our recipes'. There is also a picture of 3 fresh fish!

krona• 4 years ago

One assumes he acquired the fish with the exchange of money, however some occupations actually still require your physical presence outside your bedroom. Do you see the catch-22?

Given the photo of food rations (unlikely to support an adult for a day) the implication is there is no financial support for Shanghai residents, but the author doesn't say.

zshbleaker2• 4 years ago

Dude I live in Shanghai and I’m starving. Just wiped the refrigerator for tomorrow and got no clue for what’s next.

smcl8• 4 years ago

Yes the author cannot freely choose their recipes and was able to buy three fish:

a good ‘catch’ for what we can still buy on delivery apps

But they're able to work from home, likely wealthy and well resourced. They also mention this:

we’re lucky — many people (because of the nature of their job) cannot and see their bank account go to zero, or their own business go bankrupt

If you can't work, earn money and (therefore) can't scour delivery apps for food you're going to starve (note also: they said they've had one small state-provided package of food for nine days)

fivea3• 4 years ago

The article provides no direct evidence of people starving, only that 'We cannot freely choose our recipes'.

What? The article clearly describes how people in Shanghai are barred from accessing the supplies they ordered because their buildings have been literally locked up and there is no way to get their orders past the outside gate.

From the article:

Sometimes one of the people in the locked building yells to the dabai or anyone who passes, to hand over the vegetables she has ordered and who are now perishing at the locked gate of their building. But people don’t have the key and the ones who do may not necessarily care.

Hnrobert422• 4 years ago

I appreciate your insistence on evidence of starvation. Death from starvation generally requires 30 - 70 days without food, depending on starting weight, body fat, activity levels, etc. Shanghai has been under lockdown for 12 days. It is unlikely you will find any real evidence of starvation.

More interesting to me are the claims that food is scarce, grocery orders are unreliable, the government has not provided sufficient rations. Most importantly, the claim that the government insisted there would be no lockdown and arrested folks for disinformation when they predicted it, thus leaving the population unprepared.

Do you have any evidence that the government prepared the populace for this event? Do you have evidence they are supply sufficient rations?

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

Use logic. Do you actually believe the communist party in China has the resources to lock up 25 million people in their apartments and provide food and services for all of them over night? Of course people are starving.

hmd_imputer4• 4 years ago

What is wrong with people like you? Seriously. There is bunch of content online that shows the severity of the situation in China. Here is one: https://twitter.com/cam_l/status/1512646118575812612 Regarding the fish, I think you have conveniently missed the most important part: "Three fresh fish, a good ‘catch’ for what we can still buy on delivery apps, although you need to check it all day and be extremely lucky you can grab something for the split second it’s available.".

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

Yeah if you completely shut down private services there, then there's no way the government has the resources to help everyone. They'll end up killing and traumatizing far more people than they're saving from covid. Rather than forcing everyone to get a vaccine they do this--I mean if you're going to be a totalitarian system at least do it logically. Just goes to show you how shit the CCP logic is.

danuker2• 4 years ago

Any regime that takes no feedback is bound to crumble. I hope they realize that people starving in their homes does no good for those in power either.

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

The Chinese-made vaccines barely work.

889135272• 4 years ago

It gives more weight to Americans who opposed lockdowns too. This is the slippery slope argument coming to life, if you took lockdown to the extreme, and I think that was the biggest fear of those who opposed lockdowns.

largbae• 4 years ago

I think most everyone _is_ vaccinated. That is what makes this sadder.

Can we use some of this outrage energy that the world has summoned in this decade to hold governments like CCP to account? Or are they still untouchable because everyone still thinks that the CCP-managed economy is unstoppable and we need to reserve our place in line for the future scraps from that table?

I have been to Shanghai multiple times and have great friends suffering there. Being anti-CCP is neither racist nor anti-China. I dream of the day when all of China is as vibrant and powerful as Taiwan is today, or Hong Kong before Carrie Lam.

jdrc• 4 years ago

Little weird to be talking about peopel starving and lacking meds, but then again they re able to find fresh fish. Anyway, i wonder what this pattern of isolatation can create in terms of covid variants which may develop in china or australia but which haven't been introduced to the rest of world this season.

ImaCake5• 4 years ago

Well Australia is open and has been for a while. As far as I know there were no novel variants that were found first here because the lockdowns suppressed case numbers and besides, there is only 25 million Australians. We have the same variants as the rest of the world, except most Australians don't know anyone who has died from COVID.

jefftk4• 4 years ago

Australia: 6.6k deaths, 25M population, 0.03% dead

US: 1M deaths, 300M people, 0.3% dead.

On the other hand, Australia's had most of their deaths recently and is still going, while the US deaths were mostly earlier. So the gap will likely narrow over time.

Jedd• 4 years ago

Can confirm, up to a point, though I'm an edge case in AU -- in part because everyone I know has been careful, sane, and kept up with vaccinations.

The count of people I know who've had COVID is now up to 16, and they've all been fine, of course.

Naturally, no one I know has been hospitalised, let alone died.

0xy2• 4 years ago

All you had to do to 'achieve' this was sacrifice the education of the young, decimate small business, prevent citizens from leaving the country (you know, against the UN Declaration of Human Rights, which Australia signed and violated) and unleash police on the citizenry for peacefully protesting.

Australian police fired rubber bullets at peaceful assemblers [1], violently threw a compliant man to the ground causing brain damage [2], pepper spraying old women [3] and arresting people for the crime of... suggesting a protest [4]

After all this, massive damage was done to mental health to the point 1 in 10 residents in the lockdown capital Victoria seriously considered suicide. [5]

With all this damage and the decimation of civil liberties, it's hard to justify the measures. Especially not when you set fire to UN human rights standards to do so.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/21/victo...

[2] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-09-29/victorian-police-offi...

[3] https://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/news/watch-moment-...

[4] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arres...

[5] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-25/one-in-10-victorians-...

Laforet8• 4 years ago

China had administered more than 2 billion doses of vaccines using alum based adjuvant. This combined with the very low level of prior infection is theoretically the perfect breeding ground for a different serotype of Covid. Time will tell of this turns out to be the case

selimthegrim• 4 years ago

What’s so special about the adjuvant?

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

Covid variants are more likely to arise through large scale infections, as each infection is a chance of mutation. Long lasting infection in immuno compromised patients is also a fertile breeding ground (it is believed that Omicron was produced like this).

factcheckdec• 4 years ago

My wife's parents last week were able to accept delivery of only 3 garlic bulbs, a small cabbage and one or two other root vegetables. Every night they have to spend hours desparetly trying to put items in their basket, hoping that what they place in it remains in stock for longer than a few seconds. If the order is successful there is little certaintly that you'll get what you ordered. Some people will receive fresh meat and fish, many others won't.

So no, it's not a little weird if you engage your brain and attempt to show a modicum of empathy or understanding of the situation.

My wife is a proud Shanghainese and her parents have until now lived an extremely comfortable life in government and in academia. She's now determined to relocate them having seen them confined to a building, barred from leaving for even essential supples (water and food), by a leadership that has shown itself to be too incompotent to ensure adequate measuress have been put in place to prevent malnourishment for many.

hmd_imputer4• 4 years ago

Apparently you have missed this part - "Three fresh fish, a good ‘catch’ for what we can still buy on delivery apps, although you need to check it all day and be extremely lucky you can grab something for the split second it’s available." -

TheBlight• 4 years ago

If you believe anything you've heard about covid coming out of China for the last 2+ years I have a bridge to sell you.

darkhorn• 4 years ago

If you believe anything China says I have you a bridge to sell you.

xtian3• 4 years ago

That would make sense since they’re still building them in China

ceejayoz4• 4 years ago

If you believe China's been having massive deaths throughout the last two years, why is Shanghai's spike notable?

China's great at squashing internal protests, but it's still porous; information gets out, and has throughout the pandemic, from the very beginning with doctors posting on social media that something was going on.

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

Large scale infections like we've had elsewhere would be impossible to hide. China's low case and death rate is broadly accurate.

cplusplusfellow• 4 years ago

I respectfully disagree. Early into the pandemic there were quite a few folks writing of evidence that massive amounts of Chinese were dying. They were quickly silenced.

xienze• 4 years ago

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

Find me another country on earth whose numbers look even remotely like this.

nonrandomstring4• 4 years ago

Everyone here is commenting on Covid, vaccines, social policy and whatnot.

I can't help but see a different, bigger and human story here.

It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers. Convenient fast food delivery systems that become tools of rationing and siege. News and communications systems turned to propaganda and social control.

Meanwhile the only good vibe in here is the person-to-person charity and sharing that occurs amongst the "prisoners".

We should look at this and learn a very important lesson as technologists.

thaumasiotes3• 4 years ago

It's about how the systems people erect around themselves turn against them. Gated communities whose guards become jailers.

Historically this is backwards. 小区 existed in the Tang dynasty much as they do today, but the gate was not operated at the direction of the residents - there was a curfew, and if you lived in a 小区 you had to obey it. If you lived in a house that opened directly onto the street, you were exempt from the curfew.

nonrandomstring4• 4 years ago

That is interesting. But surely you're talking of things that happened thousands of years ago. Are you saying that modern Chinese people are generally comfortable living in conditions approximate to imprisonment? Is the Great Wall really like the Iron Curtain, there to keep its citizens inside?

bamboozled4• 4 years ago

What is 小区?

laurent922• 4 years ago

Let’s take time to discuss this, as it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system.

I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA. As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

rtpg3• 4 years ago

Talks about how magic money doesn’t exist but then printing out checks for everyone and it materially helping loads of people was definitely an Overton window shifter as well.

There are principles and a status quo, and it always stays the same… until it changes.

jokethrowaway3• 4 years ago

It's because our own political apparatus is not that different from the Chinese one. We just like to pretend we still have a choice with our "democratic vote".

You won't be able to dismantle it or even to reduce the huge amount of money it consumes.

You won't be able to escape its rules. We should be thankful we're still able to leave for the least worse country.

The real disease is called statalism and we're seeing the symptoms of that.

nonrandomstring4• 4 years ago

it’s easier to discuss when it happens to another country with an entirely different social system.

I'd say it's actually harder, because one cannot compare like for like. But of course that shouldn't discourage one from careful analysis.

I was surprised, last year, that techniques we were condescending about, and saying it only happens in China, were applied in Europe and USA.

I think those making condescending remarks about China were not realists, and perhaps a little racist. Of course similar authoritarian responses were applied around the globe, some less heavily handed than others, and some with better results than others. And in some places there was a liberal response that put choice and civic responsibility into the hands of citizens, again some with tragic outcomes, and some with joyful results. Quite a mixed bag.

As if it was an emergent property of a human group facing a new disease.

It certainly is. I think the results surrounding disgust and disease that Jordan Peterson and his group of researchers talk about , as well as the theories of Adorno etc on the "authoritarian mind" should now be checked against data we have from the pandemic. There will surely be xome confirmations and surpises.

jsemrau2• 4 years ago

Gated communities whose guards become jailers.

Left Singapore after 10 years because of this. If you go into a shopping mall you need to "check in" fully authenticated with picture ID, "ambassadors" photograph any perceived violations, work from home is the standard. With the never-changing weather that was hard on the mental health. Surely, the rules have relaxed now, but that wasn't a fun experience.

philliphaydon7• 4 years ago

There was no picture ID “ambassadors”. You either checked in using TraceTogether app, or your TraceTogether token. Before the app and token was mandatory you had to use your ID card.

The reason my wife and I left after 10 years is security due to being rejected for PR and the company I work for laying off everyone to close the office. So we moved to Taiwan.

chasd006• 4 years ago

...self-driving cars that can be turned off enmasse by the "authorities"..

Gigachad• 4 years ago

Hard to verify the source of the video but there is one going around reddit right now showing mass suicides from people jumping out of high rise windows. Claimed to be people in lockdown in Shanghai.

AussieWog93• 4 years ago

You got a link to that?

seizethegdgap3• 4 years ago

Pretty sure this is it. Cannot stress enough that this video is HIGHLY NSFW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/tzosau/peop...

ailun3• 4 years ago

I saw that video and I don't they are all in Shanghai or all recent.

Shadonototra2• 4 years ago

all recent? are you sure about that? in half of them, you see people without a single mask, wich indicates they are not that recent ;)

aren't you trying to spread misinformation?

https://www.americashealthrankings.org/explore/annual/measur...

In the USA: 1.4 millions suicide attempt in 2019

4000 suicide a day! make a video about it, and you'll have the same effect ;)

Okok, let's only take deaths

47.5k deaths in 2019 from suicides

130 deaths a day!

2.5 deaths per state a day! make a video about it, and you'll get the same effect!

barry-cotter3• 4 years ago

Yeah, this is bullshit. Even with no knowledge of China or Shanghai whatsoever you should know this is bullshit. There were very few jumpers in New York on September 11th. Most people don’t kill themselves in the face of certain death by burning or a building falling. Mass suicide wasn’t a thing in extermination camps like Auschwitz. Religiously motivated instances of mass suicide rely on peer pressure mechanisms that don’t function when everyone’s in their damned apartment.

Also there’s no hint of this in any of the group chats I’m in and given I’m in Shanghai that would be big local news. Censorship doesn’t work well or fast when people have nothing to do except gossip.

seizethegdgap3• 4 years ago

The video is here, (https://www.reddit.com/r/PublicFreakout/comments/tzosau/peop...) but each clip is unsourced or from an unknown date/time/location. It isn't a collective "mass suicide" in the Jonestown sense of the term, but a mass amount of individuals committing suicide.

0des2• 4 years ago

Very few jumped in 9/11? Are you kidding me? I personally saw many with my own eyes.

elfgkujgdfljkh• 4 years ago

thats insane why would you believe people when they say that

hihihihi12343• 4 years ago

Considering that this whole thing started with fake videos from China of people dropping dead in the street, I'm treating any new videos from China with extreme scepticism.

geysersam• 4 years ago

Ridiculous. Of course it's false. Edit: downvotes for pointing out obvious misinformation..

roenxi2• 4 years ago

Shanghai has a population larger than most countries. There are a lot of extreme stories every day in Shanghai. That has to be considered when talking about "mass" anything, even when putting aside the high likelihood of a misleading video.

cloutchaser2• 4 years ago

Funnily enough I don’t recall mass suicide videos from any other city on earth?

magpi32• 4 years ago

I am in China too. In Shenzhen. I think the author is very unkind to the Bao An. I am 100% sure they would treat me the same if there is a similar lockdown here, but I imagine they are under a lot of pressure.

My hearts go out to them though. I have a dog here in China, and I am very afraid of what will happen to her if an outbreak like this hits my area. And how can you even have a dog if you can't leave a building for two weeks? What a nightmare.

0xcoffee2• 4 years ago

Even worse, they do lockdown in place and without warning. So if you were at work, and your dog was home, then your dog would stave alone.

I really don't understand why they don't at least let people stuck at work go home, really crazy situation.

Source: Chinese gf's dad is in lockdown at his work, while mom in lockdown at home.

ithkuil• 4 years ago

Is gf's dad work in another city or does the lockdown in place prevent movement from any buildings to get back home even if close apart?

Jonovono6• 4 years ago

Be careful - they are killing peoples dogs that test positive for covid

philliphaydon7• 4 years ago

They are killing the pets if the owners test for covid.

https://www.whatsonweibo.com/another-pet-dog-beaten-to-death...

pmlnr5• 4 years ago

I am 100% sure they would treat me the same if there is a similar lockdown here

I wish you never get to find this out, because I firmly believe you're wrong.

Aperocky• 4 years ago

There was one in Shenzhen just last Month, but it was confined to a few region and lifted quite soon.

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

Start stocking up for youself and your dog, friend. At least a few months worth of nonperishable food. As fast as omicron spreads it's only a matter of time.

CommanderData• 4 years ago

The shear size of some of these provinces make the logistical challenge of food delivery almost impossibile.

This is horrifying and to think people are starving in these conditions with no option but to run away with dire consequences.

threatripper9• 4 years ago

The shear size of some of these provinces make the logistical challenge of food delivery almost impossibile.

This kind of argument sounds like a logical fallacy to me. Sure, if a single person or organization suddenly needs to supply a large area it's a logistical nightmare. For example if the USA would suddenly need to supply hundreds of millions of people in China. But that is not the case. In those areas the logistical systems have grown together with the area.

If you really think about it there is nowhere in this world where many people could run away to. Sure, there are a few nice places where a few people could run away to. But in total most people will have to stay where they are. If the logistical systems of the world fail or a massive natural disaster occurs many areas will have a lot of starving people.

maxerickson8• 4 years ago

The logistical system that grew with the area has been disrupted by the lockdown. The primary final link was probably people going to stores and restaurants to get food, which they currently aren't allowed to do.

A logical fallacy isn't a "feeling", it's a short hand for identifying a poor use of logic, you should be able to directly explain the flaw you see in the other posters reasoning.

temp8964• 4 years ago

This is China, but not sure about the city. People kneel on the street to get COVID test QR scan: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1510829144590123010

mensetmanusman3• 4 years ago

A high school friend of ours is apartment-jailed in Shanghai right now. She is a young mom, and all the moms in the apartment are all out of everything required to care for babies. Trying to share strategies on how to use any kitchen ingredients to make formula or rash ointments…

I wonder if this will actually have any political blowback in the coming years, or if this only strengthens the ccp.

treeman792• 4 years ago

Complaining is against the party.

China makes use of people who complain to much

https://nypost.com/2022/04/07/researchers-claim-chinese-surg...

8f9acd32• 4 years ago

That's terrifying :( and incredibly sad for anyone who ends up in that position and China as a people.

Can someone explain the downvotes? This is HN not the CCP, we demand action to be backed up with reason. The article suggested "political prisoners" to be included in those ending being killed by organ harvesting, so it seems relevant to the parent's comment:

Robertson claims surgeons operated on death-row prisoners and “prisoners of conscience”, which could include political prisoners

[edit]

Votes seem to have changed. That's not helped my fear of being monitored :/

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

There have been stories and rumors about this for decades. It definitely happens with prisoners that are on "death row". I guess if you're a high level CCP member and need a heart that's just what's gonna happen. You don't really have any rights there just whatever "freedoms" the government allows. I try to warn people who think Trump should be dictator that it's not a good idea.

ascar4• 4 years ago

Can you make formula from other ingredients? You can let a baby drink from another women's breast though.

That's how they did it in the past, when a mother wasn't producing enough milk. It was an actual job called wet nurse [1].

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet_nurse

simonh5• 4 years ago

Wet nurses need to be already lactating mothers, not just any woman. Also in a strict lockdown how are you going to get a wet nurse to visit you?

lordnacho• 4 years ago

That other woman would need to eat something to make milk too. Plus she'd need to be recently pregnant.

Markoff4• 4 years ago

You don't need baby formula, it's sad how MANY Chinese fall for baby formula propaganda banned in west with formula samples given to new mothers in Chinese hospitals. Only 1-5% of mothers are unable to breastfeed, the most of the formula buyers just believe fairy tales and feed their kids unhealthy formula and then they complain about being unable to get formula.

Also you dont really need much for baby besides breastmilk, you can make fabric diapers as in old times (yes, it's inconvenient, we went easier way) and that's about it, since baby just need breastmilk, clean clothes and diaper, when older you are fine with boiled smashed vegetables, so these complaints really feel but completely clueless (lazy) mother and only justified complaint is rash ointments which can be really issue and ain't that easy to deal with at home.

sgt101• 4 years ago

is rash ointments which can be really issue

If you'd ever shared your home with a baby that had nappy rash I feel you might have a different pov here.

dan-robertson5• 4 years ago

It seems difficult to argue that mothers should totally change what they’re doing (away from the thing they had believed was right) and to achieve this they would likely need to be convinced that the new way is better. But I think this is also missing the point because if people are struggling to get food too they likely won’t produce much milk.

Jonovono6• 4 years ago

For anyone interested, here are a couple Instagram accounts I am following posting from inside Shanghai. Scary stuff. Potentially NSFW (sometimes they post videos of some nasty stuff happening)

https://instagram.com/kaypapaii

https://instagram.com/ciaransingleton

dmix4• 4 years ago

Are they live videos because I don’t see anything on either account…

hmd_imputer4• 4 years ago

Check out their "Stories"

entropie4• 4 years ago

There is nothing topic related to see. I consider this spam.

Jonovono6• 4 years ago

What do you mean nothing topic related to see? It's literal first hand videos from Shanghai, and the topic of this post is "An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown". What would make it more on topic? View their stories. These people post videos everyday from inside Shanghai, since this is a post about accounts of Shanghais handling of Covid, I figured there may be others interested in seeing these.

cheshire137• 4 years ago

So I’m signed into Instagram in my browser and I don’t see any Stories link for these. Is it the case that not only do you have to have an Instagram account, but also have to use their mobile app? Instagram kinda sucks lol.

russellbeattie• 4 years ago

The lockdown is cruel and extreme, but it will save many more lives than anything less drastic. China understands the threat and isn't fucking around with the response. They're not locking down the country's economic engine for fun, or (according to the article) to save face. Thinking that is both racist and childish. They're doing it to save lives. This guy is caught in the middle, and I feel for him, but he's too close to it for any sort of perspective. The city will be up and running by summer as if nothing ever happened.

nazgul172• 4 years ago

Since covid is a highly transmissible disease, if you pursue a zero covid policy while not being an island, you're in for never ending pain.

redisman• 4 years ago

Not even an island works unless you stop travel forever

Barrin92• 4 years ago

Kind of crazy how sentimental and emotional the response is with barely any actual discussion going on about the merits of this on a grand scale. Yes, stories about people's dogs and temporary economic depression are awful. The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

It's weird to me that someone ends up in China and is surprised by collectivist policies.

pmlnr5• 4 years ago

The greater good argument, eh? That never works in the long run.

iflp• 4 years ago

The lockdown policy was successful in these aspects before, but it’s very unclear if it can still work with omicron.

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

Indeed, and success/failure may give us an indication of how much more inherently contagious Omicron actually is, versus how much of our spread has been due to vaccine evasion and restriction relaxation.

kyrra• 4 years ago

China also likely lies about their numbers so it's not likely we'd know the real death count. According to their stats, they had covid 4 covid deaths in all of 2021. This puts them at the number 2 best results spot.

The issue here being that all the top stats spots for least deaths are from island countries, which china is not.

mike_h9• 4 years ago

China is on Earth, not in some other solar system. If their excess deaths per capita were a fraction of the numbers in the West, there would be no way to hide it.

gitfan863• 4 years ago

The emotional response of the people living in China is very relevant to the effectiveness of the collectivist policies. If they continue down the path of CovidZero in the face of evidence that it is not going to work and will only cause economic and emotional pain to the population, it highlights one of the major downsides to collectivist policies. They cannot adapt because they have a culture that looks down on any contrarian thoughts.

mike_h9• 4 years ago

Where is the evidence that it didn’t work?

Sol-• 4 years ago

China may arguably have done a better job at the collective response to the virus than the west at the start of the pandemic (though with measures that probably wouldn't been seen as acceptable in liberal countries). So there they might have had reason to brag that their authoritarian system works "better", for some definition of better.

But now their zero covid policy seem to be largely symbolic and to save face - you (probably?) can't lock down Omicron. Should have spent the time they won with their good initial response to increase immunity levels in the population.

mike_h9• 4 years ago

Sadly that logic doesn’t work here, though it’s tempting. There’s a portion of the population that refused vaccines, due to a combination of factors including misinformation. Omicron going wild would put millions of elderly people into the hospitals, jamming up the healthcare system and leading to millions more excess deaths.

dirtyid5• 4 years ago

Zero covid seems to be working in Jilin an Shenyang lockdowns - about 15m after a month. SH fucked up by thinking they could pull of dynamic zero. Too many financial interests and tier1 entitlement thinking not to tempt it. Not mandating vaxxing among elderly was a mistake. CCP not authoritarian when it should be.

throwaway4good• 4 years ago

It seems like they are experimenting with a change in policy starting with Hong Kong. Probably not quite satisfied with the results.

adventured• 4 years ago

The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths

We have highly effective vaccines available globally. Even in the twisted American healthcare system I can walk into any CVS or Walgreens and get a free mRNA vaccine, 47 times over, anytime I want to.

There is no good argument in favor of China's lock-down policies in the present, post vaccine availability. Unless of course their vaccines are particularly mediocre at preventing death and or serious disease, in which case they should be placing a multi-billion dose order with Pfizer and Moderna.

dirtyid5• 4 years ago

Western mrna vaccine proven equally useless at preventing spread which overwhelms underdeveloped PRC medical system. Living with covid wasn't a choice after vaccines failed 1 of 2 epidimeology goals. Second being preventing severe disease which Chinese vaccines are almost as good at. Covid zero is simply superior to depending on vaccines if it can be maintained.

dmarchand90• 4 years ago

I really don't understand why a country where (on average, from Google) every citizen has received 2+ vaccinations there should still be such a strict policy

theshrike79• 4 years ago

China's government didn't want the western-made mRNA vaccine. They lobbied and propagandised HARD against it.

Now Omicron hit and their own non-mRNA vaccines don't work. And even if they did, people still believe the propaganda that mRNA is bad for you.

Hard lockdowns are their only tool.

ceilingcorner2• 4 years ago

Yes well that’s the issue with utilitarianism and any other calculated ethical system. You can always justify some horrible things by saying “but we saved X more lives.”

simonh5• 4 years ago

It's true in terms of organisation and discipline I never believed they would be as successful as they were, but they did it. My wife's home town was locked down for a while due to having I think 8 cases of Delta, but after about 2 months the city was open again.

The problem is they have bet the whole farm on that strategy, and Omicron is infectious enough that lockdowns even of the kind China has used so far may not be enough. They tried locking down Shanghai in a rolling manner but gave up after only a few days and locked down the whole city. A few days isn't long enough to evaluate the effect of a strategy, it takes weeks for the data on new cases to come in. This suggests that the rolling strategy wasn't viable given the data they already had.

One issue is that the Chinese vaccine Sinovac seems to be only about 50% to 78% effective, and even the higher value simply isn't good enough to achieve herd immunity even with high uptake. The problem there is that the Chinese media, which means the authorities, spent a lot of time throwing shade on western vaccines and bigging up side effects. This has had the effect that a lot of Chinese people don't trust Covid vaccines, including Sinovac. As a result uptake has been abysmal.

So when other countries like here in the UK are almost completely back to normal thanks to mass vaccination, China is still stuck relying on the same lockdown strategy they started with, and have no clear way out of it. Meanwhile Omicron is leaking through their lockdowns.

They're still in with a chance, omicron has been around for 9 months and they've managed it so far, but they're taking an awful risk. Long term unless they do something about vaccination, their best hope is that a very infectious but also very mild variant comes along and immunises their population for them. How that's compatible with strict lockdowns though is unclear to me.

chasd006• 4 years ago

their best hope is that a very infectious but also very mild variant comes along and immunises their population for them

Is that not Omicron?

gruez5• 4 years ago

This has had the effect that a lot of Chinese people don't trust Covid vaccines, including Sinovac. As a result uptake has been abysmal.

This does not seem to be supported by the data. China's vaccination rate is 88.95%, the 7th highest in the world.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/vaccines/international

refurb5• 4 years ago

In the end China will fail at its zero Covid strategy (just as many other Asian countries did - like Vietnam). It’s already spread to other cities and Shanghai will never hit zero cases again. But, due to ego and national pride will do immense economic and social harm to its population that is likely disproportion to the harm it would have gotten from Covid (its population is already vaccinated and Sinovax is still pretty effective despite not being as effective as mRNA).

What will be interesting is the political upheaval this will cause. The CCP will have to admit defeat at some point but will do it’s best to spin it as a win. There will be scapegoats and some political careers will end.

mnd999• 4 years ago

Sounds like you’re a CCP apologist.

Obvs this will be downvoted by the other CCP apologists. It’s still true though.

WillPostForFood• 4 years ago

The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths

Stopped or just delayed deaths? At some point they are going to have to stop the lockdowns, and Covid will still be there, ready to continue spreading.

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

Everyone dies eventually, so all deaths are only delayed.

Which is why it’s ridiculous when people claim that a 70-year-old dying is just as bad as a 30-year-old. These people are simply not capable of thinking quantitatively.

Andrew_nenakhov4• 4 years ago

It is likely lockdowns achieve very little, only delaying the inevitable surge of cases and deaths for a later date.

Also, they lie about their numbers. Locked down population with restructed internet access and no independent media can lose 50% to an epidemy and we'll know nothing.

mytailorisrich2• 4 years ago

Lockdowns achieve exactly what they are meant to achieve: they stop the spread of disease.

This is mainly aimed at avoiding uncontrolled surges and collapse of the healthcare system and is effective for that.

However, indeed, this must be 'step 1' and combined with a broader strategy of vaccination and controlled exposure to the virus otherwise you only end up with an infinite cycle of lockdowns.

One issue in China is that although their vaccines do help they are much less effective at preventing infections than, say, Pfizer and Moderna, or AZ.

charlieyu13• 4 years ago

There are definitely suicides in lockdown, old people dying because of being refused entry to hospitals, starving etc. If you’re taking in account of weak fatality of Omicron I’m not sure which decision would have caused more deaths.

TomSwirly• 4 years ago

weak fatality of Omicron

In the US at least, Omicron has killed significantly more people than Delta.

A somewhat lower mortality rate has been more than compensated for by a high infection rate.

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/omicron-wav...

Mattasher• 4 years ago

The merits of putting 16 million people under indefinite house arrest in tiny apartments, depriving them of fresh air, exercise, real social interaction, medical care, access to food, etc?

I'm not sure if you understand just how deeply sociopathic and disturbed you come across.

rini17• 4 years ago

Excuse me, you really want to discuss grand scale policy merits while they can't/won't distribute enough food to prevent people starving to death?

briandear2• 4 years ago

I lived in Shanghai for many years. One of my kids was born there. The Shanghai of the 2010s is the not the Shanghai of today. The author of this piece is spot on. Shanghai especially was not subject to the same extreme of “collectivist” policies of most of the country — it is/was almost the new Hong Kong — a lot of innovation and entrepreneurship. It is/was a significant engine of Chinese innovation and source of wealth and prestige for the rest of the country.

And suggesting these policies saved millions? That’s just not supported by any evidence. Cape Town didn’t have millions of deaths from Omnicron — nor did any other major world city where Omnicron showed up.

This is a communist flex — an opportunity to remind the Shanghainese that Beijing calls the shots. Lockdowns are a political tool disguised as a public health tool — much like lockdowns everywhere.

Still hard to believe that governments are getting away with the war in Eastasia (or was it Eurasia?) What an epilogue to 1984 we’re seeing!

gerbilly3• 4 years ago

Maybe this site needs an 'Are you a Robot' captcha because you sound like one.

Geez. How cold do you have to be to not understand that being imprisoned or not being able to feed your children might make you 'emotional?'

joyeuse67012• 4 years ago

May not have read the article fully.

Drblessing4• 4 years ago

Agreed. Also, he gives no evidence of claims. Lockdowns don't work [1].

[1] https://weartv.com/news/local/study-from-johns-hopkins-univ-...

ngcc_hk• 4 years ago

The larger picture is that they think they can do it like Great Leap Forward. That sone human can just do thing their ways ignoring other humans, nature and reality. It might work for awhile. Just like Soviet Union and mao. It would not.

Where is the injection? With only a 50% effective vaccine which pass its days even with last variant? That we take the weakness as the strength. And when the weakness finally shown it is just another lock down.

May be chinese like to die in a totalitarian country, but many do want to live in a free society.

That is the big picture. Of humanity.

logifail2• 4 years ago

The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

I think it's a little disingenious to use the word "stopped" in that way. It would be far more accurate to have said "delayed".

Maybe we should all refresh ourselves on what the most common causes of death are by age group. For the US, the data is here:

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/LeadingCauses.html

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/leading_causes_of_dea...

the second link is apparently the latest dataset available, for 2018.

Am I the only one who thinks it's going to be interesting to see where exactly Covid ranks once we get round to having data for 2020 onwards?

Drblessing4• 4 years ago

Agreed, Omicron is almost as infectious as measles, and everyone will likely be exposed to it. Combine this with the negative externalities of GDP decline and other effects, and the picture is pretty straightforward.

usaar3332• 4 years ago

The larger picture is that China by pursuing these policies has stopped millions of deaths, probably tens of millions of cases of long term disabilities, and overall kept the economy going.

Alright, so if we go by Shanghai's own reporting (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61043346), there's been 130k infections of which one person is in "severe condition" and no deaths. Even assuming that severe condition becomes a death, you are looking at a 1 in 100k death rate, which puts a ceiling of ~230 deaths in Shanghai and 13k across the entire country - a fraction of what you are claiming is possible. It's possible Shanghai is falsifying their data to look better, but such falsification actually just makes the lockdown look even dumber from an ROI standpoint.

Meanwhile, the lockdown itself is clearly causing deaths directly (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/shanghai-hospital-pa...). Even ignoring that, ~2,300 QALY saved from city-wide covid deaths is far outweighed by the "quality of life" lost in a single day of lockdown (63k QALY by my calculation). At this point, of the lockdown, the lockdown is 10x if not 100x costlier than just letting the virus rip through the population.

If you don't buy the Shanghai numbers, you can use other country's modeling which suggests Omicron in a vaccinated population is a bit less severe than seasonal flu. Obviously, we don't lock down every year to avoid seasonal flu as the ROI is terrible.

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

Longevity is not the only thing that matters in life. I and I think most other people would rather live in a liberal country even if it means my life expectancy is slightly decreased.

“Millions of deaths” sounds like a lot because the world (and Chinese) population is high, but the per-person life expectancy impact of an unchecked Covid pandemic is quite modest.

moistly3• 4 years ago

It has already shaved two years of life expectancy off America’s citizens… and that’s with halfway decent actions being taken to immunize and isolate. An unchecked Covid pandemic would be a helluva lot worse.

dragonwriter• 4 years ago

Longevity is not the only thing that matters in life

Yeah, long COVID is a big impact, potentially bigger in terms of QALY or DALY than COVID-induced mortality.

nirui• 4 years ago

Kind of crazy how someone is calling this "sentimental and emotional". And claiming that, at "grand scale", "millions of deaths" and "probably tens of millions of cases" are prevented and the economy still going(, so it's fine?).

Yeah.... it's not really a big deal, just few dogs and stories such as:

- Hospital refused to rescue their own nurse who had an asthma attack, leading to her death (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220329/20220329A02CZK00.html)

- In another an asthma death case, an ambulance (carries another patient) drove away while refusing to offer any help to the person who was having an asthma attack (https://new.qq.com/omn/20220331/20220331A0DFA900.html)

- Here is a video of an elderly man crying in front of a hospital, because the hospital refuse to take in his daughter: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tz74vk/%E4%B8%8A...

- The "neighborhood committee" (a community level management department) refuse to let a heart attack patient go to hospital. The patient dead as result: https://www.reddit.com/r/China_irl/comments/tztiu0/%E5%B1%85...

Those were all caused by the lockdown.

Let me teach you a Chinese word here, called 理中客, which is an abbreviation for 理性 (Rational), 中立 (Neutral) and 客观 (Objective). This is not a positive word, instead, 理中客 is a derogatory term describes people who disgusts their excuse under layers of reasoning that looked Rational, Neutral and Objective at first, but starts to break down upon deeper inspection.

For example, someone might apologetically claim that "Yes, there are pains, but in the end, most people will survive, so it's all good", which is rational, neutral and objective. But is it though? Why the pain essential? Have you tried something else? Have you learned anything from the good instances in the past two years?

I'm not an emotional person as well, nor sentimental. But if a policy is leading to such massive destruction, then objectively speaking it's a bad policy, especially when there are many safer and better ways to implement such lockdown. Using word such as "sentimental and emotional" to describe people who's currently suffering through this disaster is, logically, at very least, "weird".

I hope you learned something today.

draw_down• 4 years ago

Have they prevented anything though, or just forestalled it? Other countries aren’t having this crisis at the moment. Granted in many countries they had the crisis already, but that’s what I mean. If doing all this just delays what’s going to come then what good is it?

gerbilly3• 4 years ago

It seems like condos and apartments can easily be turned into prisons. I'm glad I live in a house, even if it is in north america.

geraldyo• 4 years ago

Do you think they wouldn't be able to keep you inside a house?

Jerrrry• 4 years ago

Yes?

bigDinosaur• 4 years ago

It'd be almost impossible to police, although you could in theory do it. An apartment building can have its main doors locked and bolted and guarded by a few police and that might trap hundreds of people.

gerbilly3• 4 years ago

Yes, they could, but could they keep everyone in a city of millions in their houses though?

sdk16420• 4 years ago

100% of all villages had erected strict and high barriers to quarantine their villages off from the rest of the China.

https://www.ifpri.org/blog/lockdowns-are-protecting-chinas-r...

You may not be locked inside your house but you can still be locked in your village, which may not have food either.

gruez5• 4 years ago

But it's probably easier to get a truckload of food in than it is to deliver groceries to each unit one by one?

alisonatwork3• 4 years ago

I lived in an urban village in China during the 2020 lockdowns and literally overnight the authorities erected 6+ foot high fences around my whole neighborhood. Entry and exit to the newly-minted gated community was funneled through two checkpoints that never existed prior to COVID. Authorities were actively patrolling the streets checking ID and ensuring nobody jumped the fence. If an authoritarian government wants to restrict the movements of their population badly enough, they will find a way.

dmix4• 4 years ago

I’ve seen pictures of those barriers. I’ve wondered how China was able to source those materials so quickly.

I know China is amazing a manufacturing anything at scale but I can only imagine having the wide deployment of something like chain linked fencing available instead of large barriers.

Did they have a stock of them ready?

egberts12• 4 years ago

Can care packages be sent to the OP? Safely?

user_named4• 4 years ago

I'm technically the OP but not the author. You cannot send packages to either of us as there are no deliveries being made.

egberts12• 4 years ago

why are they not using drones to deliver food from apartment windows to apartment windows?

mike_h9• 4 years ago

I’m in Shanghai too. It’s a city of 25+ million people: there will be some bad stories. But overall it is running remarkably and the vast majority of people aren’t thinking about how oppressed they are by having to eat fish. They’re helping each other and encouraging each other, because they know the cost of not doing this is millions of lives.

Canada• 4 years ago

Really? How come it didn't cost millions of lives elsewhere that didn't impose such strict rules?

fabian2k• 4 years ago

The number of confirmed COVID deaths in the US is almost a million, so "millions" doesn't seem that much of a stretch for a much larger country like China. Of course this is not directly comparable because the number of deaths depends on vaccination status and age demographics.

And other countries with fewer deaths have higher vaccination rates. China has the problem of both, low vaccination rates in the risk populations and worse vaccines than the mRNA ones.

But lockdowns can't work forever, I don't see how this is sustainable without dramatically increasing vaccination rates and getting better vaccines. Lockdowns only gain you time, you still have to do something useful with that time.

ipaddr3• 4 years ago

You would not know what people are really thinking because sharing misery will land you in jail. Is that how separated mothers feel in lockdown jails?

mike_h9• 4 years ago

That’s not how it works. Plenty of negative stuff shared online.

smcl8• 4 years ago

people aren’t thinking about how oppressed they are by having to eat fish

Not sure what you're meaning here. The guy seems pretty pleased with the fish he bought, it just sounds like it was pretty tough work to get them.

usaar3332• 4 years ago

Anecdotes are anecdotes. Everyone I know thinks it's dumb.

Also, millions of people would not die from covid if China did nothing. If you go by UK data and extrapolate, it's somewhere in the range of 400k.

Assuming an average of 10 years of life lost, that's about 4 million QALY. Shanghai's lockdown alone already has cost half a million QALY (interpreting being locked down as not quality life) and as it's not about to end anytime soon, is going to push well over a million. Given that it's pretty unreasonable to believe China can get away with a zero-covid policy without these continuing harsh lockdowns every month or so somewhere, there's little case for "lockdown" over "let it rip".

dirtyid5• 4 years ago

SH miscalculated/mananged trying to live with covid in the first place. Jilin (5m) and Shengyang (9m) both coming out of lockdown after month - seems like new stealth strain is still broadlycontainable. Whether cost is worth it medium term is another question. Probably time to force elders to vaccinate and then try to live with covid again. From what I read they're cutting off SH by shutting regional HWs and moving to reopenning by districts that manage to zero tests. As for logistics issues with delivery, inevitable at this scale, but should be within state capacity to sort out. In terms of eating bitter, skipping a few meals is mild relative to even recent PRC history.

bingohbangoh• 4 years ago

What makes this lockdown stricter than past lockdowns such as in Feb-April 2020?

wb14123• 4 years ago

Because of Omicron

somewhereoutth13• 4 years ago

"This makes this whole lockdown feel drenched in identity politics, because letting go of zero covid forces China to also let go of that narrative."

Not identity politics - perhaps national pride, but certainly not identity politics. Shame the author raises this 'dog whistle' in this otherwise credible article.

smcl8• 4 years ago

The author writes well in English but it is clear English isn't their first language, it's entirely likely they were just using a term they've heard a few times and thought was right and weren't trying to dogwhistle (not sure what they would be dogwhistling even if they were)

tangsanqian• 4 years ago

As a Chinese, I can say that the situation is worse than it in the article. My brother is a student who lives in a flat and has not eaten for two days and no one has brought basic substances. He can't leave the flat, he turns to his tutor but his tutor is also forced to stay at home (eating instant noodles every day). We are worried about him but there is nothing we can do, if we criticise the government on chinese Twitter we will be arrested by the police. ಥ_ಥ

Drblessing4• 4 years ago

That's deplorable, I hope everything works out all right.

baka367• 4 years ago

me and my wife (we live in Suzhou) actually talked that if this happens to our city, it might actually become worth to "cause trouble" and get arrested, hoping that there would be some food given in the police station. Its ridiculous how dystopian such conversations have become recently...

kurthr• 4 years ago

Yes, and anyone without a Shanghai hukou (identity card) is not even allowed to get government food. That is a LOT of people in the Shanghai region. I wish the best for everyone stuck there.

danuker2• 4 years ago

Terrifying. Is there no private food delivery?

user_named4• 4 years ago

No they shut down all deliveries of food and food stuff like a week before the lockdown. You could still get some during that time, but I have many orders that never shipped. After lockdown started, all deliveries stopped.

kkfx5• 4 years ago

There are two kind of issue there:

- have no "buffer", meaning living in houses where you can't store food in quantity sufficient for a certain, not little, period of time, in some countries there are even official recommendations like Swiss who recommend one week of food and three days of water (I think, not sure about exact data);

- live in a not-united population that can arise effectively, no government, no power can stop an angry population, they can only try to avoid communications, create confusion and divert anger towards against false/others target.

The first issue might be sorted out if economical conditions allow citizens to live in large-enough homes with room for freezers etc to guarantee even a month of autonomy. The second unfortunately is a tricky business that can change in decades, no less...

robonerd4• 4 years ago

no power can stop an angry population

The longer you wait, the hungrier you get. The hungrier you get, the weaker you are. Best for the people of Shanghai if they start rioting now than a week from now, when it may be too late.

zdragnar3• 4 years ago

no government, no power can stop an angry population

There are plenty of examples of the government doing just that in China. Boxer, taiping, 8 trigrams rebellions, etc, and those are just a few recent historical examples.

In a country as large as China, you need substantial support from sympathetic government insiders if the angry population is even remotely regionally located. Uniting a billion people is an extremely high bar if that is your goal.

jsiaajdsdaa• 4 years ago

Whether this is deliberate or accidental on the govts part, I feel this situation is a forced social experiment that was planned by the leaders.

I hope your brother finds a way through this situation.

FerociousTimes• 4 years ago

The only hope for your brother is if there's a black market for food staples and basic commodities taken shape in Shanghai already and there's an informal network of couriers to deliver food behind all the barriers

netsharc2• 4 years ago

Genuine question: but if the police arrest him and take him to jail, do they feed him there?

mstaoru5• 4 years ago

Based in Shanghai since 2014, I can share some details on why it feels so unbearable to be here right now.

Firstly, the totalitarian government have never been good at communicating anything except propaganda. So on one hand we're inundated with "Go Shanghai!" and how brave volunteers distribute food, on the other hand, we're completely in the dark about what's going on. Goalposts are being moved daily, rumors proliferate, and things change every day, adding a lot of stress to an already suboptimal situation.

Second, I can confirm that the food situation is extremely bad. We are a family of two, and always been kind of preppers, so we had many bags of rice, pasta, dehydrated veg, frozen meats in our large fridge. Chinese society, en masse, is much more used to just ordering food daily. Many people never cook. It's cheaper this way (though of course the quality varies). Bigger families with aunties who can cook just used to pop by the local wet market daily and get a bag of fresh produce. Many households might not even have a fridge at all, or have a small one.

The government was saying that "there will be no lockdown", and when the lockdown became imminent, people barely had two days to stock up. Queues, fights, empty shelves everywhere. More stress.

A lot of people in our community do not have any food left, and we've received two government issued "rations" so far (in 12 days of lockdown): one with 5 tomatoes, and one with 3 pounds of chicken drumsticks, 3 potatoes, 1 head of cauliflower, and a bunch of rotten lettuce. If we did not stock up, we would be starving right now. We donated quite a bit of food to our neighbors already, and many people are actually very close to having no food at all. Getting a delivery is almost impossible, group orders organized by compounds are often ridiculously overpriced, and not always work out. Scams are emerging.

Thirdly, I understand the author's frustration with the guards ("baoan"). Those people never had any formal power, but now they "run things" and, for many, the newly obtained power went to their heads. Violence and abuse is abound. We have PCR tests every 1-2 days, sometimes at 6am, some compounds at 3am. People dragged from their beds and forced to stand in queues.

How would you respond to all that?

Yes, it has some potential to save lives, but if it was communicated better, if we had more time to prepare, and they could still run food deliveries, nobody would complain that much. It's terribly mismanaged, and even after we "open up", I will strongly reconsider staying here. Omicron will return, and I do not want to be here for the next (and next, and next) lockdown.

starkd2• 4 years ago

Are people with means able to bribe the "baoan" ? I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of black market economy were developing.

Monotoko3• 4 years ago

Issue is, bribe them for what? They don't really have any means to get food either and if they were to look the other way while you slipped out of the community you'd find every shop closed.

They don't take monetary bribes, but favours, cigarettes etc

pmlnr5• 4 years ago

How would you respond to all that?

Noncompliance at minimum, riots, more probably. There is a point of hunger when one loses it.

rapind2• 4 years ago

I will strongly reconsider staying here.

It’s fascinating to me how tolerant some people are. After reading your comment (very informative thanks!), I would be well past “considering”. I’d be gone (with family in toe) as soon as humanly possible.

mstaoru5• 4 years ago

There are other factors at play. For one, I have a Chinese wife who has elderly parents (not in Shanghai), for now they fare well, but we might need to look after them sooner or later. Another factor is that I have a few years contract in a startup I care much about, sure we could do remote, but this would be a blow to them. I will try to solve these and see if we can move to Taiwan or somewhere else relatively close by.

marcosdumay7• 4 years ago

Yes, it has some potential to save lives

From what everybody is saying, it has the potential to take many lives too.

pmontra2• 4 years ago

People don't want to die. They'll find a way break out of their houses before starving to death and they'll look for food. It's hard to defend against that at the scale of a city the size of Shanghai. If the government is smart they'll let people out in a controlled way but if I were in Shanghai I won't bet my life on that. Of course it's a matter of timing. If you get out to early you'll be nearly alone and you could fail or worse. If you a too much misplaced trust you die at home.

api• 4 years ago

This is what annoys me about the US COVID protesters. We really didn’t have lockdowns in the US. A lockdown is when you have curfews, can’t go out, can’t travel at all, etc. I saw little of that in the US and what was there was sparsely enforced to the point of being not much more than a suggestion.

ceilingcorner2• 4 years ago

Perhaps if you had invested your life savings into a business, which was then forced to be shut down, you would have more sympathy.

chasd006• 4 years ago

Totally agree. Lots of lives were devastated over these “not serious lockdowns”. Let’s not even talk about the effects of school closures…

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

Meanwhile pro-restriction people were constantly saying “if we’d only had a REAL lockdown like China, this would all be over by now!”

I guess you guys don’t really use that argument anymore, huh?

chasd006• 4 years ago

And, ironically, it is effectively over in places with a non strict lockdown policy. Once omicron became dominant it was over, it’s so infectious it’s pointless to lock down. Omicron was/is the ultimate vaccine in the US at least.

happyopossum• 4 years ago

Where I live in the US we had a curfew and a travel ban, and we’re only allowed out of the house to shop or go to an approved job.

Business nod deemed critical were forced to shut down, with no warning or recompense to their owners. Many of them went bankrupt, were forced to lay off all of their employees, and cancel contracts with customers.

Spring 2020 here was no Shanghai, but it wasn’t the nothing-burger you seem to think it was.

chasd006• 4 years ago

People who live with a government where everything is allowed except what is explicitly forbidden won’t stand for a sudden, drastic, decrease in liberty without a representative vote.

US politicians know this which is why a strong suggestion plus threatening employers with licensing revocation unless they, in turn, threaten employees with job termination over non-compliance is all they could do.

imiric• 4 years ago

People are finding out that state media exists not for accurate news, but only to spin reality into a narrative that fits the powers higher up.

Are people really finding that out only now? I thought that this was generally accepted knowledge even in China, despite the constant fear and propaganda they live with.

What's happening now with the strict lockdowns and zero-Covid policy is inhumane. People are literally prisoners in their own homes and anyone in a position of power will abuse it to avoid hurting their social score. What a fucked up situation.

techolic• 4 years ago

Are people really finding that out only now? I thought that this was generally accepted knowledge even in China, despite the constant fear and propaganda they live with.

Yes and no. You see, 2 decades ago probably half of my peers had that knowledge, that was when the internet was pretty much uncensored compared to how it is today. Over the years they get converted by the narrative and now it's probably 5% or even less that keeps a critical mind when reading anything from anywhere, which is, your know, all censored.

starkd2• 4 years ago

It takes constant vigilance and a high degree of discernment to see through such a narrative. They know its hard to keep up over long term. That's why the maintenance of alternative news sources is so important before it gets that bad.

pmlnr5• 4 years ago

This is interesting to hear, because distrust got so deeply embedded in Hungarians in the previous and the current system, that at this point, barely anyone believe anything, and the ones that do follow after the conspiracy lunatics.

cycomanic• 4 years ago

I just a couple of days had a conversation with a Chinese friend about this (he is living in Sweden). Essentially he said that previously he thought free-media/free-speech was something he understood, but did not consider terribly important for his own live (i.e. you still live a good live, the Chinese government was lifting the population out of poverty ...), but seeing the media and how they dealt with suppressing covid news (especially news how people with other conditions who did not get treated, that just disappeared from social media) he realised that this could easily affect him as well.

So in summary it was not about that he didn't know that state media was manipulating the news, but more that the crisis showed how this could affect anyone.

nynx• 4 years ago

When people are starving and have nothing left to lose, change happens.

walkhour• 4 years ago

I wish this was true but I'm skeptical, how is the change going in North Korea? 3-12% of their population starved to death [0]

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine

chasd006• 4 years ago

With omicron isn’t a zero Covid policy a fools errand? As the virus mutates into ever more infectious variants a zero-Covid policy becomes impossibe.

hans17292• 4 years ago

Since Sinovac is basically useless (about half as effective against the original virus, much less vs delta and omicron), China seems to come to the conclusion that letting Omicron run through would have worse consequences than the lockdowns. It’s a fucked situation.

marcosdumay7• 4 years ago

What I don't get is, China has more than enough money to buy a vaccine that is more effective, and more than enough research capability to develop something against omicron if it's that bad there. Why don't they?

(Also, why didn't we scale the vaccines with the confidence we had, instead of waiting months doing nothing just because the complete results weren't available?)

thisiscorrect2• 4 years ago

Yes. But it was also a fool's errand before omicron. Has there ever been a recorded instance of eliminating a respiratory infection before?

newbamboo• 4 years ago

SARS #1? That’s just one example.

ceejayoz4• 4 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Containment

The World Health Organization declared severe acute respiratory syndrome contained on 5 July 2003. The containment was achieved through successful public health measures. In the following months, four SARS cases were reported in China between December 2003 and January 2004.
While SARS-CoV-1 probably persists as a potential zoonotic threat in its original animal reservoir, human-to-human transmission of this virus may be considered eradicated because no human case has been documented since four minor, brief, subsequent outbreaks in 2004.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SARS#Prevention

Many public health interventions were made to try to control the spread of the disease, which is mainly spread through respiratory droplets in the air, either inhaled or deposited on surfaces and subsequently transferred to a body's mucous membranes. These interventions included earlier detection of the disease; isolation of people who are infected; droplet and contact precautions; and the use of personal protective equipment (PPE), including masks and isolation gowns. A 2017 meta-analysis found that for medical professionals wearing N-95 masks could reduce the chances of getting sick up to 80% compared to no mask. A screening process was also put in place at airports to monitor air travel to and from affected countries.

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

There is a limit to how infectious it can get. I guess they are trying to play the long game on that.

pnw• 4 years ago

Newsflash: communism sucks.

anonu• 4 years ago

We can also generalize: Dictatorial regimes suck.

For all the gnashing, grinding, complaining, partisan politics in the USA over COVID policies, I think the USA came out alright. The detractors will say the USA failed. That 1m people died. A tragedy for sure and maybe a portion of those deaths would have been avoidable had we had better messaging from the Trump regime. But net result we have our freedoms intact. The USA is on a quick road to recovery economically. We've avoided a depression and unemployment is fairly low.

It's not perfect... By far. But at least this is not Shanghai.

shrimp_emoji2• 4 years ago

USA: Debian[0]

Shanghai: Windows 11

0: https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/890219/79e54e3aab20bd87/

briHass• 4 years ago

Let's also not forget the 10 billion dollars the US committed to vaccines (Warp Speed, under Trump) and the obvious promise of massive financial windfalls for the successful pharmaceutical companies from high-paying US citizens through our public/private health insurance. Our HC system is a mess, and expensive, but the rest of the world benefitted massively from our investment.

shrimp_emoji2• 4 years ago

It's not communism, if your charitability/level of interest in politics/economics can afford that pedantry. :p

Authoritarian, repressive regimes founded on weak, corruptible institutions with limited regard for human rights which combine the failings of human leadership with poor information and lack of trust from everyone involved indeed suck.

alangibson• 4 years ago

I'd like to hear from someone in China on why the government still pursues a zero-Covid policy. Is it just face-saving at this point?

danenania• 4 years ago

Once a large bureaucracy gears itself up to solve a problem, it will keep trying to solve the problem even after it’s not a real problem anymore.

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

Yeah. I mean if it had a purpose it has been served. Why don't they use all that massive CCP infrastructure to have zero tolerance for not getting vaccinated instead? It's ludicrous.

djrogers2• 4 years ago

Their vaccine doesn’t work - forcing everyone to get it would only highlight that fact.

throwmeariver1• 4 years ago

They are 1.5 billion in china it's not that easy even if you are using a protein based vaccine...

ceejayoz4• 4 years ago

The Chinese vaccine is substantially less effective than the mRNA-based ones, and it hasn't been mandated so the vaccination rate is still low in some areas/populations.

AndyJado3• 4 years ago

If SH did carrys out Centre Party's policy like most of other cities does, this bizzare wouldn't happen in the first place, if weepy kid always get what it want, what about the slient most?

SH's fault is not CN's fault. China has no face, we just have the biggest slient most, pardon my English if you may ;)

SgtBastard2• 4 years ago

You sound like you’re jealous of Shanghai - that’s understandable, I’m sorry your hukou is from countryside.

simongray• 4 years ago

slient most

silent majority?

guardiangod3• 4 years ago

Earlier on municipal and provincial officials have lost their job over (perceived or not) incompetent handling of COVID. No one wants to be the next in line, so when the Beijing central gov tells them to do x, the provincial gov will to 2x and the municipal gov will do 8x just to make sure.

And they will tell higher up "everything is going to according to plan."

paganel• 4 years ago

The (relatively) high number of deaths during the recent Hong Kong omicron wave must also have scared them. There are lots of non-vaccinated elderly people in China (if I'm not mistaken only about 60% of the over-80s are vaccinated), and as such even (the relatively lighter) Omicron variant would cause lots and lots of deaths around China among that elderly population (and China has lots of elders).

All things considered not the best situation to be in, because getting rid of the zero-covid strategy right now will cause lots and lots of deaths. Maybe China should have done as the rest of the world has done when it came to Covid and it should have tried to adjust gradually, as the pandemic progressed.

jerryzh• 4 years ago

One slightly reasonable opinion is that Chinese population density is way higher than anywhere else in the world and it may go out of controll if not 0 policy

blhack• 4 years ago

This is legitimately confusing to me. Didn’t we learn that:

1) Lockdown do nothing

2) Vaccines are effective

Why are they locking people down? Why aren’t they just vaccinating them all?

unicornfinder• 4 years ago

In short, because the vaccines available in China, as it turns out, aren't all that effective at all, and the Chinese government desperately needs to save face now.

JoshTko2• 4 years ago

Lockdowns were extremely effective in preventing healthcare collapse in nearly all countries it was implemented. Countries that did not go into lockdown early on such as Sweden were seeing up to 15% death rated. Lockdowns allowed sufficient time for the development and distribution of effective vaccines. China unfortunately has not completed the latter step of wide distribution of an effective vaccine. Their healthcare system will collapse without lockdowns.

umanwizard12• 4 years ago

Countries that did not go into lockdown early on such as Sweden were seeing up to 15% death rates.

No they weren’t. Show your source.

user_named4• 4 years ago

I posted a Tell HN about lockdowns coming before they were announced, about two or three weeks ago.

I'm currently in lockdown, not sure when we're getting out. And then after that someone in the compound will probably be infected pretty soon and it all starts over.

Feel free to AMA.

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

I don't see how anyone could miss it given what happened around the world with omicron. One slip and you have about 90% of the people in a room catch it, and then those people go other places.

mupuff12343• 4 years ago

Why didn't you leave?

user_named4• 4 years ago

I like Shanghai. Where else would be better?

a_wang• 4 years ago

the worst thing I hear that highways around Tianjin and Beijing are closed. If you have friends living in those places, please message them to reserve a loooot of foods

Monotoko3• 4 years ago

Also Suzhou, Hangzhou and Wuxi

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/902836853999276074/...

Markoff4• 4 years ago

It's beyond me why would anyone move to Shanghai in 2017, that's already after T left China after spending there better half of decade because of how unbeareable it became with Xi coming to power and that was many years before 2017 with tightening screws in every aspect of (foreigner's) life. China peaked some time between 2008 and Xi being elected, since his election it's all going downhill very quickly.

Btw. as Beijinger who spent few weeks in Shanghai on business trips I've never understood appeal of Shanghai, I'd much rather go for Shenzhen or Chengdu as alternatives to Beijing.

bamboozled4• 4 years ago

What actually is going on in China, is there some type of economic meltdown in progress ? Like, we can say it's because of covid, but something seems a miss to me.

This is the biggest, richest, most international city of China and people are starving, without medicine, and without freedom.

What?

stjohnswarts12• 4 years ago

I think it's as much a show of force and power by the CCP as anything. They will even shut down one of their largest and most prosperous cities on a whim if it suits their goals. Starving people and shutdown productivity do not matter in the face of what the CCP wills to happen. It's as much a warning and shot across the bow as anything.

bamboozled4• 4 years ago

Sensible long term strategy though? I doubt it...

zdragnar3• 4 years ago

Western lockdowns were absolutely tame compared to the Chinese government's version. Additionally, ordering cooked food can be extremely cheap in China, and convenient if all the adults in a household are working long hours. Some may not cook at all, or have sufficient supplies to do so for long periods of time on short notice.

Shanghai also has a population of 26 million people. Organizing a super-strict lockdown while also organizing the importation and accurate delivery of food and medicine to all of these people on very short notice is a logistical and bureaucratic nightmare.

pxtail• 4 years ago

Like, we can say it's because of covid, but something seems a miss to me.

I'm wondering about this as well - it's hard to imagine that this is not part of greater strategy so either all of this is intentional to increase pressure within Chinese society to the point of boiling for some reason - maybe to disrupt markets and world economy even more? Alternatively Omicron indeed surprised them and now when Russia is at war they do not want to deal with COVID and are ready to try to contain it at all costs.

singularity2001• 4 years ago

My pet suspicion is that it is somehow related to the Ukraine disaster or crash of the housing bubble, though a mere distraction seems like a weak reason.

dayvid• 4 years ago

I also highly recommend reading this thread by Naomi Wu on her thoughts of the Shanghai lockdown: https://twitter.com/RealSexyCyborg/status/151273459548510617...

Anthony-G• 4 years ago

Thanks for that. For those who dislike Twitter, here are two alternative links:

https://nitter.net/RealSexyCyborg/status/1512734595485106179

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1512734595485106179.html

An Account of the Shanghai Lockdown

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