If we had to pick one image to sum up China’s coronadoom policy:
Most people are unsympathetic to the effects of China’s ridiculous Zero-Covid policy on the general population
But what about the cats?https://t.co/DlX6YmNJGl
— Gummi Bear (@gummibear737) April 9, 2022
Shanghai is locked down. People aren’t allowed outside their government-designed domiciles. Except for small numbers of building representatives who venture out to gather food. Which is running low, precious low. Meat is near non-existent. Maybe that’s what the bags of cats are for.
People are opening their windows and screaming their woes into the black of night. Drones caution people not to sing. Men in spacesuits wander the streets spraying mysterious substances into the air.
They say.
But what’s really going on in China, that Expertocracy par excellence? Are these horrifying videos more sweet propaganda? Or maybe they are real and China has gone quite mad? Or is this just inscrutable Chinese behavior? Is Xi taking some kind of hidden revenge on Shanghai?
We all saw the propaganda videos at the beginning of the man-made coronadoom panic, which were obvious BS. It is natural to suppose we’re seeing the same thing again: government-directed propaganda to get the world to re-panic, just as it is inclined to calm down. After all, China rigorously controls its internet, so the pictures and videos it allows out might be managed.
Yet this doesn’t have that feel. And as good as China’s control is, it is not total. Too many videos are coming out. Here’s a long thread of them. Of course, the Chinese might be purposely allowing these “leaks”, for the same propaganda purposes, leveraging midwit dupes in Western media.
Even so, that doesn’t seem to be true. It’s more likely that this is the natural end result of Expert-designed “zero” covid policy. A policy that, once embraced and held for so long, cannot be abandoned without admitting a mistake. And that cannot happen.
China is a one-party dictatorship, a complete Expertocracy, a fully managed state. Once government makes a decision, it is not wrong by definition. It can admit to being suboptimal (“We can do better”), or to being foiled by exterior enemies (“This is Big GAE’s fault”). But it cannot admit to being wrong in something as monumental as a two-and-a-half-year hersterical guided panic meant to eliminate, for the first time in human history, a communicable respiratory disease.
It is also true that the Chinese as a people embrace hypochondria, so it is not surprising the overreaction originated there.
Long-time readers will recall that none of us were sure of China’s coronadoom numbers at the beginning of the panic. Many on Team Reality were sure China was lying about those numbers, broadcasting fake low ones. I was in the opposite camp, suspecting China’s numbers were real. At least for the reason that they obviously wanted to juice a panic (those dropping-dead-in-the-street videos), so why go low?
But their numbers and ours weren’t the same. Definitions count. China seemed from the beginning to be using the old-fashioned and medically sound definition of case (a patient ill enough to require treatment; i.e. more severe than a mere infection). Whereas idiot policy in the USA et al., especially after the propagandists got hold of the numbers, was to classify even asymptomatic suspected infections as “cases”. That made things always appear worse than they were.
That’s finally changing here: sanity is being restored, perhaps because the disease is no longer politically helpful, and “cases” are becoming cases again.
Here from our chief propagandist are China’s numbers:
The question is whether these are still real cases—or has China finally decided to join the Foolish Definition Club? And, if so, why?
China has long had a much more extensive testing regime than other countries, it being mandatory and regular. Even small infection clusters will show up. So, since we don’t see these, it’s likely the main time portion of the plot were real cases. (Mass testing was always asinine, prolonging and sustaining the panic.) It cannot be that China went without infections that long.
Now there is reason to suspect China switched to the Western idiot definition, and now count any positive test as a case. That’s what they did in Hong Kong, a move which nicely defused the growing “democracy” protest movement (remember that?). Hard to protest while locked down. Then, given the obvious benefits of that strategy in Hong Kong, perhaps it was judged good to do in Shanghai.
The other evidence is that reports are leaking out that the current rie in the chart is asymptomatic “cases”.
Shanghai reported a record 13,086 new asymptomatic coronavirus cases on April 4, the city government said on its official WeChat channel on Tuesday, up from 8,581 the previous day, after a city-wide surveillance testing program that saw more than 25 million people swabbed in 24 hours.
In the old days in medicine (2019), a surge in asymptomatic infections would be greeted with great joy, because a disease that has mutated to a harmless form was seen as a good thing. Infections that cause no harm and conferred immunity. Let ‘er rip!
Alas, allowing harmlessness to spread would admit the zero covid policy was wrong.
So China’s recent behavior is either the intense hubris only found in Experts, or China has some political reason for controlling Shanghai. It could also be to provide theatrics for us, so that we believe something terrible is happening. But I doubt it.
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There are no words to express the horrors of tyranny. Whether these images/videos are real or not (they look far more real than the pathetic propaganda content) the level of empathy for people and animals in a dictatorship like China is pitiful to see. It could never happen in the west, where we are truly free and not at all heading towards a dystopian future.
I have been asking this question myself for a while now. Jennifer Zeng, a chinese dissident, now living in the US recently said on her youtube channel that they are going to extend this policy to Bejing and Gangzou, two other megacities. If I look at supply chains I can’t but conclude that this could very well be hidden economic warfare against the west. And we are certainly going to see the effect on our economies. The CCCP won’t care about collateral damages at home. Remember, Mao’s so called great leap forward killed some 35 mio chinese in just 3 years.
“China is a one-party dictatorship, a complete Expertocracy, a fully managed state.”
This is the way Globalists have indoctrinated us to think of China.
I suspect it is actually an example of projection.
A disease so dangerous you might never know you had it. 😉
The thing is… shouldn’t we have learned by now that *whatever* is happening in China is something we can only know very indirectly and via unreliable sources; is almost certainly intended to manipulate us for our harm; and anyway is essentially not our business?
And, even if it Was our business – we of the West lack any moral basis for commenting (let alone intervening) in anybody else’s affairs.
I would Never have thought (before it happened) that, for the past couple of years, there would be such mass support in the UK for the regime of psychological, social and economic destruction of the nation. Yet, even now, there are lots of people who will not stop voluntarily applying the oppressive regulations, and are continually clamouring for more – and forever.
And if they are not crying-out for their own oppression wrt the ‘birdemic’, then they want to be shamed and discriminated against for their race, or sex, or sexuality – or they want to wreck their own survival and freeze or starve themselves on the supposed basis of climate, or in order to show their support for an Eastern European country.
The extent and degree of willed self-destruction in The West is hard to believe if you don’t live inside it – so, who knows (I don’t) whether something similar applies in other and very remote countries?
What’s going on? — something idiotic, foolish, cowardly, disgusting, and wicked. That’s what is usually going on since Adam & Eve. The world is a bag of cats.
“[S]ome political reason for controlling Shanghai” – this is it and it was the same with Wuhan. That is the only explanation consistent with their long term behavior.
As for the current videos, I believe it’s the usual mix of real and fake. They can be controlling Shanghai AND at the same time trying to spread fear to the world.
Isn’t it strange that after two years of the West screwing up and China managing the virus flawlessly, suddenly, just in time when the West is going back to real normal, all hell breaks loose in China?
Alternatively, China may be controlling Shanghai and some opposition group or a competing CCP faction or foreign element may be releasing the videos for subversive purposes.
@bruce g charlton, very well stated.
@me I think you are right, at least to a degree. Even China wants the world to think they have everything under perfect control, despite it being impossible.
No one who has lived in this world since 1960 could ever imagine Chinese Experts making decisions that would result in the misery and deaths of countless citizens. It’s just not possible. Now follow their lead to the New World Order.
Al-
One of the most terrifying things about the future being planned for humanity is that all it has to offer are two variants of totalitarianism (CCP, WEF) and one variant of authoritarianism (Putin/Russia).
Who the hell wants to live under any of those systems?
Many on Twitter are observing the Chinese case graph above and concluding it is definitive proof that severe lockdowns ‘cured’ Covid in China for the last 2 years and Covid only re-appeared when they were lifted.
When cases invariably fall in Shanghai, they will push Western Governments to do the same here until we also achieve the nirvana of ‘Zero Covid’.
Who can tell which of those videos are real and which are fake.
The one where the food is being dumped out would seem to be and extremely tone deaf move by the CCP, given China’s history of famine.
The suicide clip is could be mixed. Some of those look like crash test dummies, and at least one has a crash pad for the victim to land on.
Then again, China has 1.4 billion people and the CCP thinks life is cheap. It’s impossible to know without being there.
It’s DA GREAT RESET, that’s what it is.
Righty-right on schedule according to their simulated scenarios.
Disrupt the supply chain. Engineer economic collapse. Switch over to dogital programmable blockchain rationed carbon-allotment coins.
The ‘cases’ are of course all a hoax. The lockdowns and misery are real. Also if “cases” are rising, this is all post-fully-vexxed upon the most obedient population on Communist Earth, so HOW??? HOOOWWW???!!! WHY DIDN’T THE VEXXINES AND LOCKDOWNS SAAAVVVEEE UUUUSSSS???? I TRUSTED IN YOOOOUUUU, THE SCIENCE ™!!!!
The reason I believe that the videos this time are real and not intended propaganda is that the Western MSM is being very very quiet…
That’s because they would really really love to do the same thing here! They just don’t want you to see it coming. They’ve gotta do something… there are Midterm elections that need fortifying! The wrong guy was elected in Hungary and now even Jupiter is facing opposition in France!!! If the establishment doesn’t win, then millions of trans-children will die!!!!! How will they get surgeries without a vexx???
Also whereas the previous propaganda videos fulfilled the mission of making the virus look deadly and real. These ones just make Beijing look terrible and stupid and incompetent and worst of all show dissidents criticizing the holy atheist state… even openly disobeying it!
So how exactly is that helping the planned nanny effiminate fake and gay socialist New World Order? It doesn’t.
More!
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/open-thread-can-we-talk-about-whats
More!
https://edwardslavsquat.substack.com/p/public-health-its-what-shanghai-craves
Even more!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=og7JyP96mX4
Testing cats and fish for covid more!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay6PqrrPI_o
Those kats had it coming.
I’d like to make one addition to my earlier comment. According to Lynn/Graber, The Intelligence of Nations, the chinese population has an average IQ of 104, rare the among nations of the world. Given the huge number of people you’d expect some serious brain power, considering the right tail of the Gauss curve. And garanteed , they are not wasting it for dumb woke experiments like the west does. Children have to spend 15h/day in school. Their education system is one brutal meritocracy
So, until proven wrong, I am going to assume that the chinese are playing Go as the west is playing checkers.
And that applies to whatever we see coming out of China.
As Intel founder Andy Grove once said: that you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not coming after you
“It could never happen in the west, where we are truly free and not at all heading towards a dystopian future.”
It’s sad that, the way things are today in the U.S. and the rest of the West, I assume you’re joking. Not very many years ago I would have taken your statement as sincere.
I follow the guvmint Covid Dashboard for the state I live in. I know the numbers are juiced, which is straightforward for them to do, so I look at the trends, with the thinking that they aren’t smart enough to vary the juicing algorithm without showing their hand. Anyway, the current numbers (cases, hospitalizations, deaths) are very low, as low as they’ve been since the first days of the pandemic.
Shortly thereafter, the local news stations are reporting large increases in Covid infections, and possibly returning to the pandemic restrictions. Huh? So back to the Covid Dashboard I go to check on this sudden massive change being reported. Nope, nothing there. Surreal.
Perhaps everything about the latest reporting of the Covid situation in China is real, and they are now paying the price for their earlier zero-Covid policies? One lesson in life for me has been to trust the human body to deal with new challenges, individually or as a collection, as it was designed to do just that (by God or evolution, whatever you believe). Arrogantly constantly thinking that the design is flawed and in need of intervention can be very perilous.
China (Shanghai) is actually undergoing a genuine food crisis (an aggregate calories supply deficit). Massive destruction of domestic agriculture, mostly due to Three-Gorges- Dam policy disasters, is at the root of this man-made catastrophe.
Shanghai City was simply chosen (at uppermost CCP echelons) as a squeeze point for the nationwide food shortage. In actuality, these so-called COVID lock-downs are highly dramatized preemptive measures for quelling incipient social unrest triggered by hunger (privation). [Pet culling indicates a food maximization strategic policy.]
Note that China’s recent experiences with mass famine consequent to political change has pre-charged the minds of its current “leaders”. The Cultural Revolution (from 1966 until Mao Zedong’s death in 1976) was in many ways China’s Holodomor.
Nearest harvest seasons in The Middle Kingdom are still over 9 weeks away (they will be underwhelming, if not worse). Therefore (The Authorities) cannot hope to “defeat” this new-wave COVID scourge until mid-July or August at the earliest.
Meanwhile CCP Party Members are relying on Denmark for their personal pork provisions :: https://english.fleischwirtschaft.de/economy/news/trade-denmark-sells-as-much-pork-to-china-as-to-the-eu-52182
Report from on the ground, a professional colleague, long-time Shanghai resident (Chinese citizen). He lives, with his wife and 2 small kids, in a multi-story apartment block:
“The situtation in the city is getting down and worse on a daily basis, not by omicron, but by the way to fight it. Daily food and supply shortages is everywhere. To me and my family, no one could step out of the apt door. Strictly, unless notified otherwise. Total lock down. We are group purchasing every thing on WeChat. It becomes our lifeline. Almost everybody, in a 25 mil people town. 2 days ago I did my first barter trade with upper floor, carried by elevator itself: 1 soy sauce = 5 patatos. Welcome to the 21st century. We are doing fine. And trying to keep our spirits high. Dont worry. Thank you.”
Philly has reinstated indoor mask mandates.
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Michael Senger is the guy who has been saying for a long time, that China has been conducting a geopolitical psy-ops ploy over Covid. He is still saying it.
This is well worth the time to listen
https://brownstone.org/video-podcast/whats-going-on-in-china-interview-with-michael-senger/
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