What's happening in Shanghai (China)?

[MoreCatsForMePlease]

On Twitter, there's a lot of alarming videos/ pictures coming from Shanghai? Are these genuine or from the previous lockdowns?

It was on newsnight that the vaccine uptake in over 70s was only 20 percent....

The Sinovac was of poor efficacy compared to Pfizer/ AZ/ Moderna etc to begin with. Then the virus has changed to be more contagious. Fortunately Western vaccines have remained effective at protecting the most vulnerable from serious illness which has been our primary objective. Reducing spread has been a bonus.

As stated above, take-up by the older population was particularly poor. Confidence in Chinese conventional medicine is not the highest. Traditional remedies have remained popular in older age groups and younger people have concerns about quality control. When I was in Hong Kong in the 2000s, we met a Chinese man who would travel into Hong Kong for medical treatment/ supplies because he believed that the quality was better and closer to a Western standard than on the mainland. China has a long history of cutting corners on quality to get to the end result. Again in Beijing in the 2000s the news had a lot of stories about introducing quality control standards to a range of products decade after the UK introduced British Standards and the European CE marks.

We know that the government's treatment of its population is poor and often inhumane. "Conversion camps" for the Uighurs, very close monitoring of Tibetans and diluting their culture with settling programs of Han Chinese, crushing uprisings, enforcement of the strictest family planning policies in the world.

On food stocks, much of the urban population have small appartments and very limited space to stockpile even if more appropriate foods than noodle pots were more widely avaliable. Food distribution in the 2000s was certainly more locally based with larger supermarkets that we're used to being much more of a rareity. They do exist, but not on a scale to serve the whole population as their regular food source.

Are the videos of the cats/ dogs being taken away real? Or from a previous lockdown/ another location?

@MoreCatsForMePlease

Are the videos of the cats/ dogs being taken away real? Or from a previous lockdown/ another location?

Real. If you test positive and are taken away to one of the hospitals (that you have to pay for yourself) then pets are just killed because there's no one to look after them.

@FATEdestiny

The issue is more likely the effectiveness of the vaccine

Does that mean there is a possibility that our vaccines could become ineffective in time?

Why don't they re-vaccinate everyone with an effective vaccine, really quickly and under mandate?

They predominantly used sinovac, which in clinical trials had an efficacy of only ~53%. Because they have kept COVID rates so low, very few people have immunity from infection either, so it's effectively moving through a SARS-COV-2 naive population.

Our vaccines have also become less effective over time as SARS-COV-2 gains mutations, but original efficacy was around ~95%. Our flatten the curve approach also meant that most people by now have had at least one infection, gaining a level of immunity that way too.

@FATEdestiny

The issue is more likely the effectiveness of the vaccine

Does that mean there is a possibility that our vaccines could become ineffective in time?

Why don't they re-vaccinate everyone with an effective vaccine, really quickly and under mandate?

That's a tacit admission that Sinovac is less effective the Western vaccines, so the political ramifications would have to be carefully weighed up.

Also, the logistics of obtaining and delivering enough doses for a population that size are just off the scale. In order to see benefit from the Western vaccines, and bear in mind that even in populations like the UK with high mRNA vaccine coverage Omicron has still been uncontrollable so it's only been about mitigating the effects to some degree, they'd need to have started administering well before it actually arrived.

I can't see how any society of 1.4 billion people could possibly outjab something as contagious as Omicron once it's in. Which isn't to say there wouldn't be any benefit at all to giving it a try, but it's not straightforward.

I watched a video of people screaming out of their high rise apartment blocks the noise was deafening!!
Another video showing a very distressed man shouting in the street that he can’t pay for his house anymore as they’ve had his business shut down and him, his family and staff are all starving
He can’t even go and care for his elderly grandma as no one is allowed out. And in China we know that younger family members look after their old folk

Are they happy for people to starve and possibly die in this way rather than have the virus spread? It sounds awful and makes our lockdown seem like a holiday camp in comparison.

Samarie that video of people screaming in tower blocks is like something out of a horror film.
Those poor, poor people.

No doubt Vince Cable or President Xi’s other useful idiots will be along soon to say it’s all fake news.

My understanding is that the data from Hong Kong shows that, while the sino vaccs are hopeless at stopping infection and transmission, they are actually pretty good at stopping hospitalization and death--as long as you have had three jabs. If they can roll out their current vaccines like whoa, they can probably manage without mRNA vaccines.

Of course, whether China can triple jab all its unvaxxed elderly (about 50% of the total of Chinese elderly) quickly enough is not clear.

Any data on deaths will take a very long time to feed through because China lacks any kind of centralized system for tabulating deaths. It is based on the hukou (household registration) system, which (in admin terms) ties people to the place of their registration even if they live in another city halfway across the country.

(This is the Hong Kong data comparing the different vaccines)

Sorry, 50% of over-80s, that should be. The vacc rates for 60- and 70-something people are a lot higher.

@ApolloandDaphne

Are they happy for people to starve and possibly die in this way rather than have the virus spread? It sounds awful and makes our lockdown seem like a holiday camp in comparison.

People don't know a lot about Chinese history (I only know enough to know I don't). Within living memory 15-55 million Chinese people died of man-made famine. Early 1960s!

Famine on a vast scale has been part of Chinese history for hundreds and hundreds of years.

Most videos you're seeing are probably real. It seems like a barbaric and cruel country. I've never had any desire to go there. These poor people. I can't imagine what it's like for them.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-shanghai-close-to-civil-unrest-as-tensions-build-under-strict-lockdown-regime-12588061

The videos I saw of a young mother being separated from her 4 month old (EBF) baby were really distressing and I shed a few tears watching that. Also seen videos of inside the makeshift 'hospital' camps for the Covid positive people, and there are several very young children to one cot bed... all with Covid, so it's reasonable to assume one or two per bed might be feeling really quite poorly. How absolutely awful for those young children to be torn away from parents and all they know, and to have no comfort or cuddles when they need it.

@Samarie123

I watched a video of people screaming out of their high rise apartment blocks the noise was deafening!! Another video showing a very distressed man shouting in the street that he can’t pay for his house anymore as they’ve had his business shut down and him, his family and staff are all starving He can’t even go and care for his elderly grandma as no one is allowed out. And in China we know that younger family members look after their old folk

I saw videos of a drone flying around the towers telling people not to scream or sing, to "control your desire for freedom".

Very creepy, and horrible.

It seems like it wasn't that long ago there were regulars on the boards here who thought we should be emulating their approach.

I'd like to hope the praise for China and the zero covid approach was more naivety, not realising this is where it ends up when you have an authoritarian state trying to control a highly transmissible virus.

@HardyBuckette

I'd like to hope the praise for China and the zero covid approach was more naivety, not realising this is where it ends up when you have an authoritarian state trying to control a highly transmissible virus.

It struck me as being very poor judgement all round. Not understanding what would be required for such a project, nor an accurate assessment of the risks of covid itself.

I agree.

At the beginning of the pandemic the zero covid approach was appropriate: compare the number of deaths in the UK with those in China. Tight controls at the beginning resulted in restrictions being lifted more quickly (with the exception of overseas travel). My dh got back into China just before the borders closed on 26th March 2020 and after two weeks mandatory quarantine he returned to our house. Over the next few months he went shopping, out to restaurants, to work, met friends and had three leaving parties. Meanwhile back in the UK I queued outside the supermarket and everything was shut.
As China started to vaccinate its population, the borders effectively remained closed with mandatory two week quarantine, sometimes combined with two weeks home isolation too. Occasional outbreaks of Covid were stamped on really quickly with mass testing and isolation.
In the city where I used to live a small outbreak led to a return to online learning and mandatory testing, but this only lasted for a couple of weeks.
Zero covid can never be a long term strategy. Combining very tough restrictions with a comprehensive vaccination roll out should be successful reducing hospitalisations and deaths, however the Chinese vaccine is not sufficiently effective so the govt either uses a western vaccine (huge loss of face) or is forced to continue with a zero covid policy which cannot ever succeed.

[quote IEatChocolateForBreakfast]Most videos you're seeing are probably real. It seems like a barbaric and cruel country. I've never had any desire to go there. These poor people. I can't imagine what it's like for them.

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-shanghai-close-to-civil-unrest-as-tensions-build-under-strict-lockdown-regime-12588061[/quote]
Dear god that screaming is absolutely horrifying 😥

Those idiots here who have been advocating "proper" Chinese style lockdowns (remember the poster who kept telling us to "look east"), clearly had no clue about China and the utter ruthlessness of the Chinese authorities. This is the reality.

What do they say now?

@HesterShaw1
I am not the ‘look east’ poster, but there were some things the Chinese did well e.g stopping movement between cities and provinces. Remember the UK tier system? What an absolute farce...if people are able to move between tiers then the tiers themselves are meaningless and we all move to the top level.
China also had a check in system with qr codes, similar to our test and trace, but it actually worked...
I lived in China for 12 years so do have some clue about China and how the regime operates.

I am not saying the UK response over 2020 and early 2021 wasn't shambolic, not least because we were bounced by SAGE into lockdowns which have done incredible harm. I'm saying that those who said China was a country to emulate were utterly and wilfully ignorant of the way the Chinese state operates.

I'm sure if you have chosen to live in China for the last 12 years, you don't really mind how Chinese government operates or how it regards its citizens. That's your prerogative I guess.

@HesterShaw1

I'm sure if you have chosen to live in China for the last 12 years, you don't really mind how Chinese government operates or how it regards its citizens. That's your prerogative I guess.

I loved my 12 years in China; it’s a fascinating country. It does not mean I necessarily support how the govt operates.