Shanghai: it’s a mad world
The Ukrainians seem to have been catapulted by Russia into a World War II movie. Not a good place to be.
At the same time, the Chinese of Shanghai are living in one of those futuristic dystopian films:
Nearly all of Shanghai’s 26 million residents have been confined at home since last week, as the city aims to test, trace and centrally quarantine all people who test positive for the virus amid the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.
Only healthcare workers, volunteers, delivery personnel and those with special permission are able to move freely under the “no tolerance” policy.
The strict rules mean that quarantined residents have to order in food or wait for government drop-offs of vegetables, meat and eggs, BBC reported.
There have been protests, suicides, and young children taken from parents:
Under China’s unbending virus controls, anyone found positive — even if they are asymptomatic or have a mild infection — must be isolated from non-infected people. That includes children who test positive but whose family members do not, health officials confirmed on Monday, defending a policy which has spread anxiety and outrage across the city.
“If the child is younger than seven years old, those children will receive treatment in a public health center,” Wu Qianyu, an official from the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission, said Monday. “For older children or teenagers… we are mainly isolating them in centralized [quarantine] places.”…
“We have made it clear that children whose parents are also positive… can live in the same place as the children,” she added.
That last sentence – what a magnanimous concession.
Other countries locked down and emerged form lockdown a long time ago, but I don’t think there’s a single country that did what China is doing to its people in terms of the extremity of the control exercised. I believe that Quebec was close for a little while – Viva Frei documented the worst of times, if I remember correctly – and perhaps parts of Australia. But I don’t recall such problems with getting food, nor do I ever remember young children being taken from parents.
This behavior is literally insane, even for China. Especially with Omicron. What is the goal? Surely they must know that chasing “zero COVID” is a losing battle. Is it just the desire for control to the nth power, and the habit of it? Do they get off on this in some way? Did they simply decide quite some time ago that human beings are just pawns they can move around at will? Are they practicing for something else?
This is what our Fauci-like betters have in mind for us. China has succeeded in creating the “New Soviet Man” that Stephen Jay Gould was so enthusiastic about.
I agree with Mike K. On the open thread the situation in Philly was just brought up. Philly is going to mandate indoor masking in 7 days due to a “SURGE!!” in cases. Well here’s the data straight from the PA Dept of health: Over on the right side in the “jurisdiction” box scroll down to Philadelphia and look at all those surging cases:
https://data.pa.gov/Covid-19/Chart-COVID-19-7-Day-Rolling-Average-of-New-Cases-/7h9n-gnp7
On China, I think the “pawns to be moved at will” is the answer, based in part on experiences my husband recounted from his business trips and contacts there.
physicsguy: I followed your link and used the filter to see what’s happening in my home county (Lancaster)– same thing, no surge that I can see. And here I thought that life in the Commonwealth would improve after Tom Wolf shipped “Rachel” Levine off to The Swamp.
Dems REALLY want to bring back the pandemic days. For now, they tread warily.
But they will pore over November election results in hope of finding encouragement
Our political leaders want the power the Chinese communist party has.
And if China thinks this zero-covid policy is the way to go, how will they ever allow foreign visitors in again? A two week quarantine? The only people who would do that are those wanting to visit family.
At some point they’re gonna have to live with the virus. And avoiding it at all costs as they are doing now may end up being counter-productive.
BTW, after 2+ years of the pandemic, I think Sweden handled it best. Yes, people died but not an inordinate number, and they didn’t shut down.
The thing is that China is claiming in official covid numbers that they’re doing by far the best anybody has done in controlling covid. Of course their numbers in my mind are far too good to be true, I think they’re mostly lying and they’re using this stuff for cover so they can pretend that their numbers could be that good.
If only us “little people,” the whole world ’round, could speak the same language, we’d realize we all have the same enemy.
Just guessing that the US will force quarantine for a month or so us normals sometime around the first week in November.
One of the dynamics behind this is that the ‘Dynamic Zero Covid’ policy is directly from Xi. If they have to admit it isn’t working and need to loosen it, then they are admitting that Xi was wrong. Xi can’t afford an admission of incompetence with the upcoming party congress that, among other things, will determine if he remains in charge or not.
Add to that the huge problems in their financial market and this may end up being his undoing.
As an aside — I daily watch Tony’s China Update. It is a good source of information, mainly financial, about China.
Recall that Canada’s Premier, Justin Trudeau, stated , when asked, that he most admired the govt. of China.
Trudeau would fit perfectly in the middle of the present day demonkrat party here in the USA.
The demonkrats look upon the Chinese govt with envy because there the party governs by edict; no need to bother with what the citizens desire.
Look carefully at the powers the Chinese govt has, for that is what the demonkrats here in the USA aspire to.
“… can’t afford an admission of incompetence …”
A common problem of autocrats everywhere.
Neo states, then asks, “This behavior is literally insane, even for China. Especially with Omicron. What is the goal? Surely they must know that chasing “zero COVID” is a losing battle. Is it just the desire for control to the nth power, and the habit of it? Do they get off on this in some way? Did they simply decide quite some time ago that human beings are just pawns they can move around at will? Are they practicing for something else?”
I choose all of the above. But the CCP essentially has control to the nth power. Control freaks by definition get off on the control of others. The Chinese people have been pawns to be moved around at will since 1948. What’s best for the Party is all that counts, the individual of no importance whatsoever. The totalitarian mindset can never entirely rest while liberty exists and so in a manner of speaking, they are always practicing to increase their control. Reportedly, China is substantially increasing its nuclear ICBMs.
There have been some highly disturbing videos of people throwing themselves off Shanghai’s high-rises in desperation, echoing a similar phenomenon in the last minutes of the World Trade Center. I guess there are limits to what even an authoritarian government can expect for obedient compliance, in these situations when access to food and medical attention are placed off limits. The numbers appear to be well into double digits.
I was reading speculation that Shanghai’s outbreak is providing Xi with an opportunity to bring political enemies to heel in advance of the upcoming Party conference. Who knows? The people are really suffering though.
I’m not sure if China was shooting rubber bullets at their citizens like Melbourne Australia. Then again, I don’t think Australia was welding residential doors shut with infected inside. Either way, I rather live in the hell that is Texas than those socialist paradise. I’ve violated nearly everyone one of the CDC guidelines and have yet to get covid.
The Chinese leaders are nuts. But they’re beating us. It was easy for them to bribe American business and people like Biden. And the Ivy League universities.
I forget who made this point, but when we were in the Cold War with the USSR we had very little commercial contact with those Commies. And we made movies like “The Hunt for Red October.”
But today Wall Street, Nike, Apple, NBA and so many other entities are completely reliant on the ChiComs. We screwed up. Big Time.
When the CEO of Goldman Sachs (Hank Paulson) learned Chinese, I knew we were in Big Trouble.
Leland —
An unvaxxed friend of mine finally got Covid after attending a Cirque du Soleil performance where everyone was required to have a vaccination card or a recent negative test.
Why, it’s as if the CDC guidelines are hygiene theater or something…
“guessing that the US will force quarantine for a month or so us normals sometime around the first week in November.”
Just in time to require mail-in ballots …
Nearly all of Shanghai’s 26 million residents have been confined at home since last week, as the city aims to test, trace and centrally quarantine all people who test positive for the virus amid the spread of the highly infectious Omicron variant.
This is the sort of thing Tyler Cowan wanted two years ago.
NTD News, which is associated with The Epoch Times, and the Falun Gong religious group , has a regular section on China, called “ China in Focus”.
https://www.ntd.com/china-in-focus
Wow! Everyone here needs to watch the first 15 minutes of Tucker tonight. He had video of 25 million locked up people screaming in the night. People are starving. Cats and dogs are being killed. People are being locked up.
Absolutely chilling and Biden is silent. And that’s because he’s been bribed.
Take a look at some of the posts about this subject, with pictures, from two western bloggers who have lived for a decade in and blog about China–“laowhy86” and “serpentza”.
They have a lot of contacts back in China, Chinese wives and relatives, and likely get “on the ground” information and pictures that others can’t.
Absolutely chilling and Biden is silent. And that’s because he’s been bribed.
Scant doubt. However, even unbought, his staff might have put him on an enforced rest. Don’t want to overtax Joey Soft-Serve’s remaining grey cells.
I’d imagine that China is still trying to prove that lockdown is the right idea. Giving up and saying there will never be zero Covid is conceding that lockdowns don’t work (unless you’re willing to lock down every year). If the world realizes their lockdown propaganda was nonsense, they lose a lot of credibility.
I can honestly say that for two years the response to Covid gave me a “practicing for something else” vibe. The propaganda was just so on the nose. It felt like an experiment to see how much governments around the world could get away with, and what percentage of the population was willing to go along with whatever the government wanted. To this day, it amazes me how many people went along for months and for some even years. Seriously, if you’d asked me on April 11, 2020, I would have told you I was against lockdowns and that I honestly believed lockdowns would kill people. It just seemed like common sense.
Hi, Cornhead. Do you have a link? I suspect that part about the screaming citizens of Shanghai is a clip I came across yesterday from somewhere. Really eerie.
I was in a meeting a few days ago with a senior Chinese executive (and I presume therefore someone with direct links to the CCP), and while we were waiting for others to arrive, I asked about the lockdowns in China.
Her response inevitably started with the “You have to understand….”, but it did make sense. As she pointed out, China has been quite successful in limiting the spread of Covid in China, which means millions (tens, hundreds?) haven’t been exposed to Covid. Many/most also have not been vaccinated (left unsaid was any question about how effective Chinese vaccines have been – in that type of conversation, you must be very careful about implying anything inferior about China).
The point was the government/CCP is terrified of Covid racing through the population, causing mass deaths, and totally overwhelming the (inadequate) health system.
A lot of people, especially on the conservative side, deride Covid vaccines as ineffective because you can still catch Covid (I did recently despite my two shots, but no boosters). I genuinely have no idea, but it does make sense that obtaining antibodies via a vaccination should help reduce the effect of getting the disease – my Covid experience was a 48-hour flu where I just slept (and had a few Panadol/Tylenol tablets) – pretty mild.
Without anything approaching herd immunity for the greater population, and no, or very ineffective, vaccines, it seems China is still very vulnerable (ie compared to the rest of the world). Omicron might be milder, but it is also more contagious. I presume for lockdowns so draconian, there must be real fear at the top.
Snow on Pine,
The videos from those two are always an interesting perspective. I’ve been following them for a couple of years. In fact, earlier in here I linked to their video of them traveling along the Russian/Chinese border when I was trying to make the point that Russia had to factor in what China might do with regards to Russia’s problems in Ukraine. They have a faintly adversarial relationship with each other.
Cap’n Rusty on April 11, 2022 at 4:28 pm
“… the whole world ’round, could speak the same language, we’d realize we all have the same enemy.”
We want to think that they would all speak the language of liberty and freedom that we cherish, but maybe they do not: https://ricochet.com/1214468/finnish-intelligence-officer-explains-the-russian-mindset/
Larry Siedentop, in his book Inventing the Individual, suggests Western Christianity led to the development of our views on individual rights, etc., partly via creating Canon Law and leading to the Enlightenment. I am not positive, but perhaps the Eastern Orthodox Church did not go through that history and thus did not lead to their congregations experiencing the Enlightenment in the same way.
Cornhead–
I just watched Tucker’s clip about Shanghai. I don’t know which is the worst part– the small child being taken away from his parents and pushed into a quarantine van; the health care worker beating a corgi to death with a shovel; or the cats tied up in plastic bags on the sidewalk, crying as they await a similar fate. Needless to say I spent some extra time with my cats tonight– they reacted to the distressed cries of the cats in Tucker’s video and I wanted them to know they’re still safe and cared for.
As for the Big Guy– when is his next “vacation” to Camp David or Delaware?
Can Do cruelty
‘What is the goal?’
Total and complete domination. Utter destruction of the individual spirit, to be replaced by slavish obedience.
‘Surely they must know that chasing “zero COVID” is a losing battle.’
They do. Covid is merely a (very) convenient excuse.
‘Is it just the desire for control to the nth power, and the habit of it?’
That’s a big part of it, yes.
‘Do they get off on this in some way?’
Yep. This is virtue signaling carried to the 100th power.
‘Did they simply decide quite some time ago that human beings are just pawns they can move around at will?’
A long time ago, yes. That’s the dream and the endgame of many faceless bureaucrats with narcissistic, authoritarian ambitions. Fauci is the shop window example in America. Never doubt he sincerely wishes he could impose exactly what is happening in China. He does. I guarantee it.
‘Are they practicing for something else?’
Oh goodness, yes. This is happening worldwide. Everywhere, the wannabe tinpot dictators are stretching their power and authority to the absolute limits given the political and legal structures in their respective countries (obviously they have much more leeway in China than most other countries). It is, to a great extent, a dry run. They need to test how much people will tolerate, and lay precedents for the next ‘public health crisis’. This may come in 2023, or maybe not until 2030, but never doubt…it’s coming in the near future.
Adolescent kids, especially girls, are severely disabled if they miss the educational experience of living with their peers during puberty. People have to learn how to use their facial muscles and eyes and mannerisms in non-verbal communication. This stuff is not on the hard drive. It is learned. Facial cues broadcast understanding of speech in others and especially emotions in others and in the listener. We learn how to flirt and be sexually attractive. We learn how to express disgust and irritation and anger non-verbally. We learn our place in the hierarchy of young soon to be adults. If we lock up teenagers during these crucial years it is akin to a young bird chick being prevented from learning the bird songs of the species. These lapses in social education are why we are seeing so many adolescents who are self-harming, suicidal, depressed, and terribly lonely.
Cornhead; dittto. When I read Henry Paulson, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, book Dealing With China several years ago I had the same feeling that we are in Big Trouble. He explains in great detail, with much pride, on how he gave the golden keys of the empire to Xi. I do not think that he feels any regret,
From the Pixels of Record:
https://babylonbee.com/news/xi-says-lockdown-is-necessary-to-maintain-chinas-covid-death-count-of-0
https://babylonbee.com/news/china-introduces-new-head-of-covid-policy-dr-anthonyong-fauching
It’s a rehearsal for something bigger. Taiwan, Japan, and S Korea have kept down the numbers probably through a combination of accurate reporting (not counting EVERYTHING as covid deaths) and strict quarantine. They haven’t gone to draconian extremes like Canada or Australia yet have lower reported outbreaks. Also, I’m not hearing any spikes in Africa either so perhaps the relation to Vitamin D to Covid is more than simple correlation. Yet, the CCP already knows all this so there must be another reason why they’re performing all the self destructive moves designed to exacerbate the crisis rather than contain it…
Interesting observations this morning: except for a small sidebar link that usually goes to Tucker’s monologue, there’s no mention of Shanghai on the Fox news site, same on Townhall. Whatfinger has a prominent link to Tucker’s monologue. Yet, CNN has a story near the top of its page. Nothing at all on MSNBC. Same at ABC, CBS. NBC has a small story about US telling Shanghai consulate employees to leave due to outbreak, same at the NYT. The Daily Mail has a story about Tucker’s monologue but you have to scroll a long way down past the fashion review at the CMTs to reach it.
So, really except for Tucker, Xi committing a crime against 25 million people, effectively starving them to “save them”, is a non-story for much of the west.
Hmmm, maybe, given the current deficit, China could use a rather hefty non-repayable loan….
‘European Companies Plead China To Revise “COVID Zero” As Beijing Vows Stronger Policies To Reverse Economic Collapse’—
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/european-companies-plead-china-revise-covid-zero-beijing-vows-stronger-policies-reverse
(“Hostage” can be a very addictive game, it seems.)
At least some popular support is necessary, unless massive, potentially violent government control is to be used. Even then….
Recently had a social event with two friends of advanced positions in STEM /medicine. My conclusion was that severity and rigor are inevitably effective, and no data on actual results are relevant. And the more severe, the better the results, if only better than what might have been without the severity.
Although I’ve never tasted either, I suspect that the beneficial effects of cod liver oil or castor oil for children would not have been so widely accepted had they tasted like honey. Metaphor alert.
Those who like to make people do stupid stuff find anxious subjects.
Necessary government control is more or less, depending on the distribution of the attitudes cited in earlier paragraphs.
physicsguy– Here is a link to Tucker’s video from last night at RealClearPolitics: You can read the full text as well as watch the video.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2022/04/11/tucker_carlson_shanghais_covid_zero_lockdown_is_a_sample_of_the_repression_covid_has_made_possible.html
Notice the reference to Tony Fauci: “Is the U.S. Government threatening sanctions against China for building the world’s largest prison camp? Of course not. Effectively our leaders are defending what China is doing. Here is Tony Fauci admitting on camera he will never criticize the Chinese government. . . . Yeah, so [the Chinese] lied about an international pandemic that they clearly had a hand in creating, but according to Tony Fauci there was quote ‘nothing wrong with the Chinese government lying about Covid.’ . . . . We’re just beginning to see the outline of the repression that Covid has made possible. And if you want to see what the future looks like, look at China and shiver.”
PA+Cat, thanks, but I watched it live last night. Powerful stuff that seems to be ignored. But I also understand that with the news breaking about inflation at 41 year high, that’s going to dominate today.
physicsguy– True dat: https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/march-consumer-price-index-inflation
I wonder how much Hunter pays for JoJo’s pudding cups these days, given that he’s been covering the Big Guy’s housing expenses for years.
“…but according to Tony Fauci there was quote ‘nothing wrong with the Chinese government lying about Covid.’”
The sub-text being—of course—that there was ‘nothing wrong with Anthony Fauci lying about Covid.’…
(The old “I did it to save countless lives” defense…and who knows? Il Fauci may even believe it, himself…)
Very shrewd statements and I largely agree. However, I think shadow’s point about getting “practicing for something else vibes” in particular is right on the money. This is not like much we have seen in human history, especially on this scale, and there is nothing good about that.
Anybody here think the like of Fauci, the Bidens, and Obama don’t want this exact kind of power to use on us?
Dnaxy on April 12, 2022 at 12:43 am
I thought the anthropologists had pretty well established that many facial movements and other body signaling characteristics were pretty universal across mankind (smiles, frowns, head nodding, etc.)(along with “body signal studies”?).
Are you saying that there are also many culturally developed or defined actions that build on top of that foundation? Say especially in the area of establishing trust or identifying the presence or absence of trustworthiness?
Isn’t there a genetic (or inherent) component along with a cultural one?
Many comments today imply a more ridged set of controls and restrictions are coming if the opportunity for authoritarians to scratch that particular itch arises.
Thus it behooves us to define and establish ahead of time just what controls and restrictions will be permitted for governments to employ, given different levels of emergency, for what duration, with what status reviews and assessments, how often, etc.? Just what “police powers” should government be granted in what situations? And how do we maintain a decent economy and define essential workers, plus retain something approximating a constitutional rule-of-law republic, etc. (hopefully with our recent poor experiences to guide us?)
Natural disasters, curfews, “shelter in place” orders for Boston terrorist situations, and pandemics of greater seriousness than Covid.
Say a Spanish flu squared or cubed, with no effective vaccine available at the outset. And when one is developed, if the need to stem the disease is great enough, do we settle for testing the vaccine on only 600 people to find that 6 died, rather than 60,000 and 38 died, or whatever, before authorizing manufacture and distribution? And what about mandating other non-vaccine solutions, such as ventilation and filtering upgrades, disinfectant lighting, PPE national reserve stores, haz mat suits for all, or ???
If this kind of thinking is being done in any government now, except possibly by DHS and/or FEMA, I am not aware of it — let alone generation of operational legislation. The FDA and CDC have not been exemplary examples lately either.