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Notes -
C19 - Catchall term to refer to various covid mitigating restrictions, not the disease.
Anti-lockdown protests spread to Wuhan, China
^LOL, I don't know what to say about that. I can only hope they get what they want.
So looks like it's finally happening. It's too much even for the Chinese. Enough to go out and protest. 3 years is the upper limit to how long you can carry on with the C19 fugazi it seems.
For the uninitiated: It's really a different world in China. They are still treating C19 with an "abundance of caution". Probably infinitely more caution than most places in the world right now. Notice how all of the protestors are still wearing masks, outdoors! The sad part is that I could have made this post anytime in the last year and it would have been almost exactly the same.
I think one of the frustrating things about C19 was how much it felt like Groundhog Day, regardless of where you were in the world, outside of the US Red States and certain Balkan states- C19 Policies were kept around for so long past their expiry date, time became a meaningless concept.
I mentioned Groundhog day because I made a post about China's C19 excessiveness 1 year ago back in the old country. And keep in mind most countries got rid of the bulk of their restrictions at the time of making that post. My post was about small protests in various places in China. And in a year they have changed exactly 0%.
Many speculated on the reasons behind China's doggedness. Ranging from covid actually being bad and them knowing about it.. because they made it ha!; to China just not willing to lose face.
Not many of those reasons make sense now. China is not run by idiots. It's clear as the day the rest of the World looks down on them for this at the time of writing this. And covid wasn't that bad. So what gives?
Are they that high on their own supply? I think this is strong evidence that China's national consciousness is not connected to the "Real World" enough to actually be a threat to the US long term; A criticism often levied at The Cathedral. GDP can only save you so much from cutting your own dick off. There is really no kind way to say this, they are living in fantasy land.
Lockdowns made... some kind of sense in 2019/early 2020 when we had few other tools and the pandemic could have still turned out to be deadlier based on the reports coming out of China. In the past four-odd years conditions have changed. And anyway, Zero Covid has been a much more unhinged regime than the US lockdown ever was.
lockdowns never made sense at any point w/re to covid; there was zero scientific evidence to support them, lots of historical evidence against them, and the costs were enormous
it's why lockdowns were not apart of any pandemic planning
at best, the people pushing lockdowns were midwit morons who bought into suspicious Chinese claims about covid numbers and control even though they admit those numbers were not independently verified and the Chinese have a history of lying about these precise topics
I don't think the optimal covid response involved lockdowns, but that doesn't mean the best case is "midwit morons". A week / month-long lockdown wouldn't have been that bad - even lockdowns as they were just weren't that bad compared to the 200-year history of american political/economic mistakes!
Covid's mortality rate was, on a log scale, only a bit worse than the flu. Diseases with 10-100x higher mortality rates can exist - smallpox, the original SARS, etc - and lockdowns would be justified for those.
lockdowns do not work with flus irrelevant of the cost of them
the best case for the people who pushed lockdowns is they're midwit morons who were duped into believing dumb things; it only gets worse from there by assigning them nefarious actions to protect themselves, seize power, etc.
lockdowns were not a part of any pandemic planning guidelines in early 2020 because of their enormous cost and the lack of evidence supporting their efficacy; this was all changed, on a dime, and trying to determine exactly what caused public health derps to launch into a society-wide experiment with incredibly high costs is difficult but it cannot be because of good literature about costs and effects because it did not exist
what do you think was the economic cost of lockdowns in the USA (which continue to accrue)? if it's not over at least $5,000,000,000,000, we're not being serious about the economic costs alone with those costs continuing to accrue
smallpox was not stopped with lockdowns and historical evidence does not support the claim they worked at all let alone "were justified"
the original sars sputtered out in almost all places without lockdowns at all making any claims lockdowns were needed to be bunk
your comments rely on assumptions which are simply false; perhaps you can come up with some real disease or make up a hypothetical one which justifies a lockdown
any disease which is deadly enough to justify lockdowns wouldn't need lockdowns because people would voluntarily do it themselves just like they did in the early days of the covid hysteria
the comparison would be between what people do voluntarily and what people do in a government thug enforced lockdown; the more justified a lockdown would be, the smaller the difference in any proposed benefit from the lockdowns
and even if one were to come up with a hypothetical which just-so justifies lockdowns, the history of failure by the public health establishment w/re covid demonstrates they are fundamentally incapable of making the right call and nothing at all which has happened since their catastrophic failure has changed to think they would be any better in the future
Sources on pre-2020 pandemic planning and the evidence against lockdowns?
Wasn't the original SARS contained because, unlike COVID-19, people weren't contagious before they got symptoms?
I don't play the sources game for lower comments, but doubly so when the sources demands are one-sided and/or for easily findable materials (e.g., pandemic guidelines in 2019)
no
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