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Andrew Horsman
Andrew Horsman
2 years ago

“Sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.” — George Orwell

Hong Kong’s failing attempts to control an endemic virus through collective human intervention are a microcosmic example of what will inevitably, eventually, be the (bloody) failure of the Chinese Communist project. Just like all other things built on lies and sustained, temporarily, by hubris, violence, fear, and greed, it will collapse not because some outside force comes and topples it but because it is intrinsically unsound. The same was true of the Soviet Union, and the same is true of the wokey fantasism of the West. The only questions are how quickly it will happen and much human suffering and grief will be incurred in the process, and what form the next phase of humanity’s endless grim cycle of self-delusion will take as future generations build castles on sand that collapse on their children’s and grandchildren’s heads.

Michael K
Michael K
1 year ago
Reply to  Andrew Horsman

This is 100% correct. As it has been said in the past, the eye on top of the pyramid is blind. And indeed, the individual levels of the pyramid prefer to kick downward, and like to avoid bringing bad, but important messages upward. Hence the ones on the lowest level suffer the most, while at the same time they are indispensable to keep the system elevated – that is, alive. Meanwhile, the ones on the top level know nothing of the actual state of reality and believe everything is fine. Indeed, the administrators of the Soviet Union worked so well, that even Stalin believed all was peachy within his collapsing country.
Nowadays, due to centralized management of practically everything, and a larger separation between rich and poor than ever, our pyramid is steeper than it has ever been, and has fewer eyes on top than ever before.
It would be wise for every single one of us to realize what and who is at the base of the pyramid, and begin to organize and strengthen that base, to create a new parallel hierarchy. The current system will collapse. Those who do not have alternatives at hand will be ill-equipped to deal with the fallout. The time to start finding alternatives was yesterday. Today is the second best opportunity.

Alan T
Alan T
2 years ago

Can anyone share any case examples of previously healthy, non-elderly individuals dying of omicron? I have never seen one, and I have searched the Internet and asked people on social media a number of times.
I am not asking for statistics, I am asking for individual cases. With the previous variants the news was full of such accounts.
I do not doubt there must be some examples, but I suspect they are very rare.

Lindsay S
Lindsay S
2 years ago
Reply to  Alan T

I’m sure someone somewhere has been run over within 28 days of testing positive somewhere!

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Lindsay S

Did you somehow manage to miss this rather striking sentence?:

“By the start of March, the death rate went through the roof, becoming the highest in the world at any point in the pandemic. They couldn’t process the dead quickly enough, with bodies stacked next to the living”

Michael K
Michael K
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan T

The most grievous episode of COVID deaths was actually caused by premature intubation, and vast mistakes in the dosage of experimental pharmaceuticals. This is why we have seen such a decrease in mortality rate after the first one or two waves. Omicron certainly has been another step in that direction, but there is also the fact that the weakest people in non-zero-COVID countries have died. Whereas in zero-COVID countries like Hong Kong, the most fragile are still alive and are of course the first victims of such waves.
That besides – and this is uncontroversial in the field of evidence-based science – CoV-2 is no particular threat to healthy people (i.e. those without high blood pressure and other comorbidities).
Edit: Handing out pulse oximeters and checking up regularly on quarantined people would actually have prevented many deaths. Indeed, declaring a lockdown but leaving people alone for two weeks upon becoming sick does not make any sense from the perspective of avoiding COVID deaths. COVID, once it attacks the lungs, quickly decreases the blood oxygen saturation, which however does not mean the lungs are destroyed. Often times, propping people up in a particular way on the hospital bed is enough to release them again after half a day. In other cases, supplemental oxygen for a few days to weeks is perfectly adequate. The high death counts are a direct result of grievous failures of medical management.

Last edited 1 year ago by Michael K
Linda Hutchinson
Linda Hutchinson
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan T

I know of one person, he was 42 years old with no (known) underlying conditions, fit and normal weight.

Andrew Fisher
Andrew Fisher
1 year ago
Reply to  Alan T

They must exist in some number if Hong Kong has one of, if not the, highest death covid death rates. I rather suspect as well that keeping people away from exposure to other coronaviruses for months probably weakens people’s ability to fight the virus.

Andrea X
Andrea X
2 years ago

The “not wanting to lose face” applied to most of the west.
Take Italy or Scotland or… you choose.
The fact that things are now not as extreme in the west as they are in China should not be a comforting thought as
1) they have been bad enough and, at times, as bad
2) we could still import their strategy, just as we did with Covid 1.0, and we did it with glee, with gusto.
Until *we* examine what *we* have done and recognise the (many many many) errors of our ways there is very little solace we can take from someone else’s misfortunes (not that you should ever do that!), as we could be back to square 1 at the drop of a hat.

Last edited 2 years ago by Andrea X
Aldo Maccione
Aldo Maccione
2 years ago

You expressed it very well : the nub of the matter is not necessarily the living conditions of the residents (all in all acceptable if a bit heavy handed in places), it’s the haphazardness of the strategy (if it can be called as such) of the government and the constant gaslighting that they’re “doing what’s best for the health and wellness of the HKgers”; The worst recent illustration being when in the same breath, Carrie Lam can say that protecting and vaccinating the elderly is the main objective, while further imposing vaccination requirements on schoolchildren (but not on the elderly).

Mirax Path
Mirax Path
2 years ago

Shanghai is going into panic mode at the moment with lockdowns. I am watching to see how long China continues with its Covid policy.

Mary Bruels
Mary Bruels
1 year ago
Reply to  Mirax Path

This has serious consequences for Western consumers as well. Factories will shut down for who knows how long and will continue to negatively affect supply chains.

Martin Smith
Martin Smith
1 year ago

Isn’t this severely restrictive ‘zero’ strategy the one favoured in the UK by ‘Alternative’ SAGE and other lockdown extremists?

Ian Stewart
Ian Stewart
1 year ago

Sounds like agoraphobic heaven. Or paradise for those that think like Sartre, that hell is other people.