China’s “zero Covid” policy has a dedicated following: the millions of people who work diligently toward that goal, no matter the human costs.
Literally the first sentence. Meanwhile close to 1 million Americans have died.
1 million Americans that we know about. Dead vagrants fill the gutters, just outside the mind’s eye.
From September of last year, but as fresh as ever: https://fair.org/home/nyt-china-needs-to-rethink-its-not-letting-people-die-from-covid-policy/
The argument that China should show “higher tolerance for Covid” comes down to the “punishing economic and social cost” and “pandemic fatigue” cited by the “health experts” in the September 13 Times piece. The economic cost is easier to calculate: With its zero-Covid policy, China’s GDP grew 2.3% last year, one of the few major economies to have a positive growth rate in 2020, while the US shrank by 3.5% with its lots-of-Covid strategy.
Climbing out of that hole, the US is expected to do well this year, with the IMF projecting a 6.4% growth rate. But China is expected to do even better, with an estimated 8.4% growth rate. If China is paying an economic cost for having 99.3% fewer Covid deaths, it’s not a huge cost.
The “social cost” of “pandemic fatigue” is harder to quantify. But if, like most of our readers, you live in the United States, ask yourself: Do you feel like you are free of “pandemic fatigue” because you live in a country that has a “higher tolerance of Covid”? Do you think that most citizens of China—which reopened schools for in-person learning in September 2020, not 2021—would happily exchange their coronavirus anxiety for ours?
“Misery loves company” is an old saying. It’s not a good principle for health reporting, though."
“In the northwestern city of Xi’an, hospital employees refused to admit a man suffering from chest pains because he lived in a medium-risk district. He died of a heart attack. They informed a woman who was eight months pregnant and bleeding that her Covid test wasn’t valid. She lost her baby. Two community security guards told a young man they didn’t care that he’d had nothing to eat after catching him out during the lockdown. They beat him up.”
Zero evidence any of these happened but no one will accuse NYT with spreading “unsubstantiated claims”
Okay, i was wrong, they later on say that there’s a video from the first man’s daughter on Weibo which is… there apparently, no links, not even a ripped one for Twitter or something.
The core of propaganda isn’t lies, but emphasis (sometimes emphasizing a lie when necessary). If you wanted, you could see literally hundreds of instances of people being turned away from hospitals in America right now because they’re over capacity. But if you never show the videos people take here and only mention the videos people take there, then there will appear worse.
