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supaloopar t1_j0j6jrd wrote

Reply to comment by WickedDemiurge in Chinese doctors and nurses reportedly told to work while infected as Covid surges by Neo2199

Zero Covid was designed with the assumption all countries would practise quarantined to snuff out the disease in unison. You know, the same practises being advocated by the advanced nations when poor countries have outbreaks?

Well, that underlying assumptions was false.

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WickedDemiurge t1_j0j89z0 wrote

If China was on the dark side of the moon and had design their policy without communication with other humans, this would be a defense, but it is not.

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China knows that almost all other nations have stopped lock-downs and quarantines a long time ago for three reasons:

a. they are incredibly disruptive to human quality of life

b. COVID has an absurdly high R0 and is very difficult to control from spreading

c. The mRNA vaccines are exceedingly effective at preventing severe disease

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China is also still doing weird things like practicing surface disinfection which has been shown to be more or less worthless as COVID does not reliably transmit through surfaces, but through airborne droplets.

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Their policy is arguably bad even in a vacuum, but obviously absurd when given what everyone else is doing. It's an open question if we could have stopped COVID from becoming endemic if we had rigorously enforced quarantine during the first few months, but that's been a complete impossibility for a long time now. I was in favor of very strict quarantine at the beginning, but policy needs to change with the times.

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A vaccination first strategy is the best path forward, along with general infectious disease control steps like mandatory paid sick days for all workers, requiring health care providers to stay home when sick, etc.

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in-game_sext t1_j0je5uc wrote

I think it still rightly freaks people out because the Chinese government is famously impartial to the quality of life or well-being of their population. They have a long track record of putting productivity at the top end of all public interests. Why do they care so much about this still, at the extreme detriment of things like business and productivity? Personally it sometimes makes me think they still know something about it that we don't.

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Kale t1_j0jb2y5 wrote

Zero COVID policy might have made sense with the original strain, alpha variant, and maybe Delta variant. After omicron, zero COVID is not feasible and not effective.

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sapphicsandwich t1_j0ufudo wrote

It's known to be false so it's absurd to continue on pretending everyone else is going to do it. They should act according to reality, not hopes and dreams.

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