[HN Gopher] Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeCh...
___________________________________________________________________
Trapped in lockdown, Shanghai residents turn to WeChat groups for
food
Author : walterbell
Score : 119 points
Date : 2022-04-10 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (restofworld.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (restofworld.org)
| cryptica wrote:
| This shows the fragility of big cities. People who live in a big
| city are highly dependent on the government and the economy.
| Cities don't produce much food themselves so it has to be brought
| in from other parts of the country every day. Shanghai has 24
| million people; it's difficult to conceptualize how much food is
| required to sustain so many people.
|
| I find big cities terrifying. What if there is a food shortage or
| some other panic and everyone decides to leave within a short
| period of time. Will it even be physically possible to leave with
| millions of people and cars clogging all the streets and booking
| out all surrounding hotels and accommodation?
|
| If you live in a remote town without too many people, this is not
| a problem; everyone in those towns easily find ways to sustain
| themselves from their surroundings; fish, birds, deer, wild
| fruits, vegetables...
| savant_penguin wrote:
| If anything it shows the fragility of having someone point a
| gun into your head forbidding you to go get food
|
| If for whatever other reason you'd live in a remote area and
| the government used force to stop you from getting food in
| whatever way, the exact same thing would happen, as it already
| did in Ukraine (holodomor hunger) where you have one of the
| most fertile grounds on the planet
| reducesuffering wrote:
| > the exact same thing would happen
|
| People in Shanghai are completely unable to produce their own
| food, with many not stocking even a bag of rice.
|
| Meanwhile, there's plenty of rural areas that can produce
| family-sized amounts of eggs, milk, fruits, and veggies to
| survive on indefinitely should the government decide to
| blockade you.
| cryptica wrote:
| If there was going to be a food shortage in a big city which
| could not be stopped... Would the government tell people that
| there is going to be a food shortage? IMO, they wouldn't
| because this would cause panic buying by some which would
| make it happen even faster. I think they would just use some
| other excuse and find ways to reduce average consumption to
| make people last as long as possible on the limited supply
| and hope that the situation improves.
| 3qz wrote:
| Some may call this "the industrial revolution and it's
| consequences"... These people are entirely dependent on
| technology and social structures that they have no control
| over. Unfortunately, that's true for everyone in the
| countryside too unless they want to live with Stone Age farming
| tools. Could you sustain yourself if your town had to recreate
| the metal supply chain? Energy? Probably not. I don't think
| you're much better off in the long run. You can't sustain your
| own lifestyle either.
| drumhead wrote:
| A lot of CCP in this thread.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I believe this will lead to anyone in China (Chinese or
| otherwise) to permanently leave the country if they are able.
| vmception wrote:
| Would the same standard apply if this happened to you or your
| neighbors in your country or would you just wait for better
| days?
| Stevvo wrote:
| Most Chinese still have full confidence in their government and
| society. It will take a lot more than a couple of days of
| starvation to get people to upend their lives and flee.
| edrxty wrote:
| This. Try to find interviews with the average Chinese
| citizen. Things work very differently over there. Most of
| them are pretty happy to live in their little information
| bubbles in much the same way the those in the west do, though
| they have quite a bit less autonomy in creating said bubble
| Cerium wrote:
| Currently you can't get out unless you have a business, student
| visa or permanent residence permit. The word is that tourist
| visa holders will be denied exit. Getting in is also very
| arduous.
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| I get the feeling that the public consciousness in the West
| may still be underestimating and excusing a dismal regime.
|
| Typically I hear, "but the CCP lifted a billion people out of
| poverty!"
| bogomipz wrote:
| I don't understand your comment, especially in relation to
| the OP's comment that you responding to. The West generally
| doesn't have a very high regard for the CCP or many of
| their policies. Your quote is attributable to the CCP I
| believe and I think more recently to Xi himself. Who do you
| hear that from exactly? The Chinese people lifted
| themselves out of poverty when the CCP abandoned some of
| Mao's more disastrous economic policies.
| LAC-Tech wrote:
| There's a lot of westerners - usually men - who love the
| PRC. They're all over LinkedIn, for example.
| sidibe wrote:
| The Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution, also
| achieved by the same party, put them at such an
| artificially low point it was impossible not to spring back
| impressively eventually.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > Currently you can't get out unless you have a business,
| student visa or permanent residence permit. The word is that
| tourist visa holders will be denied exit. Getting in is also
| very arduous.
|
| As of when? I know some people who left China in December on
| a tourist visa to another country.
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Elon musk complained about the California lockdown in 2020.
|
| Did he tweeted about China shutting down his factory in 2022 due
| to covid?
| vmception wrote:
| Why do you think someone should behave the same way in a single
| party system?
|
| Support is achieved in different ways in different societies.
| [deleted]
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| If you're wondering.
|
| Yes, it's the same variant.
|
| Yes, they have a working vaccine ( just not a RMNA one), but with
| a ( bit) lower efficiency and the older population is less
| vaccinated.
|
| China is currently in the weak position of not being able to
| contain a super contagious COVID virus, as they have propaganda'd
| their policy as superior to the western one for the last years.
|
| Not implementing zero COVID policy would mean their tactic is not
| superior ( vs. Flatten the curve)
|
| There are other, more minor, variables, but that seems to be the
| biggest one. Eg. Election next year, ...
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| walterbell wrote:
| Is there also a power struggle between Shanghai and other
| political factions, with the civilian population caught in the
| middle?
|
| Oct 2021, https://www.asiasentinel.com/p/shanghai-gang-seeks-xi-
| jinpin...
|
| _> those who understand the factionalism in China will
| appreciate the depth of the spillover to Hong Kong and therefore
| the rooting out that's been taking place as a consequence ...
| power struggle with a rival political faction backed by former
| Chinese President Jiang Zemin._
|
| Oct 2021, https://jamestown.org/program/factional-strife-
| intensifies-a...
|
| _> power struggle between Xi and former PBSC member and Vice
| President Zeng Qinghong. Zeng, a princeling and close aide of
| former president Jiang Zemin, is also a major leader of the so-
| called Shanghai Faction. Zeng is believed to be the "protection
| umbrella" behind several multi-billion enterprises._
|
| Feb 2021, https://www.orfonline.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/02/ORF_Occ...
|
| _> This paper ... argues that any attempt to comprehend elite
| politics in China requires an understanding of the factional
| dynamics within the party. The paper outlines the evolution of
| factional politics in China, and shows how two factions - the
| Shanghai Gang and the Chinese Communist Youth League (CCYL) -
| have dominated the country's politics over the past three
| decades._
| uranusjr wrote:
| This is indeed a much-speculated reason behind the heavy-handed
| lockdown (but without substantial proof either way, it's
| anybody's guess).
| kkfx wrote:
| Not much a smart move IMVHO: discussing on a hyper-surveilled
| platform is not good at all and in any cases they can't download
| food so...
|
| IMVHO they best move is just talking with their neighbors, in a
| day or two, offline, there will be a sufficient mass of people
| ready to descend to the street, and others will joint. At that
| point there is not much room for a new Tian'anmen: they are too
| much to be repressed.
|
| On the other side: it's a lesson almost no one would like to
| learn that we need to produce enough food to nourish residents,
| witch means that any relatively small area (like a region) should
| allow at maximum the number of residents who can be nourished at
| a minimum level with locally produced foods, of course commerce
| would be still there and improve life, but for basic surviving
| local one must be there. And that's an enormous issue for China.
|
| They need a younger population to remain in a growing state they
| need to counter the USA, they need to counter USA/UK because they
| are already too much and so they have to source food from south
| America, Africa etc witch means they need a dominance of "nearby"
| sees and USA can't accept that but a younger population means
| more children, so even more mouth to be nourished.
|
| In Europe we have a less profound but not that different issue
| and in the north America I suspect that's the same.
| miked85 wrote:
| I haven't seen yet why China is going into lockdown again. Is
| there a new variant?
| colechristensen wrote:
| The only way "out" of COVID is that everyone gets exposed
| regularly enough that their immunity is high enough to make the
| average case rather mild. You could lockdown and try to force
| vaccines for a century and not get rid of it.
|
| The vaccines don't work well enough to extinct the virus, and
| the virus is too contagious and has too long an incubation time
| to make lockdowns work (and new variants seem to be evolving to
| become more contagious which defeats the effectiveness of
| masking.
|
| You can offer people vaccines to slow spread and reduce
| individual risk which means health systems will be less
| strained when peaks come around, but forcing vaccines won't and
| hasn't worked. You don't live in a police state where your
| opinions get to be forced on everyone, and even in very
| controlled societies (i.e. China) they're still having the same
| troubles.
|
| China is dealing with the same thing the west dealt with
| before, but just delayed because of their increased control.
|
| It's time to stop pretending perfection is possible and
| accepting the risk of covid is unavoidable and doing what is
| reasonable to limit it without resorting to forcing measures on
| people when the long term effects of those measures tend
| towards zero. (delay instead of prevention).
|
| People have developed a kind of religious zeal about this
| though so actually changing hearts and minds to "do the best we
| can respecting choices" from "it's possible to eradicate this".
| threatofrain wrote:
| China isn't dealing with the same situation because Sinovac
| isn't as good, they haven't purchased a large stockpile of
| reputable western vaccines, and so the value proposition of
| forcing everyone to vaccinate isn't as strong.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >reputable western vaccines
|
| Many vaccines were developed, the less effective ones
| aren't really a matter of "reputation" but something more
| like luck. Many things were tried, some worked better than
| others. There was no guarantee that never-before-approved
| mRNA-type vaccines were going to work, be safe enough to
| use, and work better than other vaccines, but it did turn
| out that way. That was not a result of a priori superiority
| or reputation, but an experimental technique happening to
| work out well.
| NathanKP wrote:
| Personally I'd rather live with periodic dystopian lockdowns
| like China than in a society where the population gradually
| gets weaker and weaker from long term heart, lung, and brain
| damage from Covid. (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-
| conditions/coronavirus/i...)
|
| Imagine each wave of new Covid variant leaving a percentage
| of the population a little less strong, with a little more
| brain fog... that's a way more frightening gradual descent
| than the inconvenience of a periodic total lockdown.
|
| I don't think perfection is possible, but I also don't think
| that living with regular exposure is going to work out very
| well for us. The biggest thing I fear is that we end up with
| a weakened and lower IQ population while countries like China
| that do their best to limit exposure will stay stronger
| overall because they are willing to work with a periodic
| lockdown. Lockdown supply chain problems can be solved a lot
| more easily than widespread heart, lung, and brain damage.
| colechristensen wrote:
| There is an assumption here that long-term mostly mild
| symptoms are unique to COVID instead of prevalent. There is
| an assumption here that such things are cumulative and will
| threaten everybody.
|
| The reality seems to be much more like long term disease
| side effects are relatively common, extremely difficult to
| diagnose, and just starting to be understood.
|
| For example there have been recent publications indicating
| the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV, often called "mono") is a
| cause or potentiator of multiple sclerosis.
|
| We also have "chronic fatigue syndrome" and "fibromyalgia"
| which are essentially just clusters of symptoms with no
| known definitive cause which are quite possibly
| "Long-<disease X>" among others.
|
| You're also neglecting the long term psychological and
| other effects of lockdowns.
|
| It is not clear that the benefits of forced lockdowns or
| forced vaccinations beat the alternatives or that such
| things are justifiable in a free society... and if you want
| to live in a dystopian society that matches your morality I
| suggest you move to one.
|
| As for me the cost/benefit of lockdowns has become clear to
| me and I'll vote with my feet if faced with another one.
| itstheccp wrote:
| No, they're locking down over Omicron, which is a cold that
| none of the vaccines prevent. That's what authoritarian
| countries do, they repeal the freedoms of their subjects
| arbitrarily.
|
| This is why it's absolutely insane that the free world followed
| the Chinese playbook at the beginning of the pandemic, even for
| a minute.
|
| The CCP wants zero COVID and if they need to have another Great
| Leap Forward to get it, well, nobody will miss the "COVID
| deniers" in their society anyway.
|
| Remember their war on sparrows? Starving their citizens to
| protect them from a cold is completely on brand for the
| communist Chinese -- they promised zero COVID and the Party
| will lose face if it isn't achieved, so it must be achieved, at
| any cost.
| jseban wrote:
| > This is why it's absolutely insane that the free world
| followed the Chinese playbook at the beginning of the
| pandemic, even for a minute.
|
| A stark reminder that Germany was also a communist
| dictatorship until only 30 years ago, and that Angela Merkel
| suddenly turned to authoritarian leadership and was impressed
| with China's strategy is not really that surprising
| considering that she grew up in and was indoctrinated in a
| communist dictatorship herself.
| vmception wrote:
| We just have to accept that their covid zero policy actually
| worked for two years and their numbers were mostly accurate.
|
| Now they arent working and the population has no exposure.
| newsclues wrote:
| Seems to be an over focus on the Covid zero idea.
|
| They are mass killings cats and dogs it seems.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I haven't seen yet why China is going into lockdown again. Is
| there a new variant?
|
| Just the same ones we have everywhere else. The problem is that
| the new variants are so contagious that their COVID zero
| practices now can't keep up.
| dayofthedaleks wrote:
| The Sinovac vaccine isnt effective against recent variants, so
| it's 2020 all over again until mRNA tech becomes available.
| Also many older people aren't vaccinated.
| triyambakam wrote:
| Have we been looking at different data? I don't see how any
| mRNA product has performed significantly better.
| reissbaker wrote:
| What are you talking about? A three-dose regimen of Pfizer
| or Moderna pitted against Omicron is 75% effective against
| infection and 88% effective against severe disease:
| https://www.healthline.com/health-news/by-the-numbers-
| covid-...
|
| Sinovac wasn't great against the original strain, but
| against Omicron, Sinovac is basically worthless. A two-dose
| regimen provides literally no benefit, and three doses is
| only equivalent to unboosted, two-dose mRNA (aka, not
| really effective):
| https://news.yale.edu/2022/01/20/vaccine-used-much-world-
| no-...
|
| Sinovac is trash, but politically China can't admit failure
| and buy the Western vaccines, and hence it's stuck with
| lockdowns.
| curmudgeon22 wrote:
| These are rates per 100,000 for vaccinated, boosted and
| unvaccinated from Ontario (population 14 million). I
| don't see much benefit against infection to those with 2
| or 3 mRNA doses.
|
| The most recent datapoints (7 day average):
|
| - Not fully vaccinated: 14.86 cases per 100,000 people
|
| - Fully vaccinated: 17.39 cases per 100,000 people
|
| - Vaccinated with booster: 26.89 cases per 100,000 people
|
| https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/case-numbers-and-
| spread#cas...
| stock_toaster wrote:
| For infection rates, perhaps there is a bit of a
| confounding factor of vaccinated people being less
| careful (eg unmasking) due to confidence in their
| vaccination status?
|
| The deaths by vaccination status stats on that same page
| are pretty interesting.
| xyzzy123 wrote:
| The mrna vaccines have an impact on transmission /
| infection of omicron for about 4-6 months (there is
| longer-lasting protection against severe illness etc).
|
| This leads to very confusing debates, the "headline"
| stats used to sell the vaccine demonstrate high
| effectiveness (they tend to use data from the 4-6 month
| window where they know it will look good).
|
| The metastudies / long-term studies tell a more nuanced
| story.
| reissbaker wrote:
| 7-day average isn't particularly worthwhile for Omicron,
| which peaked months ago. Most people who were going to
| get it already got it.
|
| Ontario changed the way it reports COVID data in March,
| and thus finding prior data is annoying on my phone for
| Ontario specifically. But pretty much every other data
| source I've looked at agrees: during the Omicron peak,
| the vast, vast majority of cases per 100k were in the
| unvaccinated.
| mxtihvb wrote:
| Your claim isn't borne out by Hong Kong's case fatality
| rate numbers, which are broken down here by age range,
| vaccine type and # of doses: https://mobile.twitter.com/t
| ripperhead/status/15124203942710....
|
| Note that Hong Kong's Center for Health Protection (CHP)
| has consistently been way ahead of any other public
| health establishment in tracking and responding to COVID;
| they launched on-arrival rapid testing in March 2020 (!)
| and realized COVID was airborne, not fomite-transmitted,
| months before the CDC did. They've also consistently
| released provably accurate numbers. Hong Kong has had a
| bad response to COVID recently, but all of it is due to
| the bureaucrats in charge ignoring the CHP's
| scientifically-based health advice in favour of mandates
| handed down from the mainland government.
|
| In any case, the numbers show that while Sinovac isn't as
| great as Pfizer, it's much better than being
| unvaccinated. The case fatality rate among 80+ year olds
| who got covid is 15.68% for unvaccinated people, 3.98%
| for those with 2 doses of Sinovac and 1.73% for those
| with 2 doses of Pfizer. For 70-79 year olds it's 5.28%,
| 0.6% and 0.33% respectively. Note that all of Hong Kong's
| recent wave was from Omicron.
|
| We forget how lucky as a civilization we were to develop
| mRNA vaccines in response to COVID, and how much better
| than expectations they were. We would have been thrilled
| with the efficacy of Sinovac. So while Sinovac is
| definitely worse than Pfizer, it's misleading and
| alarmist to say that it's 'basically worthless.'
| reissbaker wrote:
| The report you're linking to starts from Dec 31, when
| Delta was still widely circulating (and which had much
| higher fatality rates, further compounding issues with a
| raw measurement of "case fatality" for COVID-19). It
| doesn't attempt to isolate performance against specific
| strains, unlike the Yale research, which does. It's also
| a biased sample, since the Pfizer vaccine ("Comirnaty")
| isn't approved in China, so the people who have it are
| likely significantly different in many respects from
| those who got Sinovac ("CoronaVac"). The unvaccinated
| groups are also likely a biased sample. It's a raw data
| dump: useful if you have nothing else, but we have peer
| reviewed research that does attempt to correct for those
| kinds of flaws on exactly this topic.
|
| If you think I'm being "misleading," here's a direct
| quote from Yale statement: "However, those [Sinovac]
| vaccinations alone are of no help against the widely
| circulating omicron variant, shows a new study by
| researchers at Yale and the Dominican Republic. The
| results are published in the journal Nature Medicine.
|
| An analysis of blood serum from 101 individuals from the
| Dominican Republic showed that omicron infection produced
| no neutralizing antibodies among those who received the
| standard two-shot regimen of the Sinovac vaccine.
|
| ...
|
| But when researchers compared these samples with blood
| serum samples stored at Yale, they found that even those
| who had received two Sinovac shots and a booster had
| antibody levels that were only about the same as those
| who'd received two shots of the mRNA vaccines but no
| booster shot."
|
| That's pretty much exactly what I posted! So no, I don't
| think I'm being misleading.
|
| Regardless, even if you suppose the entire HK dataset is
| 100% Omicron cases, and ignore the sample biases, it's
| still pretty poor compared to Pfizer; the OP claimed they
| were roughly the same, which I was refuting.
| robonerd wrote:
| Supposing there were a new variant, or some new illness
| entirely, recent history suggests the CCP would sooner try to
| suppress it themselves than admit it publicly.
|
| So... maybe.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Don't forget that China still tries for a zero covid strategy
| even with variants that are unlikely to overload the health
| system like Omicron. So whether it's Omicron or a new
| variant, their response would be the same.
|
| Sooner or later they'll have to open up like we did (and
| things are going just fine). But I think it's a PR issue,
| they've been preaching the zero covid so long.. They care a
| lot about their reputation.
| blablablub wrote:
| The current omicron cases are already overloading the
| health system in Shanghai. and that are only about 5000
| cases.
| robonerd wrote:
| Starving people in their apartment buildings to prevent a
| collapse of the hospital system? The solution is worse
| than the problem. I'd rather be free in a city with no
| hospitals at all, than be imprisoned and starved in my
| own home for my 'protection.'
| rdtwo wrote:
| Is it? Or all all the false positives from over testing
| creating a huge problem?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| But that could be a response issue too.. As far as I've
| heard China hospitalizes everyone even cases that don't
| need actual care.
|
| Also they have some immunity to build up that we have had
| over the last 2 years. I know it doesn't prevent covid
| but it does seem to reduce it's severity a lot.
| blablablub wrote:
| China distinguishes between asymptomatic and "confirmed"
| cases. In the last 10 days there were around 140k
| asymptomatic cases - those are shipped to the makeshift
| hospitals "quarantine centers" you see on TV.
|
| During the same time there are around 5k cases with
| symptoms, as i understand all confirmed with a chest
| x-ray scan(?). Those go into the covid hospitals, which
| are now overflowing.
|
| Do all of those need to go to a hospital? I don't know.
| But on the pictures you see mostly elderly people, and
| the vaccination rate among those is about as high as in
| HK
| rdtwo wrote:
| Considering how many people were tested a bunch of those
| could just be false positives. They did like 100m tests
| or something crazy
| jseban wrote:
| > As far as I've heard China hospitalizes everyone even
| cases that don't need actual care.
|
| That's what I heard too, so it's a catch-22. Similar
| issues in Sweden in the beginning of the year when they
| introduced the rule that the whole household has to
| quarantine if only one person tests positive, suddenly
| the whole country was on sick leave, including the
| hospital staff, so they also did a DDoS on their own
| health care system.
| freyr wrote:
| It's been reported that Omicron was relatively mild in the
| West because so many people are vaccinated or have had
| previous exposure.
|
| In a place like Hong Kong, where relatively few people were
| vaccinated or previously infected, Omicron was much
| deadlier.
|
| https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/04/09/asias-
| ou...
| RandomWorker wrote:
| Happy valley from Monty Python
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=q_4Ny8aLTS0
| mlindner wrote:
| I haven't heard this one before, but the relevance is
| amazing. Thank you.
| kkfx wrote:
| IMVHO lockdowns have no sanitary reasons, they simply haven't
| enough prime matters and/or energy and/or food so they need to
| force a big stop without telling the real reason to a
| population used to grow year on year and work hard any day...
|
| Witch is not much different than lowering down speed limits or
| asking to lower head/air-con usage in various EU countries.
|
| Not much time ago VoxEU publish
| https://voxeu.org/article/trade-and-travel-time-epidemics a
| reasoning about how travels can be limited without hurting the
| economy and there are many other in the same line of thought.
| Honestly I see no other explanation.
| loceng wrote:
| Bags full of people's pets that were gathered due to COVID
| concerns (it looks like still alive, though uncertain if the plan
| is to kill them):
|
| "Pets filled up in bags for their duly execution in Shanghai,
| China as a part of the government's Covid response [TW]" -
| https://www.reddit.com/r/ThatsInsane/comments/u0fxgd/pets_fi...
| fabioborellini wrote:
| China might be the only society treating people and other
| animals equally, then
| blablablub wrote:
| Why do you post a video from Wuhan and say in your post that it
| is from Shanghai?
| ars wrote:
| There's no point in doing this, COVID will spread until everyone
| gets it at least once.
|
| You just want to slow it down not to overwhelm hospitals and that
| it's. And if you immunize everyone there's very few
| hospitalizations.
|
| Just make vaccines available - you don't even need to mandate
| them, most people will take them, and that's good enough.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| You mean until everyone gets it again, and again (and again).
|
| We don't know the long terms effects of even a single
| infection, let alone the repeated infections we're allowing
| ourselves to be exposed to.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Probably a similar risk profile to that of every other common
| respiratory virus...
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Like measles? Smallpox? They are respiratory viruses too
| JamisonM wrote:
| "COVID will spread until everyone gets it at least once"
|
| Unfortunately evidence seems to indicate that everyone getting
| once is also not very effective, the reinfection protection of
| past infection seems to be sub-20% from Omicron. You can find
| lots of studies with different numbers but none of them are
| good.
|
| China's behaviour with respect to vaccines is very strange,
| they could mandate vaccination very easily, they could also
| relent and import mRNA vaccines but they don't. It seems like
| even mandating their very poor vaccines would be helping their
| situation a lot if it had been done months ago - availability
| has not been enough.
| ars wrote:
| > the reinfection protection of past infection seems to be
| sub-20% from Omicron
|
| So then what? Lockdowns forever? Vaccines are even worse than
| natural immunity.
|
| But the truth is your numbers aren't accurate. Someone who
| had covid and is reinfected is unlikely to go to the hospital
| - and that's the only thing that matters.
|
| Yes, they will get Omicron, but that doesn't matter. Vaccine
| or natural immunity (and get both if you can, in that order)
| prevent hospitalizations and death.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Do you have a citation for that? The data I'be seen
| suggests no reduction in severity due to previous
| infection.
| ars wrote:
| "Reinfections had 90% lower odds of resulting in
| hospitalization or death than primary infections. Four
| reinfections were severe enough to lead to acute care
| hospitalization. None led to hospitalization in an ICU,
| and none ended in death."
|
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmc2108120
|
| It was literally the first hit on google. And it's well
| known that infection is much more protective than
| vaccination (although riskier).
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Who you're replying to specifically cited Omicron. The
| study you posted is older than Omicron. There is evidence
| Omicron and Delta are much better at reinfection.
| ars wrote:
| According to
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2200133
| Omicron has 56.0% protection but: "Among the patients
| with reinfection, progression to severe Covid-19 occurred
| in one patient with the alpha variant, in two patients
| with the beta variant, in no patients with the delta
| variant, and in two patients with the omicron variant.
| None of the reinfections progressed to critical or fatal
| Covid-19. The effectiveness with respect to severe,
| critical, or fatal Covid-19 was estimated to be 69.4%
| (95% CI, -143.6 to 96.2) against the alpha variant, 88.0%
| (95% CI, 50.7 to 97.1) against the beta variant, 100%
| (95% CI, 43.3 to 100) against the delta variant, and
| 87.8% (95% CI, 47.5 to 97.1) against the omicron
| variant."
|
| So for the metric that matters (deaths), Omicron is no
| different.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Deaths is not the metric that matters. Transmission is.
| It doesn't matter if the chance of death or severe
| illness is divided by 5, if you end up being reinfected
| 10 times over a few years.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| No, infection is _not_ more protective than vaccination.
| Vaccination is much more consistent than infection - not
| least because the vaccine is not packaged with immune
| suppressing elements.
| ars wrote:
| That's not true: "Naturally infected populations were
| less likely to be reinfected by SARS-CoV-2 than the
| infection-naive and vaccinated individuals."
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-05325-5
|
| There are other studies that say the same thing - natural
| immunity is far superior to vaccination. (But also more
| risky since acquiring that immunity can cause people to
| end up in the hospital.)
|
| The best is both:
|
| "Two doses of BNT162b2 vaccine were associated with high
| short-term protection against SARS-CoV-2 infection; this
| protection waned considerably after 6 months. Infection-
| acquired immunity boosted with vaccination remained high
| more than 1 year after infection."
| https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa2118691
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Agree the best is both. Your source pertains to
| Bangladesh, not sure the results necessarily carry more
| generally, due to the different society/demographics/etc.
|
| Please provide sources for your other studies - "far
| superior" is quite a strong claim
| peteradio wrote:
| Consistency refers to the spread not the mean. For
| instance, you could have a vaccine performing uniformly
| poorly relative to a prior infection and that sure would
| be consistent.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| I was implying consistently good. As in, the ~ 90%
| protection was relatively uniform
| hedgehog wrote:
| Here are the two recent studies I've seen that suggest
| reinfections are not rare and have similar severity to
| the first. Qatar's reports have been good so I wouldn't
| discount their results, and it's possible that the 81
| study meta-review and the VA system data don't accurately
| capture what's really happening, but still they are the
| strongest cases I've seen in the area.
|
| I haven't seen any case that protection from infection is
| better than at least the mRNA vaccines, only that it's
| inconsistent and wanes relatively rapidly. Where'd you
| find that?
|
| Burden of PCR-Confirmed SARS-CoV-2 Reinfection in the
| U.S. Veterans Administration, March 2020 - January 2022 h
| ttps://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.03.20.2227257
| 1v...
|
| The mystery of COVID-19 reinfections: A global systematic
| review and meta-analysis
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34900250/
| legulere wrote:
| So far I heard the other way around: A natural infection
| also always means an attack on the immune system by the
| virus. Also if you have a very light infection your body
| often doesn't create as many anti-bodies as with a vaccine.
| benjaminwootton wrote:
| Such pragmatism left the room in February 2020.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| In fact politicisation entered the room in 2020 - from then
| on it became an uphill struggle to put in place even the most
| basic public health interventions.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| We know that. China knows that.. I bet they're just trying to
| work on a narrative that doesn't paint the party in a bad
| light. I think they've kinda painted themselves in a corner.
|
| Mind you, zero covid could have worked at the start. If it
| never left Wuhan it may have worked. But the whole world had to
| have been on board. And after the first 2 months that ship has
| sailed forever.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Part of the problem is China's vaccine is substantially less
| effective than the mRNA ones. "Just make vaccines available"
| works less for them than it does in, say, the US.
| sho_hn wrote:
| What happened to Fosun licensing the BioNTech mRNA vaccine?
| blablablub wrote:
| still waiting for approval in China. I guess it might
| eventually happen after China approves their own locally
| made mrna vaccine.
| eric-hu wrote:
| Another part of the problem is that China forbids Chinese
| citizens from getting foreign made vaccines. They've acquired
| them, but only allow foreigners to get them.
| wellthatsawrap wrote:
| Was difference does it make. None of the vaccines actually
| work.
| blablablub wrote:
| What you wrote is absolutely not true. No one gets foreign
| vaccines(mrna) in China.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| COVID won't stop spreading when everyone gets it at least once.
| It will continue to reinfect most people, and mutate faster
| than you can vaccinate. Every few months the vaccines will
| become less and less effective.
|
| Where I live was almost entirely vaccinated, and that didn't
| stop the virus from overwhelming hospitals, even with
| lockdowns. Most people had probably already gotten it too by
| that point.
|
| I don't know what's the solution, but there's clearly a point
| in trying to keep the virus from becoming a permanent strain.
| The question is if it will be successful. Locking down ~5% of
| the country is preferable to locking down 100% of the country
| because a new variant came around and the hospitals are full,
| so on that basis it's rational if you think it has a chance of
| actually being successful.
| tyng wrote:
| I'm in the lockdown in Shanghai, feel free to ask me any
| questions. Things you read on the internet is mostly true (but
| may be exaggerated):
|
| Life: Yes we can only buy food through WeChat groups to organise
| wholesale deliveries (2000 eggs, 200 cabbages minimum order) on
| hiked prices, but it's easier than you might think; No one has
| died from starvation (yet), but there had been a few cases of
| death due to not getting medical help in time; The city's
| resources are stretched - it's a city with 25m population.
|
| Work: I'm still working 12 hour days online (we're a design &
| project management firm). I get to wake up 10 minutes before a
| morning meeting and be in my pajamas the whole day.
|
| So on a personal level, life isn't that miserable. But it's
| definitely a very difficult time to the elderly and the ill.
|
| Will I (or anyone in my shoes) leave China permanently because of
| this? I guess not, even though I have the means to do it. There
| are harder problems to solve in life than feeling terrified by a
| lockdown.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| What about poor people or people not on WeChat? I'm inclined to
| guess that your remote job isn't representative of many people
| in the city. The videos of people moaning and screaming from
| their balconies at night seem... shocking?
| tyng wrote:
| Absolutely, I don't represent everyone. I'm sure there are
| people losing their income because they cannot go to work.
| The government - which has enforced the lockdown, should
| definitely do a better job in caring for the individuals who
| are the most affected, no doubt in that.
| rdtwo wrote:
| What about parents with kids? Everyone stuck doing virtual
| school and work in tiny apartments?
| tyng wrote:
| Schools are closed, and for good reasons. If I'm the parent I
| wouldn't want my kids to get COVID. The gospel of online
| education may be coming true? Jokes aside, it's not as
| miserable as many people may think.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| > If I'm the parent I wouldn't want my kids to get COVID
|
| The risks of missing education, physical activity and
| socialization are far greater for children than Covid. We
| have two years of data to show this.
| JaimeThompson wrote:
| Limiting the analysis to just the possible impact on
| children without taking into account the impact on the
| complex interconnected system that is modern society
| might not be the best way to analyze this.
| tyng wrote:
| It's not a permanent lockdown... just for a few weeks (so
| far)
| weezin wrote:
| Do people feel that the lockdown is justified? I saw the
| start of a paywalled WSJ article saying that there are
| 130k reported cases and no deaths? I don't believe them
| on the deaths part but if thats the information from the
| government how do people justify a lockdown?
| spookthesunset wrote:
| Just Two Weeks!!
|
| It requires a lot of privilege and disconnect from the
| average person to support a lockdown two years into this.
| tyng wrote:
| Perhaps after two months I will think differently :D
| [deleted]
| itronitron wrote:
| What would you estimate to be the Covid vaccination rates in
| Shanghai?
|
| In many European and American cities the consensus of many
| people seems to be that Covid 'is over', likely due to high
| vaccination rates and those that have recovered.
| tremon wrote:
| _the consensus of many people seems to be that Covid 'is
| over'_
|
| Personally, I'll reserve my judgement on that until we're
| past the normal autumn flu/cold wave. Cases declined last
| year in the summer too.
| itronitron wrote:
| I agree. Anecdotally, a friend of mine's workplace which
| canceled WFH a few months ago has had _many_ people out
| sick with Covid over the past three weeks (more than the
| entire previous year), but luckily none have them have
| needed to be hospitalized.
| tyng wrote:
| I don't have the big picture data but all the people I know
| (locals and expats) have been vaccinated. China and the
| Western world are taking different approaches to COVID, I
| don't believe in anything said from either side, there is
| simply not enough scientific and trustworthy data, only time
| will tell which approach is better.
| 3qz wrote:
| > life isn't that miserable
|
| > I'm still working 12 hour days online
|
| > we can only buy food through WeChat
|
| This sounds horrible. You don't have to live like this you
| know.
| tyng wrote:
| I work 12 hour days no matter where I am :D
| 3qz wrote:
| I'm sorry
| revscat wrote:
| This is unhelpful.
| 3qz wrote:
| Yes it is helpful. He's showing signs of learned
| helplessness and needs to wake up.
| tyng wrote:
| I appreciate the thought, life is a matter of choices
| 3qz wrote:
| What would happen if you worked 8 hours a day?
| tyng wrote:
| I don't know, work never leaves my mind even when I'm not
| working
| voisin wrote:
| A lot of your commentary is about lockdown not being too bad,
| but what are your thoughts on the rationale for the lockdown
| when Omicron is relatively less dangerous? Do the people in
| your social network feel the costs are worth it?
| tyng wrote:
| There are definitely lots of complains: the consequences on
| the economy, not able to travel, etc. On a personal level
| everyone is affected, but is the lockdown worth it? On a
| country level I think it's understandable. Shanghai is a city
| of 25m population and it has one of the best medical system
| in China, if COVID cannot be contained in Shanghai then it'll
| be a nightmare to spread to other cities, towns and villages,
| where basic medical care is still not readily available.
| Shanghai is also the economic and financial centre of China,
| locking it down definitely comes at a great cost to the
| country, so I don't think the government has made this
| decision lightly. If Omicron is really like a cold/flu then
| no it's not worth it, but do we know this for sure?
| kodah wrote:
| This is a good reminder that COVID isn't over. I am surprised to
| read there's guards at the front of people's neighborhoods
| though. I don't know how I feel about that.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| > This is a good reminder that COVID isn't over.
|
| Covid, the disease, should be over for pretty much everybody
| except for people with very unusual health problems. Most folks
| are either vaccinated or just not that concerned and living
| with what they think is an acceptable risk level.
|
| Covid, the dumb bureaucratic reaction and endless money-grift,
| may survive quite a bit longer.
|
| > I don't know how I feel about that.
|
| Do you need somebody what to tell you to think about a
| nightmare dystopia?
| robonerd wrote:
| COVID is pretty much over, lockdowns and mask mandates are
| being lifted around the free world. However authoritarian
| governments will likely continue to use it as a lame excuse for
| years to come.
| vkou wrote:
| 'Covid is over', yet daily case counts are higher than at any
| point in time except during the first omicron surge. Over 1
| million a day, at the moment.
|
| The only thing that's over is the media's interest in talking
| about it, over other vitally important topics, like Will
| Smith.
| robonerd wrote:
| Infection counts are irrelevant. What matters is that
| relatively few people will be killed by it because
| vaccination (even the shitty Chinese vax) and natural
| immunity have changed the equation. In my progressive west
| coast city, even front-line customer service workers like
| grocery store employees are abandoning their masks. Covid
| is becoming endemic, yet mostly harmless. Zero-covid is a
| delusion for totalitarians.
| legulere wrote:
| Death rate is still pretty high in a lot of western
| countries though: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-deaths
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Without lockdowns to flatten the curve.
|
| It's not similar at all
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| You mean our fight against Covid is pretty much over - and
| has ended with complete capitulation. We are now letting it
| do as it will, for better or for worse - surrendering to our
| fate.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| What was the alternative?
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Better ventilation of indoor spaces, more utilisation of
| outdoor spaces, better sick pay provision, more WFH, etc,
| etc - essentially the complete mobilisation of society to
| defeat COVID, whatever it took.
|
| A dress rehearsal for climate change.
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| You do realize we have vaccines now, no?
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| It doesn't seem that vaccines can be the complete answer
| - due to waning and variant mutational avoidance. Unlike
| measles vaccine. Hence other measures may be necessary if
| we wish to control Covid
| NicoJuicy wrote:
| Warning efficiency vs. Infection, not deaths.
|
| And omicron is practically harmless for the vaccinated.
| eynsham wrote:
| China also has much less naturally acquired immunity than
| everywhere else, and (mysteriously) refuses to make that up
| with vaccines--it's not just an excuse, unlike in those
| authoritarian countries where immunity has already been built
| up so a lockdown would make a much smaller difference.
| [deleted]
| sudosysgen wrote:
| It certainly isn't. Doubly vaccinated people are getting
| reinfected within a month. We just decided to roll the dice
| on the long term risks of such a disease.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| True, I got covid 2 weeks after getting my booster (3rd
| mRNA dose). At a point where protection should have been
| optimal.
|
| However it only gave me slight sniffles for 2 days. The
| vaccine made me more sick :) so IMO the vaccine did its
| job. I agree with rolling the dice on this. We can't keep
| locking thingals down forever and masks only delay an
| eventual infection anyway.
|
| The anti covid measures do their own damage on our health
| and economy so I'm happy with the relaxation.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| Ah, what I'm talking about is something else - people are
| being infected through the vaccine, and get a _second_
| breakthrough infection within a month of the first one. I
| don 't know how widespread it is.
|
| Reinfections are generally milder than the first
| infection, but it's not the case every time. If we let
| the virus run through like wildfire and accumulate
| mutation after mutation as it runs through billions of
| hosts every few months, there is a chance it has a huge
| cost on society.
|
| This is pretty unique, too. Normally, people can go
| multiple years before reinfection even without vaccines.
| A virus that can reinfect after mere months and is this
| infectious is inherently very risky.
|
| A nightmare scenario would be one where people keep
| catching it every few months without it getting less
| severe after the first few times.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Is a scenario where we have to work from home a couple of
| times a year for a few days due to a mild infection
| really such a nightmare?
|
| Considering the constant lockdowns we'll need to prevent
| it, that sounds a lot worse tbh.
|
| Of course it's possible a dangerous strain will emerge
| but I think it's worth the risk.
| robonerd wrote:
| > _work from home_
|
| That this is possible at all for you is a privilege many
| do not enjoy.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| There is a lot more that can be done besides lockdowns -
| we can have actually useful contact tracing and testing.
| There are tons of measures that can be implemented to
| reduce transmission. We're giving up on all of that.
|
| Besides, viral infections are very damaging to the human
| body. An infection severe enough to knock you out for
| multiple days multiple times a year, on top of all the
| other disease we have, each time rolling the dice on long
| term side effects, is far worse than "work from home a
| couple of times a day".
|
| If there is an only 5% rate of long term side effects
| (which is much less than it is at now), and you end up
| catching it twice a year, that means you're guaranteeing
| most people to suffer from long term side effects.
|
| Not to mention, unless we're sending sick kids to school,
| parents will be in deep shit.
|
| And on a personal preference level, I would much rather
| have a week or two of lockdown every year on average
| until we can develop a vaccine that can prevent
| reinfection and mutation or treatments and testing or w/e
| is needed to limit it, than to be guaranteed to get sick
| for a week or two at random times alone and risk severe
| long term effects every time.
|
| Even the Chinese didn't have constant lockdowns. The
| majority of Chinese people didn't even see a single
| lockdown this year. If their government was competent
| enough to keep a basic surveillance testing regime the
| lockdown in Shanghai might have already been over.
| spookthesunset wrote:
| I absolutely love the goalposts for some people seem to
| have shifted from "this ends when we have a vaccine" all
| the way to "this ends when we have a newer, better
| vaccine".
|
| When will people finally accept this is a battle that
| cannot be won. Humans cannot stop a contagious
| respiratory virus any better than they can stop a
| hurricane, tornado or earthquake.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| The vaccines simply don't work as well anymore. If they
| were still as effective as they were at the start, we
| wouldn't be here.
|
| We could have ensured that by limiting worldwide
| transmission and distributing the vaccines more
| homogeneously, but we didn't.
|
| Also, we can and have stopped contagious respiratory
| viruses. Multiple times.
| jseban wrote:
| > Humans cannot stop a contagious respiratory virus any
| better than they can stop a hurricane, tornado or
| earthquake.
|
| Yep, and these actions of trying to stop the virus with
| border closings and lockdowns was 100% ideas from china
| and north korea, the crazy thing, as mentioned in other
| comments, is that the western world followed and also
| went on this futile insane don quijotean crusade.
| wetmore wrote:
| Yeah, this is anecdotal of course but I was double vaxxed
| + boosted by last October, and I got covid for the first
| time in late December 2021, and the second time early
| April 2022. The first time was extremely mild (no real
| symptoms beyond the sniffles) and the second time was
| like getting the flu (fever, sore throat, persistent
| cough and lots of mucus).
| jacquesm wrote:
| > people are being infected through the vaccine
|
| Worth noting the difference between Sinovac and other
| vaccines: Sinovac is a deactivated virus, whereas almost
| all of the others do not contain any virus. So nobody is
| 'infected through the vaccine'.
| sudosysgen wrote:
| I mean infected through the vaccine as in despite the
| vaccine, not as in acquiring it from the vaccination.
| InvaderFizz wrote:
| Seems a softer[0] touch than in 2020.
|
| 0: https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1703503427818
| rmk wrote:
| It will never be over. It may now be endemic, i.e., steadily
| circulating and flaring up regularly in the population.
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