zlacker

Conspiracy theorists are always going to weave conspiracy theories, though. That doesn't absolve the media or the rest of us from being the adults in the room.

>>unisha+(OP)
Absolve, no. Explain... maybe.

>>unisha+(OP)
Yes but when when people consistently bring up the mostly unfalsifiable theory that is most associated with conspiracy theories it's basically impossible to separate the conspiracy theorists from everyone else, and sadly much more productive to just not engage.

>>unisha+(OP)
But some things make no sense at all. The most populated country on the planet - a vast, vast population across the area almost as big as the US - has been inexplicably reporting almost zero infections since like March 10, 2020 (way before any vaccines) while the rest of the world (except small and isolated regions), the richest and presumably the most advanced societies still can't get their shit together, are still FUDdding over the upcoming Nth wave and locking down again (see EU today). How???

>>twelve+hu
Australia, NZ and many countries in Asia did just fine. You just need a government that has its shit together and a populace that complies with the government. When you're missing one or both of those elements of course you're going to have problems with a pandemic.

>>twelve+hu
When the Chinese GOVT says "stay at home", you-better-stay-at-home. That's the difference with the EU, and don't let me start on the US.

>>TimJRo+dv
So both China's government and 1.4B populace have their shit together, fully solved at ~0 infections pre-vaccine for one full year now, but the US, the EU, the newly non-EU UK, and (to a lesser extent) Japan all failed miserably?

>>twelve+ax
It's not so much about having their shit together as having a terrifying autocratic government of the kind the UK government are still pretending (unconvincingly) they don't dream of emulating.

Also there may well be areas of China where the virus never reached. I gather internal travel isn't massively widespread, and the severity of the lockdowns they imposed exceeded anything seen in the US or UK.

>>twelve+ax
There is no silver bullet here - China is not exactly your friendly democracy.

Also beware that there are reports of China having started vaccinations long before safety and efficacy results.

The flipside of exponential growth is exponential fall: In the best case if you can eliminate all social contact for 5-14 days the virus is essentially gone. But very few Western democracies are able to agree on super strict lockdowns, and if they do, they need their neighbouring countries to follow.

>>twelve+hu
If you disobey the CCP, you won't stay around for long. Also they have ironclad grip on the press, so it's no surprise that they are reporting zero cases. Not to put a tinfoil hat on, but it's not exactly like the Soviet Union, and China in the past, haven't been known for prettyfing their news.

>>twelve+ax
The difference is that the US, EU and UK are highly individualistic democracies, where governments are really weak at enforcing anything. It's no surprise that they suck at handling disease compared to societies with effective authoritarian governance.

Individuals who don't care exist everywhere, but in China government can force them to do the right thing. In the West it can't do that easily. I guess it's the price of individual freedoms.

>>twelve+hu
FWIW my office works closely with an office in Nanjing. They've all been back in the office for ages (and we can see the conference room on the video call). If they were having outbreaks like the rest of the world, there would be bodies piling up like mad. They tried to hide the bodies back in Jan / Feb 2020 and failed, so I don't think they're hiding bodies now. Which means there aren't any bodies; which means their lockdown must have actually been effective at containing the virus.

The rest of us could have done what Taiwan did, and almost entirely avoided becoming infected. Or we could have done what China did -- clamp down hard for three weeks and then go back to normal.

>>twelve+hu
With this logic you can criminalize all of Chinese success...how convenient...

>>p1neco+A1
Wait people can't debunk dumdum conspiracy theories? sad

>>twelve+ax
Do you even remember the early responses from these countries? If you do that does not sound that unlikely

>>twelve+hu
It took NYC, which is much richer than any part of China, 100 years to build the Second Avenue subway line, whereas China can build several new subway systems every decade.

Wealth doesn’t necessarily translate to organizational agility.

>>herbst+801
I remember China had uncontrolled community spread for about a month and a half before even admitting there was a new virus, let alone taking action (earliest confirmed case was backtracked to mid-November).

>>Izkata+D51
After china finally admitted it and spoke out warnings, america did not admit its dangerious for months to come, some european countries basically run the same shit campaign. Splitting society more than anything else in recent history

>>Mat342+qY
There's an evolutionary theory of conspiracy theories (that I just made up) that they self-select for plausible unfalsifiability. If a theory has a weakness can be proven incorrect, people will eventually patch it with an ephemeral insinuation that "you know what happened here" and move on.

>>twelve+hu
Some sick people had the doors to their homes welded shut by the government in China so that they wouldn't spread COVID.

>>heavys+oN2
Not just sick people. Videos showed how this was done on entire apartment buildings, if you happened to live in one you’re out of luck even if you didn’t get infected.

>>twelve+hu
A lot of the area is countryside and is to large extent ignored. Read articles on one-child policy, which was mostly followed in large cities only and resulted in millions of “extra” children growing up essentially outside of the system with no access to healthcare or education.

It seems plausible that infection stats from deep country are not faithfully reported or even collected. That said, what they did do is really complicate domestic travel, which means infections stay contained as a result.

>>mathw+PD
I haven't compared the severity of lockdowns or intensity of travel in China and other countries. I've never been to China. But, I've read that it's a very complex society with tons of different ethnic groups, massive inequality, massive migration waves back to the cities and forth, massive problems like tuberculosis rate 20x the TB rate in the States, so saying how they just lock every single human down seems like a bit of an oversimplification to me. But what do i know.