Cool.
“Virus control comes first, even before people’s lives.” Uhhh, I know about 800,000 Americans who may have appreciated some high priority virus control.
how exactly can people's lives be saved without stopping the virus? "putting out the fire comes first, BEFORE saving everyone in this building."
One of the most proactive countries in controlling covid isn't studied and copied, no of course not, it's mocked and ridiculed for racist and selfish capitalist reasons
many officials now believe that they must do everything within their power to ensure zero covid infections since it is the will of their top leader, xi jinping
IT SHOULD BE THE WILL OF EVERYONE
:angery: :agony-limitless: :meow-tableflip:
They're also just super racist and think that people who live in countries that aren't aligned with US imperial interests have no social or political agency
Americans are so convinced that their own dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is how every country must operate, that they interpret the actions of other governments only through that lens.
The back-of-the-envelope estimation for America's current death rate from COVID is about 1 dead per 400 people. Going by that number, it is reasonable to estimate that at least 3.5 million Chinese people would have died if that country had responded to the pandemic as poorly as ours did. I would say that that's a low estimate, given how the increased population density of that country would probably make it easier for the virus to spread.
So they've actually prevented a little over a third of a Holocaust from happening.
"For the officials, virus control comes first. The people's lives, well-being, and dignity comes much later."
...what? I'm confused about what this even means. Virus control is literally about saving people's lives, protecting their physical and mental wellbeing, and preserving their dignity. In the US, how is not controlling the virus protecting people's lives when it kills thousands of people every day? How is not controlling the virus protecting their wellbeing from the disease itself, and long covid? How is not controlling the virus and letting your citizens choke to death on their own lung fluid, dying on the floor in a hospital that's run out of beds, preserving their dignity?
The only way this makes sense is if you believe that the only reason China is doing virus control is solely because the government just loves doing authoritarian stuff, and the whole "saving people from the virus" thing is just an accidental byproduct, and that byproduct is bad actually because if you let it spread to over a billion people then they'd get herd immunity or something (and of course, if China actually did this and just let it spread, the US would currently be stamping their feet and crying and denouncing the intentional mass genocide of the Chinese populace, so there's nothing they could do in the west's eyes to win).
I don't understand how an individual who has a functioning brain stem could think this way. The liberal mindset has truly hit rock bottom and is now grabbing the pickaxes to go even further down into utter idiocy.
During the cold war, the anticommunist ideological framework could transform any data about existing communist societies into hostile evidence. If the Soviets refused to negotiate a point, they were intransigent and belligerent; if they appeared willing to make concessions, this was but a skillful ploy to put us off our guard. By opposing arms limitations, they would have demonstrated their aggressive intent; but when in fact they supported most armament treaties, it was because they were mendacious and manipulative. If the churches in the USSR were empty, this demonstrated that religion was suppressed; but if the churches were full, this meant the people were rejecting the regime’s atheistic ideology. If the workers went on strike (as happened on infrequent occasions), this was evidence of their alienation from the collectivist system; if they didn’t go on strike, this was because they were intimidated and lacked freedom. A scarcity of consumer goods demonstrated the failure of the economic system; an improvement in consumer supplies meant only that the leaders were attempting to placate a restive population and so maintain a firmer hold over them. If communists in the United States played an important role struggling for the rights of workers, the poor, African-Americans, women, and others, this was only their guileful way of gathering support among disfranchised groups and gaining power for themselves. How one gained power by fighting for the rights of powerless groups was never explained. What we are dealing with is a nonfalsifiable orthodoxy, so assiduously marketed by the ruling interests that it affected people across the entire political spectrum.
My well being both physical and mental, as well as that of all my friends and family, has deteriorated significantly and we have all be able to avoid COVID so far. Just the constant threat and fear has greatly negatively impacted my life.
No you misunderstand, "the people's lives" is their when they go shopping. If they can't do that then they might as well die.
For the officials, virus control comes first. The peoples lives, well being and dignity come much later.
Ah yeah, we all know that they get free food and paid sick days over there in quarantine. The real indignity is that profits are paused while a city doesn't work!
In the US, we care about peoples lives by letting them end.
In the US, we preserve your well-being by ensuring everybody gets a shot at a lifelong disability.
In the US, we allow people the dignity of dying in an emergency room from an otherwise preventable death because our healthcare system has been gutted and overwhelmed, and we have given up on containment or completing the needed vaccination of the public. The most dignified get to die, intubated, in an actual hospital bed.
They lock down a single part of an area, not the whole country you nyt dimwit
Watching China battle covid has been an absolute pleasure. Fascinating to see how an actual country is supposed to manage a response to a pandemic.
That's what always gets me. The odds that the American healthcare system would have bothered testing a random person with flu-like symptoms for novel diseases is literally zero. On top of that, that's if the sick person had insurance and actually went to the hospital in the first place.
Huh. It really has been just super fucking weird to watch the US, Europe etc. Etc. Just utterly fuck up the entire pandemic, and I mean fail in almost cartoonish, slapstick fashion to deal with the challenge and then, point at China.
Ffs, China has done super well with the pandemic. Even if you disagree on an ideological level with the Chinese govt you should be able to say 'yeah, we fucked up and they handled it far better than us.'
And it's not even super hi tech either. A lot of their response is purely people powered esp in rural areas. China's not really doing anything that new, they're quaruntining people - quaruntine comes from late medievil Italian for fortnight, which was how long sailors had to stay on ship for during plague outbreaks so you'd be sure they weren't sick. Hardly cutting edge stuff really.
Good point! Look at all those oppurtunities for dealing with the after effects of COVID China is not exploiting. Hell, healthcare providers and pharma companies in the west are gonna have millions of people suffering long term effects of Covid to exploit for decades.
i remember reading Sarum in the chapters the black plague rolled around and one of the main characters sequestered herself and her kids to a more remote farmstead and waited it out.
Agreed. What is baffling is that among European governments some are supposed to be competent. And they handled the first two waves fairly ok. Even had a real lockdown for the first one. Now suddenly it's like they've given up.
Yeah it is strange. I think maybe it was a lack of will or infrastructure to commit to localised lockdowns?
Could be french not italian to be honest, it was a while ago I read it. Point is though, it's a strategy that's so old its name dates back centuries.
Edit. Looked it up, apparently it is Italian but references a 40 day period not a fortnight as you said.
The nefariousness goes beyond just China too. There's a callous and intentional disregard for who this virus has devastated the most - the underclass of poor and minorities. The upper class and NYT reading aristocrats are largely unaffected by the most debilitating and fatal aspects of COVID, along with living in cocoons that keep them insulated from having to see how starved of resources some parts of the country are. The upper class can afford to get COVID, they can get vaxx priority, and then go back to brunch as usual. Even the MAGA boaters have the resources if they are willing to use them. The rest of us can get fucked.
China is like Holocaust because everyone works together really hard and takes personal responsibility to prevent a virus from spreading.
America is not like Holocaust because it kills a lot of innocent people and it’s citizens stand by and watch or are actively complicit in enabling it.
