There’ve been lots of western estimates with varying levels of veracity, but here’s a Chinese study from Fudan University that I think is most valid and interesting. It’s from a few months before the opening, but in it they’re predicting around 1.5 million deaths if China opened up in the near future, based on modeling from earlier outbreaks. Their numbers line up with western estimates and excess mortality rates from after the opening.
Like a billion people caught covid in the space of a month, it honestly just makes sense that 1/1000 died; covid’s dangerous. 60,000 just isn’t a realistic number of deaths on that scale.
Anecdotally I can also say that I know multiple Chinese people who lost relatives during that period whose deaths were recorded as other things, because they passed away without being tested.
I mean believe what you want because we’re never actually going to know for sure, but if I have to stake a number I’m going with academic studies over vibes.
And there’s no “coverup”, there’s just noone counting. I’m not saying the PRC have maliciously hidden their numbers, I think they’ve just deliberately made the choice to not know. It’s not in anyone’s interest to investigate because that might imply that opening up was the wrong decision.
You deciding that the real number can’t be more than an order of magnitude bigger than the official number is vibes. It’s completely arbitrary.
I think it’s just an open secret, no one in China wants to talk or think about covid anymore. As we’ve seen, excess deaths stats are very high, so people are aware that more people died than usual, it’s just a lack of acknowledgement that it was because of covid because it’s easier to just sweep it all under the rug and move on. Same as everywhere really, it’s more convenient to just pretend it never happened, otherwise it implies we were all wrong to leave covid behind.
Attitudes now are the same as anywhere, but China’s specific situation is unique. They went from the tightest covid restrictions in the world to “what’s covid?” practically overnight. Literally they closed testing infrastructure and let the majority of the population catch covid in the space of about 6 weeks. Other countries took years to go through the same thing, while maintaining testing and counting (to varying extents obviously) throughout.
Again, I don’t think it’s a “coverup”, I think they legitimately don’t know the stats because they stopped testing entirely. It’s a big country, a million people can die and its not going to be noticeable on the ground, I sincerely don’t see why the Chinese and western death estimates I linked above are so implausible?
We’re socialists and people don’t like that. Also at the time of the reddit exodus, we were by far the biggest instance and very active posters, so new people would see our good takes literally everywhere all the time and get upset.
We’re rude, but argue in good faith all the time. Just requires you to do the same too.
By the way regarding this:
Most comments from outsiders are deleted within a day
I briefly looked at your post history and you’ve got dozens of old comments on hexbear still up. The only removed comments that I could see were when you were getting upset about pronouns existing for some reason.
Default news subs (notably r/worldnews) are controlled by feds so they are at least artificially pro-Israel by just deleting anything remotely critical of it.
Either you love Stalin like a god or you are a libtard
You’re reading memes as sincere honestly, which I guess is any easy mistake to make. You’re correct about which way we lean but when we’re being serious we’re far more nuanced about AES and socialist historical figures than you imply.
Also, not that ‘authoritarianism’ is a real thing, but we do have a large number of anarchist users alongside our ML majority, and have specific rules in place to protect them against infighting.
Also we’d never say “-tard”. That’s ableist language.
Immediately stomp an insect when they see one inside the house. It’s like a reflex or impulse and honestly it’s kinda scary seeing an otherwise nice person just stomp an insect or spider or whatever in cold blood almost instantaneously. There’s like no thought or contemplation, it’s just see the insect, and then...
I think it’s understandable that men and other masc-presenting people would be upset to hear that they’re perceived as dangerous, when this perception is completely out of their control as an individual.
Completely unacceptable to deny or minimize the experiences of women over this upset though.
What's with some people claiming China isn't a communist country?
Absolute banger from the Atlantic (hexbear.net)
magnificent, no notes
Barron Trump declines Florida GOP delegate position due to 'prior commitments' (abcnews.go.com)
I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked (insideevs.com)
What's stopping your city's metro from looking like this? (hexbear.net)
Every metro interior should strive to look like a wood-paneled station wagon
deleted_by_moderator
George Galloway’s Plan to DESTROY the Labour Party | Downstream [01:25:23 | May 05 2024 | Novara Media] (youtu.be)
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/15074083...
shout out to the cashier at the convenience store today (hexbear.net)
link
You know someone has fash tendencies when they... (CW:Violence)
Immediately stomp an insect when they see one inside the house. It’s like a reflex or impulse and honestly it’s kinda scary seeing an otherwise nice person just stomp an insect or spider or whatever in cold blood almost instantaneously. There’s like no thought or contemplation, it’s just see the insect, and then...
Sexism really do be getting me down
yea...
Why are many men growing beards again ? (lemmy.ml)
Yesterday I passed a barbershop and saw ads on their wall outside of men with beards and short hair. It is a revival or saving electricity ?
It's not the genocide that makes Biden unpopular, it's the spoopy Ruzzians. (www.reddit.com)