Do you think the public health community failed to grasp that China's Zero Covid policy was only possible because the overwhelming majority of urban Chinese live in walled compounds (xiaoqu) that are easy to forcibly seal off from the outside world?
That's an interesting question, George. I do think most foreigners, including Western public health experts, are probably unaware of how big Chinese cities are organized and didn't fully understand how these residential compounds -- along with the presence of CCP "volunteers" -- made it possible to execute the draconian Zero Covid policy.
Another thought: I learned from Lorenzo from Oz's Substack that China had a long-running problem with banditry (because legalized polygamy created an underclass of male incels, but China wasn't able to weaponize this underclass against the outside world as the Muslims did).
Perhaps the security-conscious urban architecture was to protect against this bandit threat?
Given that a disproportionate number of pandemics seem to have originated in China historically, I wonder if even back then they decided to build their cities with quarantining in mind?
Or was it more down to making their cities more defensible against invading steppe nomads, in which case we'd expect cities to be similar in other Eurasian "heartland" (in the Mackinder sense) regions?
Perhaps it's just that China is a very collectivist culture, as also manifest in the way that (for example) Chinese tourists almost always travel around in large groups on organized tours?
Did it also make a difference (not just in China but in East Asia more generally) that people there were a lot more afraid of coronaviruses (because of their past experiences with the far deadlier SARS and MERS) and thus more willing to accept measures (such as centralized quarantine) that were considered unthinkable in the West?
I think we have to be careful not to generalize about the Covid responses in East Asia. For example, Japan didn't have centralized quarantine. Also, were Chinese centralized quarantine facilities really providing more benefits than harms? Many of them were absolutely filthy and you wonder how many people sent to them -- exposed, but not positive -- might have gotten infected during their stays in the large dormitory-like settings without proper bathrooms.
I thought that in China (and in most other Zero Covid countries) those who actually tested positive were confined in hospitals (even if they had minor or no symptoms) rather than quarantine facilities.
Japan seems to be a mystery: why were infections relatively low there for so long in spite of a fairly light-touch approach that (from a superficial perspective) was basically Sweden with more masks?
This isn't correct, though the so-called "Wuhan miracle" was touted by Public Health. The pivot to zero-COVID lite already had happened before the Wuhan lockdown ended. It was Neil Ferguson's computer model for COVID infections and deaths (which of course turned out to be totally exaggerated and incorrect) that prompted the US and UK government administrations to embrace lockdowns and then the entire world. The greatest scientific failure in modern history. You can see the full story here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7bd50604-2559-11ed-a44e-83ef2a2167ff
Neil Ferguson definitely played an outsized role in spreading lockdowns with his alarming projections, but it was China that exported the lockdown model to the world.
Do you think the public health community failed to grasp that China's Zero Covid policy was only possible because the overwhelming majority of urban Chinese live in walled compounds (xiaoqu) that are easy to forcibly seal off from the outside world?
That's an interesting question, George. I do think most foreigners, including Western public health experts, are probably unaware of how big Chinese cities are organized and didn't fully understand how these residential compounds -- along with the presence of CCP "volunteers" -- made it possible to execute the draconian Zero Covid policy.
What I'm wondering is how Chinese cities came to be laid out in the way which they are?
Were they built like that deliberately for the purpose of social control, or is it something more cultural?
Cities have been laid out like this as far back as the Tang Dynasty
Another thought: I learned from Lorenzo from Oz's Substack that China had a long-running problem with banditry (because legalized polygamy created an underclass of male incels, but China wasn't able to weaponize this underclass against the outside world as the Muslims did).
Perhaps the security-conscious urban architecture was to protect against this bandit threat?
Given that a disproportionate number of pandemics seem to have originated in China historically, I wonder if even back then they decided to build their cities with quarantining in mind?
Or was it more down to making their cities more defensible against invading steppe nomads, in which case we'd expect cities to be similar in other Eurasian "heartland" (in the Mackinder sense) regions?
Perhaps it's just that China is a very collectivist culture, as also manifest in the way that (for example) Chinese tourists almost always travel around in large groups on organized tours?
Did it also make a difference (not just in China but in East Asia more generally) that people there were a lot more afraid of coronaviruses (because of their past experiences with the far deadlier SARS and MERS) and thus more willing to accept measures (such as centralized quarantine) that were considered unthinkable in the West?
I think we have to be careful not to generalize about the Covid responses in East Asia. For example, Japan didn't have centralized quarantine. Also, were Chinese centralized quarantine facilities really providing more benefits than harms? Many of them were absolutely filthy and you wonder how many people sent to them -- exposed, but not positive -- might have gotten infected during their stays in the large dormitory-like settings without proper bathrooms.
I thought that in China (and in most other Zero Covid countries) those who actually tested positive were confined in hospitals (even if they had minor or no symptoms) rather than quarantine facilities.
Japan seems to be a mystery: why were infections relatively low there for so long in spite of a fairly light-touch approach that (from a superficial perspective) was basically Sweden with more masks?
One thing is that Japan did very little testing.
So you think a low IFR (perhaps due to the low obesity rate) may have been misread as a low infection rate?
This isn't correct, though the so-called "Wuhan miracle" was touted by Public Health. The pivot to zero-COVID lite already had happened before the Wuhan lockdown ended. It was Neil Ferguson's computer model for COVID infections and deaths (which of course turned out to be totally exaggerated and incorrect) that prompted the US and UK government administrations to embrace lockdowns and then the entire world. The greatest scientific failure in modern history. You can see the full story here: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/7bd50604-2559-11ed-a44e-83ef2a2167ff
https://www.aier.org/article/the-failure-of-imperial-college-modeling-is-far-worse-than-we-knew/
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/covid-lockdowns-big-fail-joe-nocera-bethany-mclean-book-excerpt.html
Neil Ferguson definitely played an outsized role in spreading lockdowns with his alarming projections, but it was China that exported the lockdown model to the world.