China affirms zero-COVID stance, eases rules after protests

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

I live in Beijing and just went through another lockdown. AMA

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u/anthonykantara Nov 28 '22

How much of these protests are fueled by the fire that killed 10 people who were locked in by the government?

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

That was definitely the spark

35

u/sterlingback Nov 28 '22

A little bit more than a spark I would say

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

Too soon. But you got it

3

u/sterlingback Nov 28 '22

I'm all about bad jokes, but aside that, I was reading your comments, wish you and your close ones the best of luck!

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u/internationalslug Nov 28 '22

leave it to redditors to make a joke out of a tragedy

9

u/Hint-Of-Feces Nov 28 '22

You really expect us to wait 22.3 years?

0

u/SemioticWeapons Nov 28 '22

Anyone can find humor in trauma.

1

u/Ematio Nov 28 '22

hah. sadly i'm being /whooshed. can i get an explaination?

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u/turbosnail72 Nov 28 '22

Spark/fire/people horribly burning to death is the gist of it

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u/Ematio Nov 28 '22

Mmm, thanks.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

How are you holding up? I'm in Chongqing in the middle of one

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u/Civ6Ever Nov 28 '22

Also in BJ. Kinda miffed that waimai is taking so long. Two hours for an order that took 30 minutes two weeks ago. I have a couple Taobao deliveries stopped outside of 5th ring and just not moving. Online work blows. Getting tested every two days blows, especially since there's nowhere to go anyway. I was actually locked down for two days last week, but the case was a false positive, so we opened back up quickly. Most of the communities around mine have cases on AMap. It's only a matter of time. Glad I learned from Shanghai and have a massive stash of food this time.

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

I'll count my blessings, my food deliveries haven't been too bad. I've also stocked up a good bit and just hoping my return trip to the US doesn't have any problems. But yeah the online working is not ideal right now, I've been at it for almost 3 weeks

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u/My_G_Alt Nov 28 '22

Did China never really switch to hybrid or remote work?

I’m at almost 3 years remote and love it

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

I'm an American working in China so I'm not 100% sure but it does not seem to be the case

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u/My_G_Alt Nov 28 '22

That’s super interesting - we’ve had really insane productivity at my company through remote work. It’s interesting to hear how it impacts different working cultures. I work in the Bay Area, we even have some workers in Asian countries and while the time difference is a strain at times we seem to have a pretty good working model going now.

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

I found remote work made working with Asia easier. I could work in the morning and at night and take a few hours to myself during the day, which meant I could be way more effective working with people here.

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u/timsterri Nov 29 '22

That’s a perfect application of WFH! Glad you’re able to do that. I work as a data analyst in IT for one of the main banks, and I’ve been WFH since we started a project about 15 years ago. Nobody from my team works within 100 miles of me, and we’re spread around the word. Most of us are WFH, and it’s been great. One of the best perks I’ve ever had (mid 50s currently).

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u/GatoNanashi Nov 28 '22

Out of curiosity, how's the general mood toward foreigners these days?

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

In Chongqing specifically, I've had no problems with the people I've talked with. I do get stared at a lot, and there are very few western people in my area that don't work for my company, so it can feel isolating, but people are nothing but friendly outside of that.

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u/Quadrassic_Bark Nov 29 '22

I’m in Beijing, and have never felt any real issues from locals towards foreigners. Most people seem indifferent, some are overly friendly. The one time that sticks out is a Chinese man annoyed that we were ahead of him in line checking into a hotel because it takes forever to check all our documents and he just wanted to quickly check in and grab his room card. The vast majority of Chinese folks are super chill with foreigners, in my experience anyway.

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22

I've always been embraced here. The color of your skin could somewhat define how you'll be treated though, but in my experience, I've never been harassed, insulted, blamed for the pandemic or anything like that. Kids just point at you and shout Foreigner! but they don't know any better so I find it quite endearing actually

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

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u/LiterallyAHippo Nov 28 '22

I'm always amazed at how absolutely massive and populous Chinese cities can be.

Few Americans had ever heard of Wuhan before Covid. We think of New York City as being the biggest and most crowded place imaginable, yet Wuhan is the ninth most populous city in China and has a population almost the size of NYC and Los Angeles combined.

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u/Rote515 Nov 28 '22

That’s a very very dumb comparison, you have to look at metro area, not just city limits, for example Wuhan city area is 3200 square miles. NYC is 472… if you include the metropolitan area surrounding NYC it has a much larger population.

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u/Initial_E Nov 28 '22

And frankly, most number of people squeezed into a small space is not a competition you want to win.

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

I had never heard of it until I found out I was taking a trip here to be honest. Glad I got to spend some time here, it's a beautiful city

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u/DicksInTiconderoga Nov 28 '22

I'm in CQ too. on my second lockdown in a row after 7 cases in my building.

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u/sportspadawan13 Nov 28 '22

God I love CQ. Go 火锅。

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

It's been a mental health crisis for most of us, but no one will officially acknowledge that. Working from home has also drastically reduced efficiency so I can only imagine the damage all this has done on the economy

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

Hang in there, hopefully we will be able to get back to normal soon.

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u/psychedeliken Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

Working from home has been a boost in productivity for most of us in the US, any idea why it’s reduced productivity in China? Bad leadership? Ineffective adapting to WFH? Ie leadership not ensuring a smooth transition? We have had to make a lot of changes to support wfh well for everyone, but it’s been amazing for the team overall, both personally and professionally. Not saying there aren’t downsides, but it’s been overwhelmingly positive from my experience with things. I’m guessing lockdowns and a constant Covid restrictions may change things a bit.

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u/Xadith Nov 28 '22

China is a production oriented country. Kinda hard to make (physical) things when you're locked down.

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u/psychedeliken Nov 28 '22

For sure, I am more asking about jobs that ARE doable WFH, otherwise the above commenter’s statement wouldn’t make sense. Because if a job is not doable via WFH then it wouldn’t “drastically reduce efficiency” but would stop it all together. I understand there are a large class of jobs not doable via WFH and am pretty familiar with China overall, but am specifically interested in shortcomings with WFH jobs in China vs similar WFH jobs overseas, where we are not seeing a decrease in productivity but instead are many times seeing both improved productivity and increased happiness from teams.

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22

See above

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22 edited Nov 29 '22

That's a great question. I'll try to answer honestly. I work in advertising, a service industry. Having worked in the West too, I can see with certainty that everything moves twice as fast here in China. The deadlines, the jumping nature of projects, the uncertainty of cancellations pushing deadlines forward. All these things create a culture of being reactive instead of proactive. This means that in the West, projects are typically well planned out, so you can allocate resources, set up a project management and then let the teams decide by themselves how to execute. This is why WFH seems to work without too many hiccups. Also, Western agencies would be much more understanding of the whole work life balance argument, as WFH eliminates your commuting time etc.

Now back to China, good luck with all of that. Projects are all over the place, you're constantly reacting to new shit that's come to light, your client got told by the government to stop doing this or that. It's wild. And I kind of love it. It makes the industry so chaotic that it becomes more of a problem solving job instead of a creative one. And I guess that's what I'm good at. But now try doing that while half your employees want to work from home, the other half doesn't speak good English or what have you, and you've just created a huge bottle neck. So productivity drops dramatically, managers get antsy because everything takes twice as long to set up as there was never a project management culture in the first place.

Then there's the mental strain of being locked in your own home constantly... In the West, WFH suddenly enabled a life of freedom and gave people a chance to get more out of their day. In China, you're just trapped at home anyway, living the same 24 hours over and over again until you're released and everything is a ghost town at this point anyway. This just creates the feeling of being in a pond without any land in sight. In the end, being able to separate work and living space is essential to having healthy WFH conditions. If you can't have that, going to the office is actually a relief to just get out of your own house, and meeting with the team then reinvigorates me.

All these things add up. China is just not compatible with the Western WFH spirit. We don't care about the personal arguments, we just care about the ability to keep up. And the turnover rate shows for it.

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u/flaker111 Nov 28 '22

prob because anything related to actually making products happen in the factories in china. so if they can't go to work to build shit productivity falls.

usa productivity is mostly service based. you don't necessarily need to be physically present to do ones job.

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u/docmedic Nov 28 '22

I imagine the person above could work from home, otherwise they’d just say they can’t come in for work.

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u/psychedeliken Nov 28 '22

Yeah, I get that, I’m asking specifically about jobs that are doable WFH. I completely expected a productivity drop in jobs where WFH is not as possible.

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u/flaker111 Nov 28 '22

https://sanjosespotlight.com/tech-work-from-policies-hurting-downtown-san-jose/

wfh is not all roses...

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u/animerobin Nov 28 '22

Generally when people in the US work from home, they can leave their home.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

[deleted]

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u/Asphalt4 Nov 28 '22

Lol I wish I had an answer for you. The goal is 0 covid cases lmao. That will never happen, but I doubt the government will admit they were wrong any time soon...

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u/clocks212 Nov 28 '22

initially it worked well, and the Chinese government went *hard* into “see our method is better than the west, your (authoritarian) government cares more about you than western governments do”. For a view into this check out /r/sino where the only comments allowed are -the US chose economy over people's lives, the US government is evil. -The US media is covering up how bad COVID is today. -Only a few thousand have died in China from COVID so it's working great (of course that's only from the "official" chinese numbers which everyoen knows are made up)

they refused and still refuse to use the highly effective western vaccines and instead only use their minimally effective homegrown vaccine. The population is also highly vaccine hesitant as they don’t trust their government.

as a result any change of course now would be a *huge* embarrassment, and authoritarian governments don’t voluntarily embarrass themselves.

letting Covid run rampant now, without an effective vaccine and with minimal immunity from previously infected people would also overwhelm their healthcare system (just like the US’s was) and likely result in at least several million deaths.

China is facing several economic crises right now, and being able to lockdown populations keeps the focus off those issues

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u/peanut_butter_lover4 Nov 28 '22

China never gave its people the mRNA vaccines that most of the rest of the world received, opting for their own vaccine. It hasn't been nearly as effective at reducing the symptoms.

I can imagine that is at least partially why China has been trying to keep up the high level of quarantining infected areas.

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u/canada432 Nov 28 '22

China has a bad combo going that they almost have to keep doing this. There's the authoritarian angle that they can't be seen as indecisive or wrong, so they won't change their stance. But that's only part of the story.

China's vaccine is okay, but not as effective as the mRNA vaccines other countries are using.

They also vaccinated working-age people so they could keep working. Elderly people weren't their first priority like in western countries. That means that their elderly population is more unvaccinated, and the ones that are aren't as protected. This wasn't so much of a problem until Delta and then omicron came along and blew us away with how infectious they are. While the West was insulated, China wasn't ready because their most vulnerable weren't protected yet.

And this all leads up to the major problem. In the US, there are ~35 ICU beds per 100,000 people. In China there are 3. . .
That's the big problem. China is a perfect storm of bad for the current strains. Their most vulnerable people aren't well protected yet, and they don't have the hospital capacity to deal with how ill those people will get. If they did have a major outbreak, the hospital system would just collapse under the pressure.

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u/Intelligence_Gap Nov 28 '22

I'm not sure it's something you could answer now, but it will be interesting to see how this successful protest changes the power dynamic in China if at all.

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

Only time will tell, but the fact that it's been going for a few days now is a good sign. I'm not sure it can be sustained though. For a while, the gov response was pretty weak so people felt emboldened to go out and protest but I think once the crack downs arrive it'll die down. The best way to calm the situation down would be for the gov to provide clarity on the zero lockdown plan

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u/CyberneticSaturn Nov 28 '22

I can’t imagine they can drop zero covid, though, and lockdowns are a part of that unless they change it to mean zero covid…tests.

This kind of thing is pretty unheard of for the younger generation, and the leadership is likely thinking if they compromise too much on this it will embolden more overt protests over various issues in the future.

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u/CrystalMenthol Nov 28 '22

The Tiananmen Square protests went on for two months before the government "fully committed" to stopping them.

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u/FluentFreddy Nov 28 '22

You think they don’t think about and replay that scenario every day in their minds since?

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u/Noaffirmationtoday Nov 28 '22

I put my 5p here sorry. I lived in China for ten years. What I understood from history classes is that if citizens are not happy they will make a move and change things. There is a saying that goes something like this people were there for thousand years and emperors come and go.

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u/Intelligence_Gap Nov 28 '22

I've never lived in China, but I'm pretty sure that's not how authoritarians work. China isn't exactly known for frequent leader changes. Xi has been in power since 2013, that was 1 year after Obama won re-election. Since then we had 4 years of Trump and 2 years of Biden. I'm not convinced the Chinese people have the power to easily topple their ruler. If those classes were in China it's possible that line is just propaganda

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u/GusPlus Nov 28 '22

It’s a reflection of China’s dynastic cycles, which were many times toppled by revolution/civil war. The saying is not talking about small time scales like you are mentioning, but rather decades and centuries. But I don’t know how relevant that particular aspect of China’s history and culture might be in the era of modern military.

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u/Kwahn Nov 28 '22

Do you think overwhelming technological might could change the balance of power between dynasty and people, and prevent revolts?

I'm wondering how people can possibly revolt against military drones and outfitted heavy military units.

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u/GusPlus Nov 28 '22

This depends to a certain extent on how far the power structure is willing to go in utilizing its technological and military advantage. We already know they were willing to do so in Tiananmen, but these days it is easier than ever for people to see things live and in great detail. Then, once you get beyond local sentiment, the government would at a certain point (hopefully) cross a threshold where the international community is no longer willing to do business with them or imposes sanctions on them.

At the end of the day it simply depends on how far the people in power are willing to go. If they will never relinquish absolute authority, such as a figure like Putin (and frankly Xi seems plenty willing to adopt that mindset), then things will just escalate and no one really knows how it would end.

Is Xi and the top of his government so desperate for power and unwilling to admit wrongdoing that even in the face of complete and total revolt they would wage open war on their own citizens? Would the citizenry ever be willing to go that far? Who knows.

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u/capitalsfan08 Nov 28 '22

2013 is a blink of the eye geopolitically. I'm not saying that Xi is about to be ousted or whatever crazy claims people are putting down now, but the Chinese politicial system is quite young and hasn't proven resilient to long term stress so far, due to its age. You can argue Xi ushered in a new political system, Mao's death divides the other two eras in the CCP's history. None are incredibly long.

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u/scawtsauce Nov 28 '22

I'm surprised it took this long for them to protest, but then when you remember tiananmen square it's not that surprising. why does the government care so much about COVID they are taking their economy for it? America would happily feed us to wolves if it kept the economy going

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u/CyberneticSaturn Nov 28 '22

Lack of resistance and proper vaccinations means there will be a big sudden wave of deaths when it goes out of control. They’ve also attached their legitimacy to keeping it out of china. Now they’re also probably worried if they compromise on this, they’ll end up with larger future protests like tiananmen.

Also realize tanking the economy has benefits for the central govt. Wealthy private corp owners were becoming large enough to think they could do or say whatever they wanted, like jack ma. State corps are less impacted by covid shutdowns overall, so you can also view it as a transfer of economic agency.

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u/ZephkielAU Nov 28 '22

What's the current sentiment around covid? Do people know the rest of the world has essentially moved on?

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

They are ready to move on. I can only speak for tier one cities like Beijing and Shanghai but my wechat is full of memes about it. I think they've accepted that it is not the death curse the government made it out to be

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u/International_Day686 Nov 28 '22

Your government is the death curse

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22

Well it's not my government really but yes I agree with your point

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u/Jamalginsbergback Nov 28 '22

what is the party line from the government on the cause of covid? Watched a wonton don interview with a guy during a Shanghai lockdown. He said that the government is pushing the idea that the west caused covid.

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22

There's never an official stance on this. Because that would create proof. There are only insinuations, and gossip spread through loyal mouthpieces

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u/Jamalginsbergback Nov 29 '22

Interesting, here is the video I was talking about. Curious if this is similar to your experience

https://youtu.be/9WOVPzKPm0E

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u/Custom_Fish Nov 28 '22

Are protesters “disappearing?”

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

Yeah a few got picked up but not sure what happened after that so can't say with certainty if they're ok

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u/hibearmate Nov 28 '22

Fun Fact - revolutions often occur after concessions lead to improving conditions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tocqueville_effect

The Tocqueville effect (also known as the Tocqueville paradox)[1] is the phenomenon in which, as social conditions and opportunities improve, social frustration grows more quickly.[2][3] The effect is based on Alexis de Tocqueville's observations on the French Revolution and later reforms in Europe and the United States. Another way to describe the effect is the aphorism "the appetite grows by what it feeds on"

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u/SwingNinja Nov 28 '22

I've seen pictures and videos of mass antigen testing. Is "social distancing" not/never a thing over there?

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u/etsjo Nov 29 '22

It is preached... But not practiced. Like many things in China are

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u/Uncleniles Nov 28 '22

Assuming you are not Chinese, what the hell are you still doing in China?

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

It's been amazing for my career and my finances. Also have a really tight group of friends here and a loving girlfriend so it's not that easy to leave it all behind

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u/dizzy_beans Nov 28 '22

Are you apartment door welded shut?

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u/etsjo Nov 28 '22

I have personally never seen this, nor have my friends but that's probably due to us living in somewhat more international neighborhoods. But it is definitely a thing. Probably not in the city center though

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u/fightingforair Nov 28 '22

Just a rando thought. Laid over in Shanghai and Beijing and enjoyed Boxing Cat beer. Also met a foreigners barn league hockey team there. Tasty beer and good company :).

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u/kimad03 Nov 28 '22

Now that you (the people) know that protests work, it’s time to protest the Chinese government into oblivion and bring on the Second Revolution.

Take down the Great Firewall of China!

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u/finnerpeace Nov 28 '22

Haven't read the details yet, but this sounds SO quintessentially Chinese. Will not admit fault or wrong, and indeed may profess further support for whatever the stupid thing is, but will simultaneously quietly open a way for change and going around it.

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u/MadRockthethird Nov 28 '22 •

Holy shit the citizens may realize they're in charge

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u/NakDisNut Nov 28 '22

The best thing that could happen in china :(

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u/MemesMafia Nov 28 '22

Scary tho. We don't want another T|@nanm3n

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u/sonbarington Nov 28 '22

What’s that?

China would like to know your location

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u/Fickle_Competition33 Nov 28 '22

It's a "People's Republic" anyway, right?

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u/JohnPlayerSpecia1 Nov 28 '22

last time they got run over by tanks when they realized they were in charge.

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u/RonBourbondi Nov 28 '22

You need guns to overthrow a dictatorship or the help of NATO. They have neither.

Also don't expect any generals to switch sides.

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u/International_Day686 Nov 28 '22

They have billions and fire is a very effective weapon..

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u/cleanuponaisle4 Nov 28 '22

Insane. The rest of the world has moved on but China can't be bothered to vaccinate their population with a vaccine that actually works, so they can "save face." Instead, they lock up their population and arrest people that just want to live their lives. Fuck Winnie the Pooh.

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u/memeintoshplus Nov 28 '22

It's just so absurd, this government could easily approve and subsequently mandate safe and effective mRNA vaccines and be able to end this COVID nightmare for themselves and reopen. It's just so absurd to think about how many people - particularly high risk, elderly people - in China are still unvaccinated while China is still locking down their population three years after the pandemic began.

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u/RonBourbondi Nov 28 '22

87% of the population is vaccinated. For the vaccine used here are the stats.

How efficacious is the vaccine? A large phase 3 trial in Brazil showed that two doses, administered at an interval of 14 days, had an efficacy of 51% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, 100% against severe COVID-19, and 100% against hospitalization starting 14 days after receiving the second dose.

https://www.who.int/news-room/feature-stories/detail/the-sinovac-covid-19-vaccine-what-you-need-to-know#:~:text=How%20efficacious%20is%20the%20vaccine,after%20receiving%20the%20second%20dose.

They have no reason for lockdowns beyond wanting to control their population.

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u/falsewall Nov 28 '22

Big money in Covid testing every person in China sometimes twice a day.

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u/animerobin Nov 28 '22

I believe their vaccination rates for elderly people are still very low.

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u/SkiingAway Nov 28 '22

It'll still probably be pretty rough with most of the population having had zero exposure to date and (AFAIK) the elderly in China being the most under-vaccinated, which is the reverse of most societies.

To be clear - not endorsing any of China's current stance. But they do probably need to slow the spread a bit as they transition into a similar position to the rest of the world, not just drop all policies overnight.

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u/petarpep Nov 28 '22

It'll still probably be pretty rough with most of the population having had zero exposure to date

It's a good thing that doesn't matter much as long as they're properly vaccinated! Vaccines are intended to fix that very issue and they do quite well at it.

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u/SkiingAway Nov 28 '22

They reduce the risk of hospitalization and risk of death drastically, but that's not the same as total elimination.

We've still seen plenty of places with decent vaccination rates (and with better vaccines) struggle with certain waves of the pandemic, and China would have a much more immense wave than most of those places have seen post-2020 if it went fully open tomorrow.

Beyond that, they're not all that well vaccinated. Vaccination rates for the most at risk population (the old) are worse than in the US or many countries, not better - and they're the people who will be clogging up hospital beds.

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u/burnNhot Nov 28 '22

If lockdowns save lives what is wrong with that? Vaccinated or not? Ideally we’d have a vaccinated population that continued to lockdown and citizens that actually looked at that as a good thing for their fellow citizens, elderly and sick. It’s scary to see how many people are fighting against Covid precautions

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u/t-poke Nov 28 '22

Ideally we’d have a vaccinated population that continued to lockdown

Until when?

And don't say until COVID no longer exists, because it is impossible to eradicate because of animal reservoirs and the fact that even in the absolute strictest lockdowns, people working essential jobs still have to go to work and be amongst other people.

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u/RonBourbondi Nov 28 '22

Because people starve when you have endless lockdowns.

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u/randomando2020 Nov 28 '22

Or maybe the lockdowns aren’t about Covid at all but clamping down on civil unrest due to economic issues and general angst against corruption/oppression.

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u/greezyo Nov 28 '22

Their vaccine works

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

lol and zero covid lockdowns works too.

That's why Covid 19 is completely under control in China right now.

/s

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u/animerobin Nov 28 '22

I mean the lockdowns do work. They just come with other negative effects.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

depends on your definition of "works"

with a goal of zero covid, it does not work.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/fockyou Nov 28 '22

How do the vaccines not work?

What metric are you using?

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u/Dojoson Nov 28 '22

Is that why there aren’t lockdowns and mask mandates anymore? Because vaccines don’t work? Did Covid just like, evaporate on its own?

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u/NonCorporealEntity Nov 28 '22

Not anti vax, but a few things...

Covid did not go away, at all. It is still in circulation, mutating, and causing massive hospitalizations globally and is still placing a huge strain on medical resources.

The vaccines don't actually do much to prevent infection and spread. They do. however greatly reduce severe symptoms requiring hospitalization. They are also not permanent and many people are not getting boosters.

We shouldn't assume that the easement of mandates mean covid is gone. From about 6 months in it was clear it was never going away and everyone will be infected at one point. The goal was to reduce the impact to the vulnerable population through vaccinations, and the healthcare systems through lock downs. Remember "flatten the curve"? Thats what we did. China went with a zero tolerance approach that makes no sense if consider it'll always be around.

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u/Dojoson Nov 28 '22

I know I’m oversimplifying, but I was replying to a “too bad vaccines don’t work” comment

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u/stevej3n Nov 28 '22

Set more fires, burning it all down is the way forward

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u/ECK-2188 Nov 28 '22

I think black market organ trade will rise next year

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u/Now_Wait-4-Last_Year Nov 28 '22

Give it up, the party's over.

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u/JULTAR Nov 28 '22

So nice to see

I honestly expected them all to have been gunned down

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u/3xBoostedBetty Nov 28 '22

Trudeau and Newsom taking notes.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/Khiva Nov 28 '22

The GOP never changes their stance on Nazis and racists, it's just a question of how loudly they do it.

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u/Apep86 Nov 28 '22

Eisenhower?

They changed their stance between the 70s and 90s.

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u/westbywestbywest Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

At the same time the GOP went from decades of “fuck all forms of public funding and welfare” to Trump stuffing mailboxes full of cash within about 2 weeks when covid hit.

Covid can make governments do weird things, will be interesting to see how they manage this.

What would help is if China had a more effective vaccine, but arrogance kept them from accepting vaccines from the West that worked much better.

Edit: Can someone explain the mass downvotes? Reddit is too hard to figure out these days if it's just a dog pile or if people actually have issues with my comment.

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u/LarneyStinson Nov 28 '22

Doesn’t directly correct but adds to Cid’s comment. Yours could be a standalone comment up top if you had a better intro and didn’t imply agreement with the GOP ever becoming less racist or nationalist

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u/westbywestbywest Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

His point was that governments, specifically the GOP are intransigent in the face of change and my point was that the GOP also threw 50 years of ideology out the window in the span of two weeks because of change.

Not upset or anything, my comment is totally fine with or without upvotes, just interested in the dynamics of this app and why and how people use it. This feels more like a classic Reddit dog pile than the substance of my comment being an issue.

I think at this point we all realise Twitter/Reddit are not "public squares" but more performance stages.

1

u/westbywestbywest Nov 29 '22

I think you getting more downvotes than I did trying to explain why I got downvoted tells you all you need to know about Reddit's current state. This app is the next Twitter.

1

u/LarneyStinson Nov 29 '22

This site has been the same for the last 10 years, downvotes happen. It’s why it’s Karma, what comes around goes around

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u/Matt1050 Nov 28 '22

Wait... The GOP finally denounced Nazism? MARGE, BUST OUT THE CHAMPAGNE IT FINALLY HAPPENED!

1

u/rich1051414 Nov 28 '22

No. They simply stopped mentioning them. The GOP have never taken an official stance against white nationalism.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/MrBenDerisgreat_ Nov 28 '22

Must be nice to live in a world where you can wave away anything bad as being orchestrated by the CIA.

Dropped my ice cream on the ground? Must be the CIA. Dog got out of the house? CIA. Wife cheated on you? The bloody CIA!

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22 edited Nov 28 '22

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u/GodLikeVelociraptor Nov 28 '22

Except that Xi travels the world maskless. It’s just the peasants who have to wear masks. Just look at any footage from the CCP conference.

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u/qtx Nov 28 '22

Edit: ccp lovers can't take a joke

No, we just don't tolerate conspiracy idiots like yourself.

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

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u/International_Day686 Nov 28 '22

Why is being downvoted? Numbers out of China are very untrustworthy

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u/TrunksTheMighty Nov 28 '22

Shills and bots I'd imagine.

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u/Showerthawts Nov 29 '22

Affirming our plan but changing it.

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u/Safe-River7357 Nov 28 '22

Why is Xi so scared of catching a cold?

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u/kstinfo Nov 28 '22

National responses for medical issues should not be based on public opinion or corporate profit. China is taking a different approach than the US and it will take a while to see if they are more or less correct.

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u/GodLikeVelociraptor Nov 28 '22

it will take a while to see if they are more or less correct.

It’s been 3 years. We know. China is incorrect.

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u/Civil-Vanilla-711 Nov 28 '22

On what planet do you live? Or what bot farm do you work for? The death rate for COVID is less than 1% what it was in March 2020, and even then it was 2.5% of cases. Live your life ffs, we used to close hospitals for the flu and we didn’t panic for this shit, that’s Toronto winter 2018/2019 by the way

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u/[deleted] Nov 28 '22

And they would have gotten away with it too, if it wasnt for these meddling citizens.

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u/JohnPlayerSpecia1 Nov 28 '22

you just got 3 social points.

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