Coronavirus

I wouldn't be able to identify a person with Covid-19 even if I saw him in a mirror.
Are people still being tested in China?
 
____no5 said:
Spaldy, this article is complete BS. Let me explain you why.

In this country, by April 2020 everything was back to normal. Still you had to wear masks on the metro /malls but you were going to the work without masks, while bars & restaurants etc were, and up to this day are, fully functional.
From April 2020 fwd it was, and still is, kind of a big deal if we have 5 cases in a city of 20 million, or even a suspicion of virus, as NP mentioned above. This leaves a window of only 2 1/2 months (February -March 2020 plus a week in January and a week in April) that those 1.7 million should have died. This would have meant massive corps incinerations. Or secretive burials. Mostly incinerations though.
Guess what. That never happen. Not in a country that a 9 or a 90 year old have smartphones. And a people that is constantly filming -posting everything.
To hide 1.7 million deaths in the heart of this country in 2 months and nobody's talking about it, is not even remotely possible. Whoever thinks it is, he simply never put a foot in this country the last 20 years, so writing such articles is either dangerous by stupidity or by design.

I can assure you that people do talk, do complain and their dissatisfaction is quite visible when there is. They did. But that was for a case here, a misstep there, some super strict measures, or even more bizarrely for the lack of stricter ones, but not 1.7 million people disappeared. This would have been a tsunami of dissatisfaction that never was.
By April 2020, people also began to realise the poor (by their standards) handling of the Virus from the Western leaders and happiness was back to normal.
To conclude, maybe the numbers are higher. Maybe 10 times higher. Maybe. But that’s it. To claim that it is ~400 times higher, this is QAnon level of journalism.
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But this is all entirely anecdotal though whereas the article contains real research and data. If you've got numbers to back up your claim I'm more than happy to believe you. However, unlike you, I don't find it that far fetched that in a country of 1.5b there are over 1m deaths. After all, look at the USA which is rapidly approaching 1m deaths and has less than 1/5 of China's population.
 
Perun said:
I wouldn't be able to identify a person with Covid-19 even if I saw him in a mirror.
Are people still being tested in China?
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They are tested like crazy. I had to make ~10 tests since this summer for visiting other provinces or flying and every time people were lining up until the corner of the road.
 
Alright, I'll go about it this way: You have a point that I shouldn't be talking about the state of a country I haven't been to. I severely mistrust anything coming from the PRC government, and I honestly don't believe the country is Covid-free. But since I don't have any first-hand experience, I'll be respectful enough not to press it.
 
Having lived in China, in a modern international city of around 9 mil. people, I can tell that if some mass testing needs to be done, they will do it. They will close the whole community with thousands of apartments and won't let you out until everybody is clear. I was there some years before covid, but this is completely believable to me.

On the other hand you have the rest of the population living in mountains, fields, farm areas with poverty and almost no infrastructure, close to being ungoverned. Places where you can hide the fact that you had another baby because it goes against the govt. policy. How would you even start organizing some testing, controls, where people are close to having nothing to lose? That is where there might be a big or small amount of deaths.
I am in no way informed/educated enough to form an opinion on 1,7 mil deaths, but having a major part of the country living in rural conditions, even the PRC probably can not tell.
Not that I would trust anything officially presented there :)
 
I travelled through most of Qinghai with the car, touched Xinjiang and came back through Gansu to Lanzhou last September. We are talking rural here. Still totally controllable COVID wise. Not remotely as bad as I was imagining or heard about. Not bad period.
In all, I've done many provinces but always what I saw was good infrastructure comparing to what I was expecting. Actually I never saw in China something really bad with my own eyes. And I've even lived in a very remote place of 50,000 people. That in China is way less than a village as you know. Still it had 2 hospitals, a nice Stadium etc.

I too heard the stories about not declaring babies, but a) that was quite a while ago and b) as you have witnessed this country is (still) changing rapidly year after year. So what was true in 2010 it may not be true any more while the 80s and 90s are ancient history.

@mtmccox I had exactly the same (false) image of ungoverned super poor rural areas, before I start to actually traveling there. Now I know that there was no such thing in the last 15 years and that the reason of such thing had ever occurred would be more of a kind of "tolerance" than anything else. Those children had to pay high price in their adult life being non existent anyway, it's not as officials /community were offering their parents such a present when closing their eyes. By the way I've heard that the penalty was a mere 21,000 CNY that would be completely tragic if true.

EDIT: The wild development that happened in this country was unprecedented and we both witnessed a part of it. Once in 400 years maybe? I don't know, maybe it's exaggerated but it's impressive. I mean I know (many) people that now receive north of 5,000$ net salary and as children had meat once a month.
 
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I think the whole thing about the PRC and COVID is they absolutely manipulated the numbers early, but they also have the capacity (read, the dictatorial will) to do things to snuff out COVID outbreaks before they spread. If they are able to test at the rate they say they are able to test, and since they can very easily limit travel, it is certainly doable.

Which is needed, because Sinovac doesn't work very well.
 
Lower effectiveness of in-house vaccines must be a reason (I've heard that they recently approved the use of mRNA technology) but probably not the main one. The way economy is structured is the main thing in my opinion. And maybe even more importantly the way public opinion behaves.

The low wage workers, which is the backbone of the particular manufacturing-based economy, cannot afford many days of unemployment nor there is a provision /culture for allowances and furlough-like schemes.
Second, the people have very high expectations of their government and would be very dissatisfied if it failed to contain the COVID to nearly zero cases.

Those two are the big boys in my opinion.
 
Day 3 of just lying in my bed. I feel mentally fit, but I have problems focusing on typing, which impairs work. I can focus on reading, though. But most of the time I'm just watching crap online. I can't leave my tiny room and whenever I sit up somewhere I almost immediately feel like lying down again. All because of some pesky little coronaviruses in my throat that make themselves far more important than they really are. "Look at me, I have SPIKE PROTEINS! Lay down and worship me!" Fucking bitches.
 
Just self-tested positive. Tomorrow proper test. Have felt something is off in the last few days, but always tested negative. Anyways, so far so good apart from a very sore throat and a few muscle pains here and there.

Hopefully it remains like this.
 
Perun said:
Day 3 of just lying in my bed. I feel mentally fit, but I have problems focusing on typing, which impairs work. I can focus on reading, though. But most of the time I'm just watching crap online. I can't leave my tiny room and whenever I sit up somewhere I almost immediately feel like lying down again. All because of some pesky little coronaviruses in my throat that make themselves far more important than they really are. "Look at me, I have SPIKE PROTEINS! Lay down and worship me!" Fucking bitches.
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Yeah, this is kinda where I got to at a point. The fatigue was real. I was just exhausted, so exhausted, by the end of each day.

matic22 said:
Just self-tested positive. Tomorrow proper test. Have felt something is off in the last few days, but always tested negative. Anyways, so far so good apart from a very sore throat and a few muscle pains here and there.

Hopefully it remains like this.
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Hoping it stays not so bad!
 
I am free from isolation tomorrow. 2nd dance with corona in 6 weeks, having never knowingly had it prior to that.
This time has been totally sweet, just a sore head for 2 days.
Wonder how long til the next time and I wonder what the record for reinfection is...
 
^You might have had two different variants, like Delta then Omicron. With luck it'll be a while before anything significantly different turns up, so you won't be reinfected until then
 
Brigantium said:
^You might have had two different variants, like Delta then Omicron. With luck it'll be a while before anything significantly different turns up, so you won't be reinfected until then
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Na, I'm lovin the time off work, I want a new variant and I want it soon, before the weather gets nice. Nobody wants to isolate durin good weather!
 
Day 4 after the positive self-test (and day 5 after the start of the symptoms)... Sore throat is almost gone. Feeling almost normal apart from a runny nose and cough. 3 more days of quarantine and then another re-test...

I guess I got through it lightly. Probably got the Omicron variant. The double vaccination might have something to do with that too.
 
Looks like Norway finally will remove all (or most) restrictions tomorrow.

Looking forward to it. It should have happened weeks ago. They have been too slow, and businesses have been bleeding money the last two months.
 
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