Broke: Globalism
Broke: MAGA
Woke: 14 Principles of Xi Jinping Thought
Xi Jinping has just hurt the feelings of 6 billion world citizens:
In view of the rapid spread of COVID-19 across the world, China has decided to temporarily suspend the entry into China by foreign nationals holding visas or residence permits still valid to the time of this announcement, effective from 0 a.m., 28 march 2020. Entry by foreign nationals with APEC Business Travel Cards will be suspended as well. Policies including port visas, 24/72/144-hour visa-free transit policy, Hainan 30-day visa-free policy, 15-day visa-free policy specified for foreign cruise-group-tour through Shanghai Port, Guangdong 144-hour visa-free policy specified for foreign tour groups from Hong Kong or Macao SAR, and Guangxi 15-day visa-free policy specified for foreign tour groups of ASEAN countries will also be temporarily suspended. Entry with diplomatic, service, courtesy or C visas will not be affected. Foreign nationals coming to China for necessary economic, trade, scientific or technological activities or out of emergency humanitarian needs may apply for visas at Chinese embassies or consulates. Entry by foreign nationals with visas issued after this announcement will not be affected.
China is truly mean.
Anyhow.
We are not approaching the point at which East Asia countries, which had successfully contained the overflow from the Wuhan epidemic, are now seeing their numbers begin to tick rapidly upwards again thanks to feckless Europeans and Americans.
This presages a world divided into safe “blue zones”, and “red zones” where COVID-19 rages. I called this back in February:
Nonetheless, there are many places in the world – probably the great majority – that are less functional and competent than China. Certainly there are very few countries with the political wherewithal to put half of their population under varying types of travel restrictions and basically implode their own economies. There are going to have their own outbreaks, time lagged ~2 months relative to China (note that the first death in Wuhan didn’t take place until January 9), and will then start catapulting the disease back into areas where it had previously been checked – at least short of a total shutdown of globalization on the Best Korea model.
It would be interesting to see who’ll end up on which side of the barrier.
(1) My bet is that the East Asians will be able to control it.
Ironic that the one #coronavirus bet I made to date is on the "whitepill" side of the spectrum. #prediction pic.twitter.com/GCHr1EHqsc
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) March 27, 2020
(2) I am increasingly sure that the US is screwed no matter what. China closed down Wuhan when it was at officially just 400 cases, Murica is now #1 with more than 100,000 cases and (mild) containment measures only began very recently.
The US does have significant advantages relative to China, such as automobile centric culture, suburbia, etc. – hence, why I thought the US would do pretty well in January – but they squandered them due to political paralysis. Sad.
The gamblers now think there is a 71% chance that there will be more than one million Corona cases by April 15, that is, three days after Trump says he wants to see packed churches for Easter.
I don’t think containment much past that number is feasible.
My guess for the US is that it will end up as a epidemiological patchwork quilt of “Blue” and “Red” states that mostly correlate with their respective electoral divisions.
(3) Europe will be somewhere in between these two extremes of East Asian competence and American dysfunction.
(4) Like most, I was pessimistic about the Third World… but perhaps I was overly pessimistic. Quarantines aren’t that organizationally hard to imagine – after all, the concept was invented in 14th century Italy.
The Third World vs. Late Stage Liberalism. Who will perform better on #coronavirus? pic.twitter.com/tEh65Z5BkH
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) March 14, 2020
I reached Pakistan today after a week in US. Went through three airports, multiple train and subway stations, despite the big Corona scare on US media there was no screening by US authorities anywhere. Landed back in Karachi to find a thorough system in place. Kudos #SindhGovt
— M. Jibran Nasir 🇵🇸 (@MJibranNasir) March 14, 2020
What the Third World does lack is technical means. But I believe that China will be waiting in the wings, ready to provision help in return for geopolitical influence even as the US burns and squabbles.
For instance, my friends in Serbia tell me that Chinese specialists have already de facto taken charge of their containment efforts. A week ago, I identified Serbia as one of Europe’s more dangerous potential Corona underfires (after Ukraine). However, following the arrival of Chinese specialists, testing is being massively ramped up – soon, there will be 6,000 tests per day, which is very impressive for a country of 7 million. They are now also using hospitals to house people with mild symptoms, to prevent them from infecting their families. Makeshift camps have been set up in Belgrade.
Vucic is… grateful.
Italian activists have replaced the EU flag with a Chinese one.
Meanwhile, the unbelievers who have insulted and defied Sinotriumph were instead brushed off.
"Brazilian media reported that Bolsonaro attempted to call Chinese President Xi Jinping on Friday but he refused to answer."https://t.co/yQDf1d5C0i
— Artyom Lukin (@ArtyomLukin) March 22, 2020
All in all, China is winning the post-Corona world, while all that the MAGA people can do in response is indignantly sputter about their “China Virus” and making the Chicoms “pay.”
Interesting to reflect that just a couple of months ago I was discussing how long Corona-chan was going to delay China overtaking the US in various private chats. I was a "Sinotriumphalist", relative to consensus, but not even to the extent we're seeing IRL.
— Anatoly Karlin (@powerfultakes) March 25, 2020
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Please keep off topic posts to the current Open Thread.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Disease hits liberal democracy in its weak spots – something that potential enemies can’t help but notice. If Corona-Chan wasn’t a bio-weapon to begin with, she’s likely making those who actually design them think dangerous thoughts.
So you trust the Chinese casualty figures? I sure as fuck don’t. How’s your bitcoin doing?
I have become more pessimistic about Russia in recent days. Putin made a highly embarrassing U-turn on his holiday week. Russian government looks confused and overwhelmed by recent events. The populace is oblivious to the dangers ahead of them. We will be going “herd immunity” way I fear.
Thanks for your concern.
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/1238297712858185728
It’s amazing, isn’t it?
The virus probably originated in China, and yet China is going to clean up in the geopolitical sweepstakes.
The globalism promoted relentlessly by the US becomes nemesis. The arrow returns to the archer.
I doubt China will manage to stake out much. Take me, for example. This Corona thing made me far more sinophobic than I was before. Because this thing came from China. And they obviously made a piss-poor job of containing it.
Imagine that Chernobyl disaster released a gigantic radioactive cloud that produced deadly fallout all over the world. So people in Europe, America, etc. are dying in droves of radiation, and the Soviets sneer, “Weak Westerners, they were not prepared for our nuclear accidents.”
Russia and China bashing is an industry. One cannot let it down. They hope to be payed by ‘let’s China (and Russia) pay’. One cannot say anything good about Russia and China, that would weaken the morale.
Also, just FTR, I do believe that Chinese cases and deaths are almost certainly greatly underestimated – perhaps by a factor of as much as 3-4 (as in Bergamo, Italy).
But what I have no doubt of is that the epidemic has been almost entirely contained within Chinese borders. This is obvious. All international infections in March have been sourced from Europe, with a few coming from Iran. US is also now stepping up to the plate. From China – entirely or almost entirely zero. No amount of “covering up” within China could produce such results.
https://twitter.com/FerdiGiugliano/status/1243128000121618432
Third worlders did the crush it now approach and closed the borders exactly because they know if they get it they’re fucked, and shutting the border is piss easy
Most likely, it was a banal zoonotic event, which can happen anywhere. (Though, in fairness, China produces more than its “fair share”).
Still, ethically close to neutral.
There is a non-zero chance that it was a bio-error. That would be genuine cause for getting angry. But probability of that has been receding
In your position, I would probably be much angrier at my elites, who had two months advance warning (China had zero) but still managed to fuck up on a much larger scale than China, let alone Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, etc. The “experts” spent this time denying that it was going to be a problem. Trump, who spent February and early March dismissing this. And so forth.
Anyhow, while this “blame China” approach will work for the US (or at least half the US), I don’t think it’s going to resound anywhere else much.
https://twitter.com/PurpleBaptist/status/1241448552393572353
Sadly, we netizens all (well, especially in YouTube) knew in January, that China’s government was lying by orders of magnitude about its death and infection numbers, and that this was likely going to be a slightly more dangerous epidemic than the Chinese government was saying.
It was also known by early February that China was burning likely thousands of bodies each night, and this was supported by rising sulfur dioxide from the cremetorian smoke in the regions affected, available on open source pollution and weather websites, and NASA websites.
It was never “high level secret knowledge” that China was burning thousands of bodies, but just general netizen knowledge, even for people who speak like hippies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfYCD9VigAI.
However, many government in Western countries had seemed to naively believed Chinese official figures of small numbers of infected and dead, – probably wanted to believe such rosy data, and as a result was created this “it’s just a mild flu”.
They somehow were even not suscipious when China’s government arrested the Chinese journalists reporting about the reality of the epidemic in Wuhan.
It’s “high trust” Western countries’ responsibility for stupidity, including naive believing of Chinese government data about the epidemic. Combine with years of lack of preparation for epidemics (all they need to defeat this particular epidemic, is something as cheap as GP-5 gasmasks, that USSR could provide multiple for every citizen).
If I was Serbia, I would avoid specialists, from a state in whose government incompetence created the problem, due to lack of hygiene regulation in the food industry, despite the creation of these epidemics becoming a regular and predictable event in China in the 21st century. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971214014970
Countries of the world could have better learned from what the civil defense of the USSR had the capacity for decades ago.
Technology to stop these epidemics has been available for a century, and the problem is deterioration of state capacity to apply this old technology, after the end of the Cold War.
To defeat the epidemic, while maintaining a normal economy – you just need to legally require people outside seal their eyes, and filter air to something like P100 filtration standard. (i.e. all which was within the capacity of Soviet Union half a century in the past, and was backed by national stocks of hundreds of millions of GP-5 gasmask).
The difference now is how advanced gasmask technology have become (so office workers should be able to comfortably continue work and speak with a Scott Promask or Dräger FPS 7000), and the economies should be continuing as normal). While at the same time, countries (unlike the USSR) have not produced enough to provide to the public, even though it only be investment of a few billion dollars to maintain such stocks that would last for decades.
Another difference is also the existence of gendine-coated gloves, which should now be mass produced for anti-epidemic insurance.
When do you think USA will peak? Right now it looks like a powder keg.
I agree “blame China” is very unproductive (for non-Chinese), and the part which is within non-Chinese citizens’ locus of control is to blame their own government for believing Chinese government data, and not having adequate anti-epidemic preparation (whose historical example to follow should be the USSR’s state capacity by the 1960s).
But if you read Spanish newspapers and television, much of the main Spanish media describe the epidemic as “Chinese virus”, “Chinese pathogen”. Also it seems like a significant proportion the Spanish comments under articles – even in their educated newspapers – are angry with Chinese, as much as with their own government. So although it is unproductive, I assume ordinary, less educated Western European people, will be angry with China for this.
Italians and Spanish should be angry at their own government, rather than ordinary Chinese. Ordinary Chinese people are usually the main victims of their government’s incompetence, while local Chinese seem integrated in those countries (Chinese are like normal working class citizens of Spain and Italy, they have small shops, and poor Chinese children are often adopted from Chinese orphanages to live in Spanish/Italian families).
Still, it is only something fortunately unusual and humane to the 21st century that the Latins are not massacring Chinese immigrants at the moment. If you think even in civilized 1920s Japan, and with no causal connection (unlike in this case) to the disaster, they massacred Koreans, when there was earthquake in Tokyo.
The Chinese did nothing to prevent their citizens from spreading the virus abroad, and when Italy banned flights from China (on 31 January, probably far too late, the virus probably already was in Italy by then, but still), the Chinese reaction was whining about an “over-reaction”:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-10/italy-s-hopes-for-closer-china-ties-hit-by-virus-flight-ban-rift
Sure, the dogmatic belief in open borders by Western elites (plus sheer incompetence in preparing health care systems) is at least equally at fault, and the hysterical “We’ll make the CCP pay for it!” antics of stupid “yellow peril” Americans (often the same ones who five minutes later will go on about how it’s just a hoax to block Trump’s reelection) are ridiculous. But the propaganda spin the Chinese are putting on their own behaviour “We sacrificed so much to contain the virus, for the good of the rest of the world! And now we’re coming to save you!” (with the medical stocks they bought up throughout the world in January, or which were outright donated to them by Western states) is also pretty disgusting, even though that shouldn’t preclude cooperation in acting against the pandemic. imo you’re blinded in this by your anti-Western preconceptions.
According to whom? Or should I say WHO — which seems to be in China’s pocket. Has China let in any other international observers to verify this? There was a rumor floating around that China Mobile lost 8M cell subscribers in Jan-Feb. Actually not a rumor, it happened.
https://www.chinamobileltd.com/en/ir/operation_m.php?year=2020&scroll2title=1
This was a rather weird drop for a company which experienced sustained subscriber growth for the prior 24 months.
Let me interrupt this circle-jerk of America-hate to note:
China has poor relations with most of its neighbors.
Chinese businesses have poor international reputations for good reasons.
Chinese products do too.
The only first class made in China products are made under foreign supervision with the profits accruing overseas.
China’s richest city is in a state of low-level revolt.
China’s cultural exports are a rounding error from zero.
China cannot follow Japan and South Korea’s path because of its overall size and because of its rapidly aging population.
The pervasive culture of fraud prevents the most complex levels of social and industrial organization. “At PPP we’re bigger than the USA!!!” OK, could China put a man on the moon? Create a company as admired as Apple and Google? Create worldwide movie and music hits?
CV control makes China look good because it played directly to China’s strengths: authoritarian control of a pathetically weak and docile population.
“Chinese don’t sit on benches while eating but squat like Europeans do when they relieve themselves out in the leafy woods. All this occurs quietly and demurely. Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse. … It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
This wasn’t some anti-Asian bias. On Japan, written on the same trip:
“The inner palace courtyard is among the most exquisite architecture I have ever seen,” he wrote in his diary about Kyoto. The Japanese are “pure souls as nowhere else among people.”
https://akm-img-a-in.tosshub.com/indiatoday/images/story/201806/albert_einstein_0.jpeg
The blue and red zones in the US will likely be the inverse of their electoral mapping. New Orleans (blue dot in a red state), New York, New Jersey, Detroit etc. seeing the fastest spread. Red state exurbia, suburbia, ruralia just won’t see as much spread.
Well, aside from Italy’s lack of epidemic preparation (where we all have to acknowledge the superiority of the Soviet Union in this area, compared to contemporary countries), Italians can blame their government, for unintentionally making themselves the “frontline” in such epidemics, by naively importing Chinese businesses, perhaps using illegal Chinese immigrants, into their country.
Chinese factories, exploiting some kind of illegal Chinese slaves, is a significant part of Italy’s “craft” style of manufacturing. There’s also these Chinese brothels and Chinese victims of human trafficking entering Italy. (It seems like Chinese people are the real victims of this kind of slave factory and brothels, while Italians were happy to benefit from cheap labour and prostitutes).
(This might be a biased source – but there are many reliable sources on this topic. In Spain, a large part of the shops are owned by Chinese people, and import cheap Chinese products in some agreement with the Chinese government)
People probably had more important things to pay for during quarantine+economic crash then cellphone subscriptions (especially work phones for companies who weren’t able to operate)
What is there to verify? Other Governments would say if new cases were coming from China
You don’t know what you’re talking about, Anatoly. Immediately after Trump promised to wait and see, the Catholic bishops of America all gradually announced we would have no Holy Week services. Many of them did this despite the fact that their respective governors said Mass is fine as long as there are health precautions in place. Even the Jewish tranny health secretary of Pennsylvania said this!
But the bishops are all, in a word, cucks.
Trump or no Trump, there will be no sacraments for the faithful.
But what do you care? You’ve never shown any particular concern about the Chinese government’s suppression of Christianity, so I’m sure you don’t care about the fact that European police (as in Italy) are preventing priests from saying outdoor Mass, with precautions, as they did during the plague. Not one of you doomers, you advocates for a secular police state, have shown one iota of explanation for why Germany is right to “temporarily” ban ALL public religious ceremonies regardless of size or precautions.
You don’t care. But, more importantly, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Here in America, abortion clinics (and porn) have been deemed essential life services, while churches are not. That’s all anyone needs to know about the seriousness of this baloney.
I’d say that’s a pretty good bet considering that America probably already has something like 1.7M Coronavirus infections today. The reasoning is pretty simple…
We currently have 1,700 Coronavirus deaths and the fatality rate has probably been around 1% so far. On average, it’s about three weeks from infection to death. Therefore, we probably had roughly 170,000 infections three weeks ago.
Most estimates are that the doubling time for infections has been 3-6 days. But let’s be conservative, and assume 6 days. Therefore, during the last three weeks infections would have increased by about a factor of ten, and 170,000 infections three weeks ago would have become 1.7M today.
https://www.unz.com/runz/correctly-estimating-coronavirus-infections/
Obviously, these are all rough estimates with simplifying assumptions and also don’t take into account e.g. the lockdowns in various parts of the country over the last week or so. But I’d still be very surprised if we don’t have well over a million infections right now.
In understanding the Coronavirus, people have to get used to thinking in exponential terms…
Anyone who knows anything about Japan, Japanese culture, art and history would know how delusional this claim is
Beijing is fine as are Shanghai and Shenzhen, unless you’re some boomer retard stuck in the 90s who still thinks Hong Kong is the richest city in China
China cannot follow their path because they have more resources and manpower? Huh?
And Japans and ROK aging problem is way worse then Chinas
Honestly you ought to take good look in the mirror, cracker
I made fun of Chinese whining about racism at the very start of this post (“very mean”, “world citizens very offended”). The problem is not China, as you agree, but the Western elites who take such appeals seriously. And yes, I’m aware they bought up medical stocks in January and February – quite understandable, not their fault, considering nobody thought to implement export restrictions.
China shut down Wuhan Airport on Jan 23, no other region got to a serious stage.
I don’t begrudge them trying to make some PR now that they’re provisioning aid. Especially considering that the US has launched a rather vicious propaganda war against them.
At the end of the day, it was European countries and the US that allowed epidemics to develop within their countries. East Asian polities contained theirs, despite much denser transport links with China. But you don’t see the latter engaging in a propaganda campaign against China (with the understandable exception of Taiwan). Whereas it is most enthusiastically pursued by the US, the one big country that has perhaps failed most spectacularly.
It’s been days now and you still have yet to reply to this comment in that thread: https://www.unz.com/runz/correctly-estimating-coronavirus-infections/#comment-3793124
Just sayin’
I was closely following Corona since mid-January. China’s early response left much to be desired (and I posted as much), but most of these allegations range from “strongly exaggerated” to neocon BS.
And dude, come off of it already. 🙂 People are not going to wear these gas masks to work. Medical masks are a thousand times cheaper, and (for reducing r0) almost as effective. (Individuals should ofc be free to wear these gasmasks if they so want, to maximize personal protection). Let’s at least start with that goal, since it’s achievable in the short term, whereas making the requisite amount of gas masks (and convincing people to wear them!) will take many months that we don’t have.
Yeah, I can see letting my cell service slide. Actually I can’t. Especially if I was housebound. I’d search under the couch cushions for loose change to pay my bill. I suspect most people would.
Also, the point of letting observers in would be to confirm China’s claim that there are no new cases in China, not abroad via Chinese travelers.
Look, maybe I’m a totally gullible idiot and you and the other Coronavirus Hoaxers are correct. Maybe “It’s Just the Flu!!!”
But there were 140 Coronavirus deaths reported in New York today, nearly triple the figure of three or four days ago.
At the rate things are going, we’ll probably be seeing 500-1000 deaths per day in New York within another week or so, and they’ll begin to have huge problems disposing of the bodies. So I’d call that a pretty bad case of the flu.
As I keep on emphasizing, this isn’t Global Warming. We just need to wait another week or two and it will be pretty clear who was right and who was wrong.
I think your logic is sound. Ofc the gamblers refer to confirmed cases, but since the US is finally massively stepping up testing as of the past week, we can expect a huge flood of these over the next week or two.
Serb? Sorry we bombed your country! If it were up to me we’d have sent you roses, ammo and puppies in support of your reconquest of Kosovo and Serbian parts of Bosnia.
Best to move on, forgive and forget!
I agree with that, the main fault lies with Western political elites, and there should be a reckoning with them over this (but probably won’t be). However I don’t think inertial’s point can be entirely discounted. If hundreds of thousands or even millions die of Covid-19 in Western countries, I don’t think it will make China more popular, no matter how much medical supplies the Chinese send. That being said, the crisis will probably deepen already existing fractures within the EU (not sure imo that this will translate into enthusiasm for China though). The emerging line in Italy seems to be that the disaster happened not least because of austerity cuts in the Italian health care system (seen as the fault of bid bad Germany of course). The near total lack of solidarity with Italy by France and Germany in recent weeks didn’t help either. Germany has now belatedly accepted a few dozen Italian intensive care patients, but it will probably be seen as too little, too late. Will be interesting to see what happens on the Euro front, once the economic consequences of the pandemic become clearer.
I agree with that as well, I’ve lost all respect for Americans in the last few months (first over the Soleimani assassination in January, then over the reaction to the pandemic…Trump’s cult must be one of the dumbest political movements ever). The “We’ll make China pay” nonsense pushed by the American right will probably indeed find few followers outside the US. So in that sense China could profit from it, but only because the US right is such a pathetic joke.
Anyway, while I expect Russia to handle this better than many other countries, stay safe…if things go really bad, maybe Dmitry can send you one of his Hazmat suits, lol.
Look at the change in proportion of faithful Christians over the past 30 years in America, then compare it to the change in that proportion in China. And tell me which country’s institutions are really worse for us.
Of course abortion clinics and porn studios should be closed. And ideally, when this is over, conveniently not re-opened. And of course the fact that they haven’t been closed shows how evil and twisted the American government is.
BUT. Using this to argue that it follows other public gatherings should go on as normal is a complete non-sequitur. It’s like saying “oh, this city was really stupid because they failed to earthquake-proof their new hospital. Therefore, what they really should have done is earthquake-proof the hospital, but none of the other buildings in the city.” When you expose a blind spot, the solution is to open that blind spot, not close the spots where we ‘can’ see.
When it comes to the Mass, “business as usual” would have been catastrophic and should never have even been considered (and in the Catholic Church, it wasn’t). I do agree that there are better options than stopping Mass entirely, outdoor masses with strict precautions being a good example. So my advice as a fellow Catholic would be… do something. Talk to your parish, see what they think. Maybe aim for a very strict, very sanitary, 6-ft.-apart Easter. Don’t complain about a “secular police state” which you even admit wouldn’t oppose it, and which, when it made a mistake, did so by not going nearly far enough.
I am not a “doomer,” I actually think the virus has a good chance of being controlled if we act even semi-competently. China’s response was far from perfect yet they managed to do so. But unless you’re a genuine specimen of “just-the-flu”-bro, I honestly can’t fathom in what specific way you would propose the US govt. act less strictly than it did. I would be glad to hear a specific proposal though.
It seems like we otherwise share a lot in common, if your handle is any indication I don’t live too far. God Bless.
What if it’s the cell of the company which fired you?
Or you’re the company owner and suddenly you don’t need to pay for 100s of your workers cellphones
Occam’s razor etc. etc.
Right now, they don’t have a big enough rocket, which is also true of the US. But that will change. The past few years, China has had more launches than the US. Less total mass to orbit, sure, but they’re serious about space, and have bigger designs on the drawing board. It should be technically easier to build something like the Saturn V now – that is, it should require fewer discrete, made-to-order parts, as consumer electronics can replace many mechanical parts.
I don’t have any doubt whatsoever that China will go to the moon. At heart, they really have more motivation than the Soviets ever had. It’s not so much a question of beating the US – but matching the achievements of Europeans, who have humiliated them in the past.
But exactly that was intended by the psyop. To mobilize the greatest possible number of morons against China.
China Mobile has 493,000 employees. You’ve got 7.5 million to go. Keep flailing, this is becoming fun.
I am very glad I am not longer in Asian studies. As a European, you were treated with respect, sometimes even deference. Now all that will change. All my leftist ex-colleagues, who have done everything possible to trash their own culture, will find out how it feels to be treated like a Pakistani. As they say, you should be careful what you wish for.
Also, Anatoly, you should be careful what you wish for. The heel of the Chinese jackboot may end up being a great deal sharper than the heel of the American jackboot.
Russian and China are allies of convenience. No one holds a grudge like the Chinese. They are still bitter about the Opium War – not so much for the Great Leap Backwards. They have not forgotten or forgiven the loss of territory to the Russians in the nineteenth century. If I were a Russian in Vladivostok, I would think twice about buying a house.
A virus jumping from an animal to human is an act of God. The danger is heightened based on excessive interaction with animals like eating them but nature does this and it going to happen somewhere anyways. China did a pretty good job of slowing down the spread for about one month by freezing activity in the entire country. During this time, nearby countries like Vietnam and Japan made stopping the spread look too simple because they wear masks. So other countries which generally don’t have acceptance of mask wearing in public didn’t prepare enough.
The silencing of doctors acting in the public interest on December 30 by police shows a huge problem in Chinese society that will undermine China from reaching its full potential. But it did not contribute to a cover up. Wuhan public health authorities warned on December 30 of the pneumonia outbreak. And it was a national story by December 31. The doctors likely moved up the timeline for public information but their detention and punishment by police was not part of a cover up operation. Before the lockdown on January 23 authorities lied to themselves, reasoning it wasn’t so spiraling out of control and there’s no evidence yet of human to human transmission and even allowed a huge city-wide new year banquet involving thousands to go forward on January 20. But those missteps sound very familiar because most governments around the world in responding to corona have committed the same errors. But unlike Wuhan, they have no excuse due to info fog.
this is the important discussion. what happens afterwards. as i’ve posted several times, i believe this virus has greatly accelerated the US cold civil war.
1) the Democrats see that the Republicans are about to go down permanently, and are already making their early alliance with a major outside force, China, against their internal enemy, Republicans. this happens in most big civil wars, and is one of the telltale steps along the way. the Democrats are not only openly hostile to Trump and Republicans as always, deliberately getting in the way during a ‘crisis’, but are now siding with China in the domestic argument about the virus, an ally they had not previously taken.
2) by all historical data, a recession guarantees that Joe Biden becomes President in 2021. we’re not in normal times, but even before the recession the US is about to enter, i still would have had Biden winning the 2020 election, simply by the effect of demographics.
3) Democrat governors were easily able to shut down their states with no real resistance at all. tell private business owners to shut down their operations and go out of business eventually, if the governor so deems it. able to go after firearms dealers. and able to release prisoners. they will be reluctant to give up these new powers they’ve acquired, new powers that they often acquire after a crisis or ‘crisis’. they’ll ignore Trump when he says it’s ok to open the state – it will suddenly be states rights again, and Democrat governors who will deem whether the business you’ve worked on developing for decades is ‘essential’ or not, and whether you’re ever allowed to re-open.
4) Congress Democrats tried to put as much poison into the ‘crisis’ bailout as possible, but were largely stopped. this deliberate acceptance of a political back and forth on a bailout bill during a ‘crisis’ shows that not only do they not really believe it is a genuine crisis, but that they’re willing to let Americans die and the economy crash if it means getting Trump out of office. which is all that matters to them. they don’t care about the citizens, only power.
5) the introduction of UBI, which the Republicans envision as a one time thing, may indeed be a one time thing, but may also open the door to permanent UBI. this would be the way to bet should Biden become President. indeed, permanent UBI may become a Biden talking point during the campaign and debates. note that UBI will work exactly as i’ve described in the past – they’ll just take money from the productive, tax paying citizens, and give it to the useless dead weight citizens. that was always how it was going to work. but, other forms of government handouts won’t end. those will continue as well.
6) once Biden is President, the end of America 1.0 is upon us. the borders open, permanently, and the travel bans against China, virus countries, and especially Muslim nations all end. America is flooded will millions of third worlders who are enfranchised by the Democrats, to ensure that Republicans can never win a national election again. people may begin dying from Covid-19 again, or other imported pathogens, but the Democrats can now ignore that and no longer have to pretend to care. they never cared, and it was all partly a method to attack Republicans in public, partly because they’re just less competent and capable and it’s normal for people to die from disease in second rate nations.
7) the geopolitical shift towards China begins in earnest. permanent Democrat monopoly over the US weakens it steadily year by year, with outward signs of this becoming evident to outside observers. the US military becomes less capable, and becomes less funded as the new diverse America 2.0 cannot sustain 700 billion dollar a year Defense budgets with all it’s other financial obligations. once the US Navy begins to slip, and it actually did begin to slip under Obama, it will only be 20 years or so before Chinese hegemony over parts of the globe starts to appear.
Chinese wet markets and Chinese culinary and medical practices bring animals into close contact in filthy surrounding that would never otherwise meet in nature.
These viruses come out of China for a reason.
They are not an act of god.
That said, this is the result of PC. We could not act, because that would have been racist. The first response of the Mayor of Florence was to encourage his citizens to go around hugging Chinese.
PC came from the West. It is a great deal worse than the Black Death, let alone the coronavirus.
“ Right now, they don’t have a big enough rocket, ”
So 51 years and counting letter, still behind the USA.
https://spacewallpapers.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/usa-flag-on-the-moon.jpg
One day…
AK: Deleted. Don’t post disgusting images on my blog
https://i.redd.it/ohli82pel2221.jpg
Extreme liberalism is to blame for the West’s poor response to the epidemic. Liberalism tends to a state of indecisiveness. Instead we favor letting things play out as they will, and making endless arguments about why we can’t do anything. Any response will be worse than the virus itself, so they say. Besides, decisive responses are authoritarian, therefore bad. I suspect for example part of the reason public health “experts” tend to express distaste for quarantines is because they seem authoritarian and wrong.
Liberalism tends to favor procedure over results, argument over action.
Liberalism also makes collective action more difficult. This is because it systematically disfavors the idea of group identity. Paradoxically, two opposite tendencies emerge. One is the idea that we should only think in terms of ourselves, the other is that we should be universalists. The former position argues why should I be prevented from enjoying my freedoms just because of some old people, or what about the economy. The latter argues how wrong and unthinkable it would be to shut down travel from certain countries or “stigmatize” high risk groups.
East Asian countries are not dominated by liberal ideas as much as Western European and Anglosphere countries are. This is obvious in the case of authoritarian China, but it is also true of Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore. They are more like our societies were decades ago. If you told someone in 1950s America that it would be “stigmatizing” to close off borders, they would have paid you no attention. Bad ideas make a society decadent, and these ideas can spread. If East Asians descend further into liberalism they too will behave in similar ways.
I don’t claim liberalism is the only reason for the failure. There are other patterns. Places like Hong Kong which were more impacted by SARS were more prepared because of the experience. People from developed areas of Northeast Asia tend to be extremely health conscious/paranoid and may thus behave in ways which are helpful during an epidemic. Many people nowadays seem to have an irrational preference for high tech or “modern” approaches over simple common sense actions that have proven to work like quarantines or changing one’s behavior away from risky activities. One can’t rule out that Western governments are simply more incompetent, possibly for reasons that do not have anything to do with the adoption of liberal ideas. It may even be the case that western Eurasians are not as naturally compliant as East Asians. But liberalism is the source of much of the rot.
Peak America was a great place. It is gone.
You’re childish.
Tuscany is where the main population of Chinese is in Italy. It hasn’t been hard hit. Milan is another major population center for Chinese but has even now not seen a surge in cases. So at least it turned out Chinese people living in Italy weren’t propelling the virus forward.
9.Anatoly Karlin says: •
“Interesting to reflect that just a couple of months ago I was . . . ” displaying how little I knew about almost everything while thinking I was so really really clever with my ‘Corona-Chan racist slander.
“All international infections in March have been sourced from Europe, with a few coming from Iran.”
Not so. Those external infections have never been related to the domestic outbreaks in those countries. For e.g., Italy had two infections of Chinese nationals, but those were isolated and went no further. Italy’s multiple explosive outbreaks came from seedings inside the country, not externally. Many more things you don’t know, but still claim as fact.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/covid-19-two-major-waves-of-global-infection-towards-global-contamination/5707588
The government is not perfect but is fighting the coming epidemic. But the population absolutely does not understand what is coming
Petersburg yesterday
https://paperpaper.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/10-img-3703.jpg
https://paperpaper.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/8img-3673.jpg
https://paperpaper.ru/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/3img-3607-1.jpg
I saw a man coughing continuously in the metro yesterday. People around him did not move to another part of the train, although they had the opportunity (they were afraid to show themselves as cowards?). Sellers in most grocery stores work without masks and gloves, despite the recommendations. We do not need recommendations, but we need prohibitions supported by punishments
China might have lifted its coronavirus lockdown too soon, so we may see a spike in cases again, plus there is evidence that a person can get reinfected again almost immediately, and there are too many reports of this to just dismiss this.
The comment is saying there were 7 deaths on Diamond Princess. This shows one reason why the argument is flawed. First, several dozens of passengers spent some time in ICUs, which means that they would’ve died (most of them, at any rate) in an uncontrolled epidemic. Second, you treated people alive but still ill as if they were definitely to survive. Sadly, that’s not the case. Three more people have since died, bringing the number of deaths up to ten, and yesterday I read somewhere that fifteen were still in intensive care in critical conditions. Let’s hope each one of them survive, but at least we should acknowledge that their lives are still in danger. The Diamond Princess was used to argue that half of infections were asymptomatic, because at the time they tested positive, half of them hadn’t yet shown symptoms. Since then, it turned out that most of these were presymptomatic rather than asymptomatic cases. Many cases showing mild symptoms only have since developed critical pneumonia, so the statistics from the early stages of the epidemic were rather serious underestimates of the problem.
So we should just wait a few weeks.
They very well might be, but maybe they are just concerned about the health and survival of their flock. Which is part of their job description, last time I checked. The horrible death of many in the flock is certainly not what God intended, which is why the concept of force majeure is not unknown to Him.
The plague is not a success story, in terms of epidemic prevention.
You are aware that most of those ceremonies would be Muslim, aren’t you? Anyway, it’s one thing to be concerned for your own health (is it not a minor duty for Christians to be concerned about it?), and another to be concerned about the health of those you might infect. The German police has the right to protect those potentially infected by participants in the ceremony, and those who will be denied treatment for other ailments while hospitals are overwhelmed by the epidemic.
Besides most people not wearing these gas masks, they don’t reduce the one major risk of infection, which is when you take them off, and improperly disinfecting them afterwards. (The latter is not even an issue with disposable masks.) So I’m not a big fan of these. I have to admit I’m relieved they are unnecessary. Even regular face masks are very uncomfortable.
China has some 800 million people in the workforce. It also has 1.5 billion people.
I don’t know how many of these people have second cell phones, or cellphones for their children, or phones provided by their employers, etc., but the number must be possibly way over a hundred million. So very likely it’s just some percentage of these getting cancelled.
It seems to baffle the officials in China as well. The public explanations or guesses seem to be an array of mundane reasons, such as many people had two subscriptions for all kinds of reasons, and now they’re not needing them because they are not moving around, and not expecting the economy to rush back very quickly.
In anycase there simply cannot be 8M deaths because, as one might be able to see, that if you are dead in a sudden, you probably don’t have enough time to cancel your subscriptions. Also one might notice the “doomer” our beloved host said there will be 1M dead in the entire world. As the tragedy is far from over, they cannot all be dead already and eight times over. That would be ridiculous.
I have to say, this is interesting. I want to know more.
Elon Musk, who has single handedly done more to advance American rocketry and space access over the last decade than NASA had been doing for decades, claims that China’s economy will be 2 or 3 times the size of the US economy:
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/28/musk-says-chinese-economy-will-surpass-the-us-by-two-or-three-times.html
From an article published two days ago (26 March) in the New England Journal of Medicine one of whose co-authors is Anthony S. Fauci, who of course has been much in the news lately as a coronavirus “hawk” (in comparison to the “dove” Trump):
Where’s the evidence that the west donated medical equipment to China? If they did, it would be another example of stupidity, but it would mean a surplus of medical equipment in the west that has just vanished. Of course that direct exist. The Chinese are the manufacturers of these devices.
As for China’s culpability – they informed the WHO on Dec 31. Which was a few short weeks after the virus was discovered, and very soon after Beijing discovered it. A genome was sequenced in mid jan. That is pretty fast. Wuhan was shut down end jan. There were 400 confirmed cases at the time.
And the WHO didn’t recommend travel restrictions, so China opposed them, but blaming China for the west not applying restrictions is nonsense.
Switching to the US, Helen Chu was refused federal permission to use swabs she collected from the Seattle area to track covid. Trump downplayed it as a flu as did his supporters. As you can see here.
Testing was minimal. Lockdowns are local but not universal. Trump is suggesting a big knees up at Easter when the transmission will peak.
The US has blamed the world, tried to steal Germany’s ip, nato has done nothing in Europe. The US might not understand this but it’s leadership of the “free world” is in jeopardy.
It always was the presumption of some people that they know better than God what His intentions were, and take Him to task for that. It is the presumption on which the ‘modern world’ was built, actually. Which took us to the parlous situation we are in. No matter how many time this presumption was proven wanting, they continue to blaspheme.
Part of this is wishcasting, no?
You are one of the most fervent Zionists among the commenters at The Unz Review. China is a major supporter of Iran and the Palestinians, and does not consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization. An increase in the relative power of China and concomitant decline in the relative power of the US could be bad for Zionists.
I have lived in Russia so I don’t expect Russia to handle this better at all. Inadvertently I expect that Russia will handle this better by not completing devastating their economy and society by going extreme lock down, I see this is already happening with businesses insisting people turn up for work.
https://correctiv.org/faktencheck/2020/03/05/coronavirus-ja-deutschland-hat-schutzausruestung-nach-china-geschickt
Germany sent two shipments (5,4 tons on 1 February, 8,7 tons on 18 February) of protective gear and other medical equipment to China, as “humanitarian aid” (so I suppose China wasn’t charged for it).
iirc other EU countries did the same, but I’m not going to look for it, sorry.
Read my comments again…while I don’t particularly like China and its system, I haven’t accused them of a “cover-up” (a charge that is rarely, if ever, substantiated). I’m mainly angry at my own government and other political elites in the West.
This no different to the China Flu of ’57 and Hong Kong Flu of ’68. Whether the response to this pandemic is seen as having been much improved on than the response to those will be interesting to see, I suspect it will have seen be enormously harmful to society and the economy whilst having had no real impact in stopping the spread.
There has been a lot more reliable data since the Diamond Princess and this is all being factored in to.
Oxford University has a good resource.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/
At least France did (if the French foreign ministry can be trusted):
https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/china/news/article/china-medical-cargo-shipment-for-use-in-hospital-facilities-in-wuhan-and-hubei
I suspect it will have seen be enormously harmful to society and the economy whilst having had no real impact in stopping the spread.
Well, at least it will have cut down substantially on auto accidents — here on my “Saint Helena” they are down by at least 60%.
I blame the government anyway. Normal people are cattle and cannot be expected to act with responsibility and foresight. They must be shepherded by the state. Russia’s domestic propaganda presented coronavirus as a foreign problem, and the authorities fear that imposing restrictions on social activities will antagonize the citizens and hurt Putin’s approval rating.
“We currently have 1,700 Coronavirus deaths and the fatality rate has probably been around 1% so far” Nobody knows the real fatality rate up to know. You would need real infection rates to calculate real fatality rate. People assumed infection rates and than you get that 1%. So of course using that 1% you can calculate infection rate, but it is nothing but the infection rate which was assumed before.
East Asian countries tend to have lower mortality than Western countries in similar conditions. This could have something to do with people in those countries being overall more risk-adverse. For those interested in HBD this could be connected to other known behavioral differences. All in all a low mortality / low fertility model will be very successful in conquering the world. As cynical as it sounds we don’t know yet which countries will economically least harmed by the epidemic. The dependency rate than e.g. Italy is getting a lower dependency rate.
Taking off/discarding simple masks also needs to be done carefully in order not to touch potentially contaminated surface, so in principle there is not much difference from taking off full face gas mask, but decontamination at home is a real bitch without a doubt for reusable masks. That was one of the main reasons I bought batch of gas masks, after using and spraying one with disinfectant I am leaving it alone to sit and dry it in container at least for a week, but if the need arises I can use another ones quickly.
So China got allies in Serbia and in a few deranged individuals in a public park in Italy. How is that going to change anything? How many divisions can China deploy in Kosovo? How many armies can Serbia deploy in Taiwan? Is Serbia able to buy their own toilet paper, come next year?
How did it work for Serbia last time when they allied with Russia, keeping in mind that Russia was a historical enemy for 2 out of the 3 Serbia’s immediate neighbors? (I am excluding all the fake countries created by Yugoslavia’s breakup, who were nevertheless at war with Serbia.) Do you think Chinese are better seen by Hungarians or Romanians?
“ We are not approaching the point at which East Asia countries, which had successfully contained the overflow from the Wuhan epidemic, are now seeing their numbers begin to tick rapidly upwards again thanks to feckless Europeans and Americans.”
If you buy for one second the ridiculous CCP propaganda that China has successfully contained their epidemic, I have a bridge to sell you.
Actually:
https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.thesun.co.uk/news/11274221/coronavirus-riots-wuhan-china/amp/
But granted: to be fair with you, if you’re happy to be a mouthpiece for a grotesque, third rate/Third World dictator like Putin, why not shilling for the CCP as well, specially now that your country is increasingly just a satellite of China? At least you’re being consistent, I’ll give you that one.
I’m not sure who exactly you mean by ‘they’. If you mean the Manchu, then those guys are long gone and aren’t gonna be doing much forgetting or forgiving on account of being all dead.
Anatoly, please have a look:
https://kornev.livejournal.com/557751.html
Written by the end of February.
The more situation evolves, the more it seems that the author might have been right in his speculations.
As seen today:
https://www.lemonde.fr/international/article/2020/03/27/600-millions-de-masques-l-objectif-du-pont-aerien-en-preparation-entre-la-chine-et-la-france_6034705_3210.html
Brave herd immuners in Netherlands are starting to experience the cold realities of their recklessness:
https://engnews24h.com/80-percent-of-ic-corona-patients-are-overweight-shortages-are-imminent-now/
This is clearly a uncorrect statement, state propaganda about the threat of coronavirus has been going on for a long time
The Apollo program was very inspiring, but 50 years is a long time to rest on your laurels. Hopefully, Sinotriumph will shake Europeans the world over out of their woke slumber, and get them to stop blowing trillions on masochistic enterprises like diversity worship.
BTW, please refrain from posting images of scat in this hallowed forum. It is in poor taste, and you’ll not help the West get back on its feet by smearing it with feces.
How many Chinese are travelling to other countries?
Thank you Mother Russia for all the sacrifices you have made.
https://youtu.be/ElJMsIsB3cU
This video summarises the Chinese people’s attitudes towards Russia very well.
Concerning a very specific US neocon subtopic of “ebil Chicoms oppress Christians” which has crept up in this thread, let me throw in my ChiNaz shillbot two Yuan:
1) China is third, possibly by now second place in the world by number of protestant Christians
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/countries-with-the-most-protestant-christians.html;
2) Ten years from now China will have the most Christians in the world https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10776023/China-on-course-to-become-worlds-most-Christian-nation-within-15-years.html
https://www.catholicworldreport.com/2014/04/21/in-2030-the-country-with-the-most-christians-will-be/
Oy, vey, it’s like another holocaust.
So what’s the deal? The deal is the same as anywhere in the world outside of the Anglosphere and its closest allies:
a) Officially recognized churches are welcome
b) Sects and cults get the boot
This is how it works in any random Slavic country, this is how it works in any random Asian country, this is how it works in China. The Oppression of Christians™ happening there is exactly the same Oppression of Christians™ that happens in Russia. In the sense that foreign cults and sects (“heroic underground pastors” in Anglo-Zionist lingo) come over, start operating under the radar, then the radar snags them, and the state reacts by either including them into the official lists, or, if they’re deemed dangerous, they get the hose.
Sure, this is “tyranny” to Anglosphericals, but then again, showing your ID to vote is also “tyranny” to Anglosphericals, because Anglosphericals have no lived experience what tyranny is, and just make up word meanings instead. A state taking care of its officially recognized religions, and constantly weeding out unrecognized cults is one of the legitimate jobs of any state that exists on a landmass with lots of other competing powers and religions. You blink–and competing powers take you over from the inside.
Tl;dr=no, the country with the most Christians in the world does not “oppress Christians”. It oppresses cultists. Just because these cultists may be tolerated in the US, doesn’t mean everybody must.
You’re either retarded or on ZOG’s payroll.
Can’t tell which is worse.
“China’s cultural exports are a rounding error from zero.”
So were the USA’s 150 years ago. If/when China dominates the globe economically and politically, expect a lot more strange new respect for their culture, and a lot less for America’s. Strong horse/weak horse.
That’s a tautology.
Moscow and SPb are down to 50% of usual traffic levels. Though at this point of the epidemic, they should really be looking to drive it down to at least 20%. https://citymapper.com/cmi
Since early March, nowhere in the world have cases with a travel history to China popped up anywhere. While travel has decreased considerably, it’s still remarkable.
They obviously have not been putting much effort into it. I know they can do better than that – just look at Putin’s approval rating.
It certainly doesn’t seem that way. Instead, it seems quite the opposite when I walk around London, for example.
Russia thinks it’s like Singapore. Except they have actual sanitary control in Singapore.
https://twitter.com/mashant/status/1243902872615600128
Yeah the total destruction of the Chinese state and society through state sponsored aggressive drug pushing by the Anglos is forgivable, but that empty strip of land that didn’t even have Han Chinese living in it and has one port which is frozen for half the year? Yep that’s worth starting WW3 with the holder of the largest nuclear arsenal in the world
Clowns
That’s a tautology.
Of course it is, but it is not mine! The fact is, there seems to be a growing recognition that the number of actual cases far exceeds the reported cases, so that fatality rates are going to turn out to be much lower than were initially predicted. And that even Fauci (“Dr. Doom”) is saying this is noteworthy.
I doubt it. Can’t rule it out, in which case, to quote proto-weebo Albert Einstein again:
“ Even the children are spiritless and look obtuse. … It would be a pity if these Chinese supplant all other races. For the likes of us the mere thought is unspeakably dreary.”
Dreary indeed.
Yes…and it’s working…morons unite.
I don’t think there’s a strong case, or any case at all, for lots of asymptomatic cases not getting caught in South Korea, for example. Greg Cochran might not be a nice person, but he certainly knows a lot about infectious diseases, and he wrote a nice dissection of the idea.
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2020/03/26/oxford/
Karlin just wrote a blogpost about it from a different angle, about the hotspots.
Now, your whole case rests upon those undetected masses of infected people with mild or no symptoms. But you need to address these points. I don’t believe it’s possible to address them without acknowledging that they don’t exist.
I agree that ordinary Chinese (other than ones supporting these markets of weird animals being used as food, but they are a small minority of Chinese) should not be blamed, but the Chinese government does deserve blame for allowing those dangerous markets to exist in the first place despite plenty of knowledge that it was dangerous, and for covering up the problem initially. Ultimately this is what caused the problem.
This will ultimately be about math. There are clearly a lot more people with the virus than officially reported – that’s true about China, Italy, UK and US. We need random testing to do statistical analysis.
In Slovakia (5.5 million people) there are 290 cases, zero victims. They just released a result of the first randomised testing: 4% out of 1,000 people tested positive. We need more tests like that and also to establish accuracy, it is possible that not all cases are caught due to timing or severity.
If the 4-5% infection rate is correct, and the mortality among the infected is between 0.5% and 10%, this will be bad, but not catastrophic. All speculation on changes is premature, but I don’t see China benefiting – it would be counter-intuitive and that seldom happens in real life.
So, spectacular ineptitude and stupidity of European and American governments at all levels had nothing to do with it? South Korea presumably got infected people from international travel, but contained the epidemic pretty quickly. If the West acted like that, there would be no problem. There is. Ergo…
Cochran is the kook who has such a ludicrously simplistic and rigid opinion of sexuality that he ascribes it to a germ.
His previous post also cherry-picked a handful of Italian villages showing within common ranges statistical anomalies to make his hysterical point about “global apolocalypse” now.
And his “points” as you label them on that post rely upon the efficacy of the test in picking up a lower respiratory virus from a swab while patients have a miniscule viral load. People who are coughing up their lungs have more of a lung-based virus in their cheeks or nose than those who are not. Who knew.
This would be huge news.
It would mean that the ratio of cases reported to actual cases would be about 1:136. That would, if similar to other countries, drive the lethality rate down about a hundred times. It should be 0.01% and completely irrelevant except for a bit of pressure on hospitals for a short rush of time.
Where is your link?
I forgot the “not” in my sentence, but now it is too late to edit it. It should be “All in all a low mortality / low fertility model will not be very successful in conquering the world”
This is not true. A lot has been said on this topic, in St. Petersburg, some stores even drew special markings on the floor
https://s13.stc.all.kpcdn.net/share/i/12/11313238/inx960x640.jpg
White squares are where people should stand
So how do you say “social distancing” in Russian?
Higher quality, modern full face mask is far more comfortable, pleasant and convenient than a disposable N95 or N100 mask. These former are designed – with a century of technology refinement – for workers to do physical activity in a threat environment. They are lightweight, provide crystal clear vision, speaking diaphragm, – seal to face effortlessly, and provide far more airflow than a disposable mask.
Moreover, as well as being far more uncomfortable and inconvenient, disposable N95 masks are not necessarily effective (due to difficulty of face seal, not sealing of eyes).
Combined with the correct goggles and training to use it, N95 would be effective. But it’s more difficult, less comfortable, less effective and less pleasant to use them.
We know medical masks do not physically block many of the droplets containing viruses. So our understanding of the world, would assume they might not be effective – therefore the burden of evidence is to ask whether they are sufficient to reduce R0 in a signficant wa?
Intuitively, we feel they might be useful for blocking coughs and sneezes of infected people, like mandatory covering of your face with your hands when you sneeze would be. So we can hypothesize they are useful and better than nothing. But this is just assumption.
On the other hand, our model of the world, and basic understanding of viruses, is correct – we know that full face mask with P100 filters will prevent infection. As these filters are often effective (although it is not the test requirement for their certification) to 0,007 microns. And the other entry points of the face is full sealed, and this is easy for users to check.
It’s far easier to remove full face mask without touching the face, than to remove disposable mask, as everything is far away from the face.
As for decontamination, for this virus, just don’t touch the mask and leave it alone to decontaminate itself. The virus will not remain active on the surface for more than 48-72 hours.
This is not radioactive fallout.
Higher quality full face mask, is far more comfortable and easy to use, and convenient, than disposable paper mask.
Afer you have upgraded to an expensive, modern mask, you realize how paper masks are horrible, uncomfortable, difficult to use, difficult to remove, difficult to check face seal, and they block airflow so you cannot do physical activity without breathing constriction (at P100 standard).
On the other hand, modern full face masks like Dräger FPS 7000 is technology with a century of refinement, which is designed for people doing difficult physical activity (not going to the supermarket).
If correctly fitting, then they are ultra-comfortable, light weight, easy to breath, easy to check seal, easy to speak while wearing, give you panoramic vision, and putting on and off is also easier than with a disposable mask.
They actually test these masks by having people to do high intensity aerobic exercise with them on, and checking their blood oxygen levels.
Why do you imply that one problem excludes another?
I did not say that Western incompetence was not to blame either. Just that Chinese government actions were the ultimate cause. Thgey allowed the wwt markets that spawned it to function despite clear evidence thsat this was breeding viruses, they initilly downplayed it and persecuted those who raised the alarm, and as German Reader noted: “The Chinese did nothing to prevent their citizens from spreading the virus abroad, and when Italy banned flights from China (on 31 January, probably far too late, the virus probably already was in Italy by then, but still), the Chinese reaction was whining about an “over-reaction”:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-10/italy-s-hopes-for-closer-china-ties-hit-by-virus-flight-ban-rift
This does not excuse Western mistakes of course. But don’t lose sight of who created the problem in the first place.
There’s a good Kindle fiction book, a technothriller, on a future space conflict between China and the U.S. centered around a moon mission. It’s written by a former U.S. Navy pilot and commander.
Echoes of Apollo (2015) by George Thompson
https://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Apollo-George-Thompson-ebook/dp/B00VAVPOI6/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=echoes+of+apollo&qid=1585415659&sr=8-1
Соушал дистанцинг
Lol I did similar, bought 4 full face gasmasks (not all arrived though – I have one shipping still, a Scott Promask, after your suggestion), 4 half face respirators, and (before that) about 40-60 disposable ones, as well as several goggles to match halfmask (until I could find ones which were comfortable – I recommend Bolle Chronosoft).
Although I wonder why you suggest the need to spray this equipment with disinfectant when you return? If you have more than one, or do not leave home often, – you can just leave them for several days somewhere isolated, and the virus will deactivate on the surface.
In theory, the outside of the respirator will not be more contaminated than your clothes and hair.
Here you can appreciate an intelligent Soviet design in an old GP-5 gas mask, which sealed not only the face, but the whole head – so people do not need to wear a hood, and wash their hair immediately after returning home.
Is China the only country in the world that didn’t ban outbound travel to overseas by their citizens? Even now, with the COVID-19 in full-blown mode, is there any country in the world banning outbound travel?
I was in Billa two days ago, they didn’t have those markings, but there was a loudspeaker thing playing telling people to keep their distance.
Despite the mask shortages, I’d estimate that 5%-10% of people are wearing them now.
There are at least 1.6 billion mobile subscriptions in China. Chinese economy was hit hard during the first quarter. Tens of millions probably canceled their business subscription during that period. It does not mean tens of millions died.
That’s really bizarre but as one of the posters replied that if you are dead your subscription will go on until it gets cancelled due to non payment of bills or someone else in your family notifies the company about your demise but due to electronic IDs in China the govt. knows everything and who knows whether they notified the company about the deaths. But 8 million is too much no totalitarian state could hide it. Any how thanks for this interesting factoid.
The extremely incompetent way the Chinese let this bug escape has done enormous damage to the reputation of the CCP – the way, for instance, that people trying to raise the alarm were actually silenced highlights as nothing else, in stark, vivid relief, the faults of authoritarian systems (sorry Daniel Chieh). It actually illustrates one of the classic criticisms of authoritarian systems, in real time, and takes it from an abstract idea to concrete reality.
I think the usual Unz people are banging the drums so hard about how great China handled this as a desperate rear guard attempt to deflect attention from the obvious.
I don’t blame them. Ron Unz is not about to admit he was proven completely wrong about his authoritarian idol.
Official recommendations of the government
“ПРАВИЛО 2. СОБЛЮДАЙТЕ РАССТОЯНИЕ И ЭТИКЕТ
Вирусы передаются от больного человека к здоровому воздушно -капельным путем (при чихании, кашле), поэтому необходимо соблюдать расстояние не менее 1 метра от больных. “
It’s a natural disaster, no matter how you slice it. Don’t you think the 2009 H1N1 swine flue, which probably originated in some U.S. factory farms, was also a natural disaster?
As for advocating “hugging Chinese”, it’s not entirely PC. It’s also economics. Chinese tourists and cheap labor are probably important for local economy. Of course, it’s also a matter of timing. No one would ask anyone to “hug Chinese” now.
China has made the FIRST landing on the far side of the moon, complete with rover.
And to quote the racist ravings of Einstein? He thought Chinese women (all of them) too ugly to be able to reproduce. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/12/einsteins-travel-diaries-reveal-shocking-xenophobia ) And this (his second wife, and first cousin, Elsa Lowenthal), is who he found attractive? (https://img4.bdbphotos.com/images/500×250/z/h/zh4rpa9ifvozirfh.jpg?skj2io4l , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsa_Einstein )
How can you breathe with your head so far up your fundament?
What will also stay in peoples minds are those horrific YouTube videos of Chinese authorities dragging away screaming people and dragging people out of their cars after a single temperature test (!), and putting them in camps with infected people.
After bungling keeping the bug contained, reacting in this manner is not helping the CCP look good – although I imagine to some people, it will appear admirably “efficient”.
American business culture was known for fraud during America’s ascent:
http://archive.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2007/08/26/a_nation_of_outlaws/
“Liberal despotism” would be a more accurate description for most of those countries.
Russia, on the other hand, Is a Liberal democracy
You are appealing to the wrong authority. Einstein was actually a quite biased observer. Furthermore, what he saw was a China at its weakest point in the 1920s. He could not have dreamed what China would become in the next 100 years.
See “Einstein’s travel diaries reveal ‘shocking’ xenophobia”. I think his attitude was typical of contemporary Europeans.
As for Chinese culture, google “Story of Yanxi Palace”. Netflix also has quite some Chinese content over there now.
China is the first country achieved a soft landing on the far side of the Moon. They will build a 4000-ton class “Moon rocket” and send astronauts to the moon in the 2030s. Unlike the Soviet Union in the 1960s, China is doing things in a very methodical and steady pace.
China regularly creates these zooneses, and it’s because of lack of regulation of the food industry, allowing robber baron capitalism, and – what, from the 21st century European view, we would see as a traditional unhygienic relationship between humans and animals that has been tolerated too much by the authorities.
This panedemic – created by China, and responded to incompetently by the rest of the world – is one of the most predicted disasters. Here is an article from 2014 about how regularly China is producing epidemics, due to the lack of hygiene regulations in the country, and how such epidemics will continue to be repeated in the future (they write in 2014). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1201971214014970
On one hand, Chinese need sympathy. Although China is having great progess in recent years, in 2020 it still a third world country (China’s GDP per capita is lower than Mexico), and this is particularly in their food industry. So resources both of people and government, are not the same to enforce food industry safety, as in countries like EU states.
For example, hundreds of thousands of Chinese were killed or injured, because Chinese milk manufacturers used melamine as an ingredient in their “milk”, to save money – causing mass cyanide poisoning. After this, China made a large effort to secure foreign milk supplies and technology (for example, in response, China bought half of Israel’s milk industry, Tnuva, for $2,5 billion) – showing they may learn from past mistakes, but perhaps only after many deaths.
China’s development process in understanding of hygiene and safety, is like watching Europe and America, in the late 19th century to middle 20th century. Although, it relies on importing foreign knowledge. Probably, in some decades, China will be a developed country, and with equivalent safety levels.
As for the incompetence of the rest of the world’s governments in response. Partly, this is also because they believe Chinese government data about the number of deaths and infected people. Deaths in Hubei had likely been orders of magnitude higher than officially reported numbers, and this was what netizens were all talking about already in January – until China arrested journalists reporting on the topic.
Still, it is quite shocking incompetence form governments of countries of USA, EU, and (to less extent) in Russia as well, to not close down travel in January.
ОТОШОЛ НАХУЙ БЕГОМ
^_^
They do not deploy divisions.
They deploy warehouses.
That aspect of China’s response to infected people, is now more understandable to me, when you see how people in European countries are still walking in the street – in such an epidemic – without masks and goggles.
In an epidemic, people seem to naturally undervalue the risk to themselves, as well as the fact they also endanger other people by endangering themselves. Because of the latter, there is a justification to force people to quarantine, and force them to wear adequate personal protective equipment.*
On the other hand, China arresting the journalists who were reporting that number of deaths in China were vastly higher, than official reported numbers – has endangered the world, and is less understandable or acceptable.
Many Western countries seem to believe the official China data, even though numbers are far lower than the real number of people who died from the virus in China. China falsifying numbers of dead, to pretend far fewer have died, has partly contributed to rest of the world’s too relaxed attitude to the epidemic in January/February.
If China had honestly reported on its real death numbers (instead of arresting journalists who talked about the piles of dead bodies), then the governments of the rest of the world would have more scared, and responsed more strongly in January/February.
–
*In the USSR, this would have been more effectively achieved, as the army would simply seal off infected cities, and civilians could all be given personal protective equipment, which was stocked in multiple times the populations’ total number.
The supposed might of Chinese logistics is pure shit. Ki Jingping put all his eggs on a railroad link to Western Europe. Even if Merkel would have the money and the interest, Trump can cut that railway in Poland, Greece, Bulgaria, and several other US colonies. It’s already happening with Russian pipelines.
Trump
s and USsuzerain country of Israel recently invited China to use its own port for these purposes, inducing much asshurt on part of assorted anglo mongrels.He`ll soon learn that these clowns in Jewrope are not really his vassals.
Chinese and Russian help to Italy is ultimately the part of the same plan.
And it`s not “pipelines”, but a single one, which will be built still. Gazprom misstepped with the finalizing contractor, being a US company. It will not misstep again.
And then there is the Russia`s SMP, which already saw twofold growth in traffic, all to the tune of wailing anglo.
You make a good point.
It still says something about the level of civil society in China that people had to be dragged away kicking and screaming. In the West, if a policeman shows up and tells you to stay home, most people will probably comply in an orderly fashion. People in China do not trust their authorities, and for good reason.
I saw one video where a guy in a car was dragged away in an extremely violent fashion after a single temperature test – that seems excessive.
And then to be put together with infected people just for displaying ambiguous symptoms, like fever, where then you will certainly get it, shows a callous disregard for lives and a very heavy handed approach.
You do make a good point about falsifying numbers and arresting journalists who were reporting on the numbers. Again, this is of a piece with silencing those who raised the initial alarm. Its incredibly reckless and makes it seem very questionable whether China under the CCP can truly be a responsible global citizen. The CCP seems to care more for reputation than endangering the world.
Most of these things are the typical shortcomings of authoritarian systems, so none of it is surprising.
Disagree slightly with this. At least with respect to quarantine, western countries’ early response to this wasn’t all that bad. Incoming travelers from affected regions were isolated and quarantined and travel stopped in reasonable time. Things really went sour when outbreaks became established in Europe; it was inevitable that some would happen and Italy was probably just very unlucky. Nobody had the nerve to cut off eu countries even when it became obvious that they were exporting cases. This, combined with a lack of testing, and denial about the scale of community transmission got us to this point. The fact that so many governments screwed up in exactly the same way will mean that this incompetence will probably go unpunished.
This amazing detachment from reality demonstrates why the American-led West is destined to recede in power and influence.
“ he saw was a China at its weakest point in the 1920s”
They’ve had a lot of those, haven’t they?
Conquered by Mongols, by Manchus, by Japanese. Quasi-conquered by Europeans when they set up their zones of influence. And really wasn’t Mao and the various civil wars the real low points?
If anything, if the nationalists had stayed in power and China had avoided the civil war with the communists, it would be a whole lot better place. Pro-Christian, Anglophile, modernizing, building and reforming—1920s China was on the right track.
Einstein having a much higher opinion of the Japanese seems to have been the reaction of outsiders 200 years ago, 100 years ago, and most people right now.
I certainly would not bet against further economic growth. But it was slowing already well before Covid19, and as long as the CCP runs the show, they’ll always be well behind South Korea, far more polluted and corrupt, and their rapid decline in working age population is coming far too soon to ever really catch up.
Russia has just as many Chinese tourists and businesmen as anybody else in Europe – infections directly from the Chinese is practically zero in Russia, despite doing the same move that the Italians did. Nor was there much of “Russia are overreacting” from the Chinese authorities when Russia banned flights there.
Nobody, and as sure as **** a fraud as yourself who has never even heard of places as Petrograd, petropavlovsk or even the word “mir” (LOL infinity), knows exactly what is the cause of the virus.
If China did a full lockdown of 1 region on January 23rd, and infections in the rest of the 1.45 billion population is practically nil- then it is a bizarre defying of logic to blame the poor performance of Western countries on China–not least when mafia considerations in Italy may have played some part in movements and activity of Chinese there, and a clearly not “secretive” lockdown of 40 million+ on Jan 23rd should have given a clear sign to NATO countries on the implications of having areas in Europe with large, aircommuting Chinese populations before Italy banned flights.
Anyway, if you want state incompetance, coverups and callous disregard for human life….. then look at Banderastan- not that it matters as its a certainty that you have never been there
It didn’t even have a real central government, half the country was ruled by various warlords. By the early 1930s most of the country was at least under the control of the central government.
Despite the catastrophe of Maoism, China was at least a unified country and way more powerful than in the 1920s.
All of the usual suspects chirping away in the usual manner.
Russia looks we won’t go any higher than 450 CASES in a single day.
Maximum number of cases won’t be more than 12000, mortality rate less than 1%. Of course I am not thinking of those several thousand Russians still going to come back from abroad and should be infected with coronavirus at a much higher rate. Even then, 18000 is maximum.
Most important consideration is probably “those under medical observation” which is 165000
Under no circumstances should May 9th celebrations be reduced or stopped.
Canada closed the borders in the 400s of cases too. Trudeau obviously loves globalism very much, we may be lucky that he has a personal grudge against Corona for infecting his wife and locking him at home. British Columbia is starting to show a slowdown in infections. The Chinese now donate to Canada more equipment than it has donated to China in the beginning of the year. Are we on the way to becoming a plague-free zone under the protectorate of Chinese Empire? Not sure about Ontario: on one hand, “all businesses are essential businesses with few exceptions, keep your weed shop open!” policy is not very conductive to quarantining. On the other hand, the dreadful spring weather will force people to stay home for some time from now, and they’re generally apathetic and conformist so social distancing measures are met with compliance. Even teenagers who have stopped going to school are not seen crowding in places.
Strangely, Indian people have all but disappeared from sight, except the ones doing delivery work. I can now have a glimpse of old-timey Canada before mass immigration.
With the creation of the epidemic (excluding bioweapon conspiracy) – we are generally seeing the dangers of local Chinese incompetence, rather than anything that can be blamed on the nominal influence of Marxism–Leninism ideology, in a country which now has something more like a robber baron economy than anything to do with communism.
Marxism–Leninism, was supposed to be part of European enlightenment and knowledge, and you would hope the influence of this ideological trend should eliminate irrational Chinese diets and historically low levels of public hygiene in China. Whereas the reality of China’s government today, is poor levels of hygiene in the food industry, and official support for a lot of primitive folk susperstition: some of the official medical aid China deliver includes “traditional Chinese medicine” (i.e. useless nonsense).
However, the lying and falsification of data about the number of deaths, is something which seems systemic in the kind of top-down bureaucracies, which communist ideology produces – and where there is a constant need to project a successful external image (this was the same in the USSR). This is not something particularly Chinese, but rather it is a result of communist state politics.
We can see this is nothing related to East Asian character, but the nature of the Chinese government, by comparing its fake statistics on the epidemic, to South Korea and Japan – where East Asians more provided honest and reliable data about their deaths and infections than we even see in Europe.
Civil defense in the USSR was far more prioritized on saving civilians’ lives, than in equivalent civil defense in NATO. Epidemics like the current one, could have easily been defeated by the USSR from the 1960s.
(Although to be fair, preparation in the USSR for certain other disasters like earthquakes was far weaker than in countries like Japan.)
If I were Chinese, I would be very annoyed if random Italians came up and hugged me,
I am not talking about a military invasion. I am talking about simple colonization.
https://depts.washington.edu/chinaciv/geo/1zgzpopu.jpg
No one is rushing to freeze to death.
But of course, the Anglo cries out. Too bad the world isn’t hopping to be your footsoldiers anymore.
November, 2019–Coronavirus identified in Italy after laboratory tests isolated a strain of the virus from an Italian patient with genetic differences from the original strain isolated in China.
Massimo Galli, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Milan said, “Very strange pneumonias” circulated in Europe as early as November last year.
Well, that can be said about all of us here, can’t it.
All of us here can be relied on to take the positions that we’ve reliably taken until now.
Fact is, this kind of thing is silly. China did some things well and some things terribly. Letting the bug out was a terrible preventable mistake of the kind authoritarian governments reliably make, but China did a good – if brutal – job at containment. America would never have silenced doctors trying to raise the alarm because of its “reputation”, but is not as good at containment – and it is doubtful if America could ever act as as seen in those videos (thank God).
I just got annoyed at the ridiculous unbalanced China boosterism I was seeing on this site the past few days because it did a good job at containment, when the whole mess we are in is because China initially failed to contain the bug by trying to silence doctors who were warning about it.
If this is what amazing good government looks like according to Unz – no thank you. It’s about as intelligent and balanced as the attitude to Jews on Unz – and that’s saying something.
So – just trying to restore some balance to the insanity here.
The WHO Joint Mission, headed by American Dr. Bruce Aylward, reported that China’s response to the outbreak of Covid-19 has been ‘exceedingly transparent, swift, effective and lifesaving.’
The World Health Organization has heaped effusive praise on China’s total ‘commitment to transparency’ in identifying the virus and sharing information with the world.
Said the WHO’s chief executive director for health emergencies, Michael Ryan of Ireland, “I have never seen the scale and commitment of an epidemic response at this level in terms of all of government. The challenge is great, but the response has been massive and the Chinese government deserve huge credit for that response and for the transparency in which they have dealt with this.”
You could say that about various peoples. Britons were conquered by Romans, Danes, Anglo-Saxons, Normans. Jews were conquered by Persians, Romans, Greeks, Arabs, Turks, various Europeans. Etc.
Europeans had virtually no contact with the Japanese 200 years ago. During the Edo period until the Meiji Restoration in the 1870s, only a few Dutch traders and officials were allowed to interact with Japan, and that was only on an isolated trading post segregated from Japanese society.
“Pro-Christian, Anglophile” is just being used as a proxy for pro-Zionist here, no?
The ultimate cause was a natural disaster in the first place, like the H1N1 swine flu and all those flu outbreaks before it. It happened in winter flu season, in Wuhan, a city with heavy air pollution and a lot of smokers (30% of Chinese men smoke). The hospitals were probably already swarming with patients with respiratory problems. It was a miracle the Chinese discovered the novel coronavirus in the time frame they did, thanks to the medical-surveillance system they established after SARS.
As for blaming the Chinese for spreading the disease, not a single country banned outbound travel then and not a single one is doing it now. Crying foul for what China did is just double-standard and hypocrisy.
America pilots also fought for China – the Flying Tigers.
Russia and China fought a de facto proxy war in Cambodia with the Chinese supporting the Khmer Rouge and the Russians supporting the Chinese.
And they were prepared to fight over small, frozen pieces of real estate.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Soviet_border_conflict
De facto proxy war in SE Asia in the 70s and 80s.
Siberia is cold and thinly peopled and it has resources. Manchuria had no Chinese until the end of the Qing period. Now it has more than fifty million of them.
There is a big fat question mark about “who created the problem in the first place”. I was disinclined to believe that this virus was a US bioweapon. However, Trump’s announcement that the US is planning to sue China for this epidemic immediately reminded me Russian folk wisdom that the thief always runs ahead of everyone and shouts “Hold the thief!” louder than others.
But let’s just assume for the sake of argument that this virus evolved naturally in Wuhan. Then South Korea, European countries, and the US faced exactly the same problem. Koreans handled it rationally and curbed the spread of the epidemic, whereas Europe and the US screwed up big time. Europeans blame the EU and Schengen. Even before the virus it was pretty obvious to anyone with a brain that the EU is less efficient than the USSR. BTW, the countries that retained Soviet-era epidemiological service, like Poland, are doing much better than those who did not have it or stupidly destroyed it. What’s more, the UK never was part of Schengen.
The US does not have even those lame excuses. If you extrapolate current trends, it looks like the US screwed up even more than Europe. Using scientific lingo, the most parsimonious explanation is that the scale of the epidemic in each country is directly proportional to ineptitude and stupidity of its government.
By all means restore balance here, but repeating MSM propaganda is not the right way to do it.
Saying that, “China initially failed to contain the bug by trying to silence doctors who were warning about it” is just flat wrong. China didn’t do that, nor did the Wuhan authorities where Dr. Li worked. Here’s what happened:
Li did not inform China’s CDC, which was already investigating it*, as he should have done.
Instead, Li used social media to repeat the rumor on January 30 to family and friends and they told their friends….
Li was wrong professionally: it was not SARS, as he asserted in his tweets.
Li was wrong legally: it is illegal to spread rumors likely to cause panic.
Li was neither harshly questioned nor convicted of anything.
After 30 minutes of questioning the police concluded that he had merely acted irresponsibly and allowed him to return to work.
*Dec. 27, 2019 – Dr. Zhang Jixian, ICU doctor at Hubei Hospital reports to Wuhan Municipal Health Commission on pneumonia patients with an unknown cause..
Dec. 28, 2019– three more patients arrive at the hospital, all related to Huanan Seafood Market.
Dec. 30, 2019 – Wuhan Municipal Health Committee issues notice of an unknown viral illness.
Dec. 31, 2019–Beijing receives virus genome results, informs WHO of Wuhan pneumonia with unknown cause. Wuhan announces virus on CCTV and CGTN.
Another very fine post.
This cargo-cultesque attitude towards China is getting annoying. I thought it was confined to Godfree who is a delusional kook. He actually claimed that he had come across not a single lie told by the Chinese government in sixty years and that the country has been a roaring success story ever since 1951. That period covers the famines and the Great Leap Backwards.
However, I lived in Japan for seven years. You should not idolize them too much. They are, man for man, a cut above Chinese people, but they are human too. They can be bitchy and unkind like any one else.
Like all East Asians, they are great to have working for you. You do not want them in a position of authority over you.
Daniel Chieh will say I am being a whiny Anglo. All I am is a whitey who values his personal freedom and self-respect.
I rather like the idea of expanding southward – going in the opposite direction that everyone else seems to be going.
Chinese civilization is surprisingly resilient. That’s the reason why they have the longest continuous civilization in the world. Both Mongols and Manchus were assimilated by the Chinese culture, not the other way around. Japan was in a much better shape in the 1920s than China because of their 60-year head start after the Meiji Restoration in 1868.
China has already caught up or surpassed most aspects of Japan and South Korea. If you don’t know that, you don’t know much about China. Both Japan and South Korea have more severe aging problems than China. South Korea has only a population of Beijing and Shanghai metros, claiming China will never catch up South Korea because of labor shortage due to aging is laughable. In fact, China’s aging problem has been greatly exaggerated. Japan, the rest of East Asia excluding China, and Europe all have more severe aging problems, while white Americans have about the same aging problem as China.
Yes. And it is a problem we are going to have to deal with if we are trying to integrate China into the global system as a responsible member. Its not quite there yet.
And yes, it’s economy is a robber baron economy – that’s why it seems so strange that people on Unz are offering it as an alternative to America’s economic inequality.
I sometimes wonder if Unz dot com is an attempt to discredit alternatives to the current order by making them look crazy. I doubt that is Ron’s intention – he is an incipient schizophrenic – but I suspect this is why the powers that be allow this site to survive while less offensive ones get the axe.
Romanians have demonstrated all too often an uncanny talent to shit on their opportunities and piss against the wind and bet on the wrong horse in addition to a great ignorance of the world, but considering themselves very ‘deştepţi’, having the answers to everything. ‘Şmecher prost’ care îşi fură singur căciula . Gyorgy Schwartz is not the winner and you will lose your money.
Funny that you say that.
https://www.businessinsider.com/seattle-flu-study-coronavirus-testing-washington-2020-3
You, as an very specific kind of Anglo, particularly value personal cowardice and thus lie freely to hope to recruit free footsoldiers from the very same people you also freely denigrate whenever you find them in your way.
The main problem I see with just leaving it untouched for some time – atm moment we have no any data how long this particular virus survives on the material from which masks are made of. There are some preliminary studies regarding survival on paper, plastics, steel but still not enough info to be sure as masks have just some plastic parts, but there lots of special kind of rubbers too:
https://riafan.ru/1263027-uchenye-vyyasnili-pri-kakoi-temperature-umiraet-koronavirus?utm_source=yxnews&utm_medium=desktop&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fyandex.ru%2Fnews
The Chinese regions which border Russia have some of the lowest fertility rates in the world, how China is going to organize mass colonizations when it’s population is set to decline is beyond me
And all of this ignores the fact that the price of colonizing and investing into Siberia is always going to be higher then just paying the Russians for those resources (which is what is actually happening)
The Sino-Soviet border disputes have no bearing on modern politics, the Chinese have zero reason to antagonize Russians and vice versa, by the time they get an incentive to do it the basic demographic and economic factors will make it a pointless strategy
To me it is more “fair” to criticize America’s dysfunctions, as it is a extremely wealthy country, with a couple of centuries of successful development, and every cultural and economic advantage. In this sense, it is like a mature adult, where the flaws of its character can seem final.
On the other hand, with China in 2020 – despite their great economic progress in recent decades by importing technology and knowledge from Europe, America and Japan – it is a still a country where most people are poor, simple working class. China has a GDP per capita lower than Mexico. Moreover, there is tragic history of centuries of dysfunction, and predation on China by other countries.
The low current level of China’s culture and politics, is not reflection of how they will be when they are a developed country. As China continues to develop economically (hopefully), in the future decades, the culture and personality of the people, will also change – although perhaps just to converge with how people are in places like Western Europe today, although not of course not to reach some amazing high level or give birth to a new Athens.
I did find interesting your more pessimistic comments on this topic last year where you said that the character of civilization might also be exhibited at earlier stages of encounter with other civilizations. In late 19th century already, you can read Europeans were amazed by Japanese, and considered them to be “honorary Europeans” – while the impression from China, was almost the opposite. This is just one example though, and not exactly a scientific rule.
Perhaps, there will not be any great cultural flourishing from China, even as they evolve to become a developed country in the future decades. On the other hand, I think they will progress slowly through the middle income trap, and the Chinese population and its culture will become very similar to people of developed Western countries are today – perhaps to match as simplistically their convergence in per capita economic level.
Invading Vietnam is a common activity for the nations around the world, it is true. China has done it at least three times in her history.
Invading Vietnam successfully is another story.
Wow, so it’s true what they say about Jews and scatological ‘humor’. Simply repulsive.
Well perhaps, in great caution, we could revise recommendations to leave them for a week – which I am anyway, as I have multiple ones now?
However, any virus which deposits on the outside of the mask, is far away from the face, with full face masks, and on the other side of sealed visor – so I don’t see much danger. While any virus you might breath in by suction while at the supermarket, should be locked deep inside the P100 filter components (which should actually collect most particles in the air down to 0,007 microns).
The danger seems to me more on the packaging of what you buy from the supermarket. What procedure are you doing to decontaminate packaging of things you buy from supermarket?
Another danger is the possibility of throwing the virus into the air when removing outer clothes. Actually in Wuhan, they had to train medical staff carefully about this.
If you watch at 11:00 in this Chinese video, they train the nurses with flour so they remove their clothing slowly and mindfully:
https://youtu.be/1Rrn7fmOn1o?t=665..
No
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Morgunova/publication/330648496/figure/fig4/AS:[email protected]/Map-of-existing-and-developing-routes-included-in-Polar-Silk-Road-36.png
Would this have occurred if the Chinese government had shut down the stupid markets where people were eating bats, pangolins, and other creatures that humans have no business eating? Even though it was well known that this was very dangerous? So it wasn’t exactly a natural disaster.
Australia does:
https://www.airlineratings.com/news/australia-bans-outgoing-travel-ignore-warning/
Canada and US have closed their border which is de facto outbound travel ban by both countries.
At this point it is too late. It wasn’t too late when it first appeared in only one country.
I saw another somewhat clever method the Chinese nurses are doing in this video.
They have disposable N95 or N99 masks. And then they wear a medical mask to cover their N95 or N100 masks.
This means it might be a bit easier to decontaminate their N95/N99 masks, if they want to re-use them (which I assume they re-using them), as larger droplets at least would not be on the outside of the N95/N99 mask.
It’s a bit depressing to see Chinese nurses were provided with bad personal protective equipment, although that equipment situation has looked even worse in Europe at the moment than it was in Wuhan.
I don’t want to find them at all. I want 鎖国.
I’m afraid that this kind of markets will exist illegally as long as there is some demand for it. Even if the market does not exist there is no guarantee that some virus would not jump to human from somewhere, or mutate in the population and eventually cause disease, like all previous outbreaks.
Australia is the exception not the rule. Their purpose is to prevent returning visitors bringing back the virus. No, US and Canada’s border closure is not de facto outbound travel ban. I’m sure no one will prevent you from leaving these countries.
Anatoly, just how much better do you think that the US would have handled the coronavirus epidemic if Hillary Clinton would have been US President right now as opposed to merely being US President-in-exile?
If this wasn’t so deadly, it would actually be pretty funny how Japanese only eat rice, seafood, and seaweed while Chinese eat EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bats, armadillos, pangolins, dogs, cats (including civet cats), et cetera.
Fair point about criticism of America vs China. And to be honest, I’m not really that critical of China and pretty much expect authoritarian systems of this kind to make these kinds of elementary mistakes – just the bizarre setting up of China as this marvel of competence and efficiency on this site the past few days seemed so utterly detached from reality that it required comment.
Like most on this site, I’m very critical of America and disappointed in it in general, and I totally get the desire to find another country to admire – just the current Chinese government can hardly fill that role.
I feel like this site has a primitive “anti” philosophy – America has disappointed us, so every country that has tension with America must be amazing. China, Iran, etc. It’s a kind of primitive unthinking “anti” thinking that misses all nuance and complexity.
Yes, my sense is that when one culture encounters another that is radically different, there is an initial cultural “explosion” – for instance, the “shock” of Europe encountering ancient Greek and Latin texts led to the Renaissance and everything that followed, fairly soon after that.
Radically new ideas stimulate creativity – once these ideas become familiar and assimilated, they are unlikely to stimulate much of anything.
If China had it in itself to become the next Athens, its explosive encounter with the West would have set that process in motion already decades ago – the strange new ideas would have created a tremendous cultural ferment and an explosion in creativity.
In essence, China has now encountered the culture of ancient Greece and Rome – but it did not have the same effect as in Europe.
China’s inability to produce top flight mathematicians, despite its supposed aptitude in this area, and extreme effort in this direction, and despite that no modern infrastructure is needed, in my opinion says much about what we can expect from China in the future.
For my own part, although I understand I am unusual here in this, this isn’t actually a criticism of China – I think China just has a different “type” of culture, one based on “acceptance” rather than “dominance” as in the West, and “acceptance ” cultures lead to a very different kind of cultural flourishing. Although it would appear China has fully shifted to a Western “dominance” culture, I am not sure how much this is only apparent. That there is no explosion of creativity in the fields of “dominance” but mere adaptation only suggests it does not go very deep.
As for China catching up economically, I would actually apply the same concept of “time lag” that I applied to culture – an economy gives some indication of its innate prowess within a few decades of being exposed to the stimulus of modernizing, not longer. I would have expected by now at least some world class companies or brands and technologies – I believe other major economies after a similar period of modernizing were already producing world class work, whereas China remains at this late date still largely just the world’s workshop. The hands of the world not it’s brains.
So I don’t know what to make of this – I certainly think its quite possible China will catch up, I just think there are some negative indicators at the moment. We shall see.
Whiteys value only I, ME, MINE, MY WAY. They collectively didn’t outgrow the egocentric phase of cognitive development and have a hyper-inflated opinion about themselves. They fall in a state of severe cognitive dissonance when other people fail to share that opinion (showing ‘disrespect’) becoming abusive and aggressive and even criminal.
Look, I don’t “blame” China. I also fail to see how this episode will enhance China’s positions around the world. Make everyone more suspicions of China, yes. Make China more popular, no.
SE Asia can be a little scary. Of course, there are the snakes, and the jungle. And once you leave a few dead bodies around, all the tigers become man-eaters, stalking you at night, when you’re supposed to be quiet and have no lights on, so as not to give away your position.
Still, I was thinking in more amorous terms – utilizing economies of scale. Give all the Vietnamese men Chinese brides, and all the Vietnamese women Chinese husbands. Rinse and repeat. IMO, Vietnam is about half-sinicized as it is, though the rest of SE Asia would be a little harder.
Europe should have done the same thing with North Africa in about 1900.
Anatoly, this is where electionbettingodds is pulling those numbers (https://sites.google.com/umich.edu/2020predictionmarket/home). Given the amount of money at stake I wouldn’t put too much faith in them compared to the other contests.
Also, what do you think of this take that Russia is lying about the numbers (https://www.codastory.com/waronscience/russia-coronavirus-mistrust/)? The author, Katerina Fomina, is a western liberal (although she lives in Moscow) but I have seen the same sentiment echoed by other Russians.
Hahahahaha, sue sue sue. The American way. Lawyers and lawsuits are virtual and artificial. That only works conditional on the backing of the gun. In China, Russia, and anywhere outside of America and its vassal states, the reaction to “we’ll sue you” would be one of mockery. It’s like in the 80s or 90s, the wife of a KMT general going to PRC demanding compensation for lost property. To them, Chinese-Americans, and any Chinese invested in the US economy, the answer is one of, “If you don’t have the military backing to protect your assets, it’s your problem, not ours! If others who hate you destroy or seize your wealth, it’s mostly on you.”
By the way, I recently responded the following to a Chinese-American and distant relative of Chiang Kai-Shek.
I politely disagree. The American way of doing stuff based on “money” and “competition” often does not work very well. It tends to attract an excess of hardworking, ambitious, and status-seeking people, and also a ton of con men. By the way, this is what I have observed with those who immigrate to America or want to. The idea that having a glut of, say, scientists will increase competition and push people in the group to do better does not really match with reality. It creates an utterly toxic environment of lots of people doing stuff for the sake of tenure or other people’s approval (a form of status), and actually scares away a lot of the actually good, original thinkers. A better system is not having that many people enter science at the start and giving everybody tenure after an extremely rigorous initial selection process that doesn’t take that long. That’s the way much of Europe still does it I believe, and certainly how it was done in former USSR. As an example, Perelman went back to Russia and did his work on Poincare Conjecture at very low salary at Steklov because US wouldn’t give him a tenured position. And a mathematician has pointed out on Chinese internet that Terry Tao isn’t actually all that deep or significant of a mathematician. His work is scattered and soulless and he’s gotten way more attention and recognition than merited. In number theory, his best result done with Ben Green is not as groundbreaking as that of Yitang Zhang, and in PDEs he’s probably not even as good as Fanghua Lin of NYU. https://gmachine1729.livejo…
Look at how America’s dealing with this virus. America utterly fails at the institutional level despite having some extremely brilliant individuals. What else do you expect from a multiethnic liberal immigrant country full of status seekers, fifth columns of countries all over the world, and people who want to escape/deny their own roots?
The “competition” and “money” does deliver superficial short term economic results for America. But you also get a ton of con-men mega parasites at the top. Multiculturalism makes it such that the masses are too divided and stupid to gang up on incompetent elites.
The American system can pretty some top people (many of them are immigrants by the way) but they tend to be successful more in the “conformist” or “consensus-based” way. It is difficult for America to produce truly deep thinkers or doers of a more revolutionary nature, especially at the institutional level due to the crass individualism and lack of tradition. I see this as extending somewhat to the Anglo world at large too. Britain after Newton could not really compete with Germany or France (and also later Russia) in math and physics. Scientific revolution was actually more or a German product. https://gmachine1729.livejo… The industrial revolution began in Britain but the actually deep stuff in science and philosophy tended to come from Germany.
At this point, I mostly want to do what I can to prevent more toxic Americanization of China, Chinese with American degrees absolutely need to be viewed as American cultural/political subversion agents/saboteurs/spies by default. Chinese people have very short memory and limited understanding of West. The Xinhai Revolution in 1911 brought down the Qing Dynasty and then things went totally out of control, nearly 40 years of civil war ensued. The people who staged that were heavily American influenced. Qing Dynasty was dysfunctional and behind the times but at least it was more organizationally coherent with some emphasis on traditionalism while also trying to modernize. Moreover, many in China find the dismantling of more Soviet based institutions in 80s and 90s in China to be have been utter disaster. I had asked if maybe the Cultural Revolution which dismantled Soviet based stuff to some extent too was more to blame. And the answer seems to be that while that did some damage too, it was more starting in the 80s after the political coup of Deng denounced the Cultural Revolution and turned towards America instead. Deng’s reforms emphasized too much motivating people with money, the result was kind of a mess to be fair. The last couple decades, there have been a ton of greedy, fraudulent status-seeking Chinese with American degrees swindling money in China while also engaging in political subversion. Like Kai-Fu Lee who even lied about his formal credentials in America. Chinese academia is a quite a mess much because it’s run or at least heavily influenced by America worshippers. There were more world class scientists in China in 40s-70s than now. Most of the good stuff in China actually came from the Soviet Union/Russia, which got much of its good stuff from Germany in 18th century. Sure, some top people with American STEM PhDs played important roles too in China, but the science and technology they worked with was Soviet based.
What America is good at is superficial cool and fooling idiots and attracting status-seekers. American worshippers in China go on and on about going to America to learn advanced STEM (including America’s joke of an undergraduate education) to “bring back to China” without the slightest knowledge of the actual history. Of course, America is a new country founded artificially without much real history or culture, it is quite fit to attract those types. Unfortunately, in a time of crisis like right now, your GDP and artificial indices mean nothing when you don’t have the actual physical economy coupled with coherent organization at mass scale.
China falsifying numbers and arresting journalists is no excuse for the West’s incompetent reaction, because we have living proof that China’s number aren’t an excuse: as seen in Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Vietnam.
These people weren’t looking for “muh Chinese lied to us” excuses, to the contrary–they used the info given by China to actually swing into action and do what needs to be done.
Western Europe and the Anglosphere instead decided to treat the novel coronavirus like they treat crime gangs made up of Tyrones and Omars–pretend that it’s not happening+hope it all works out on its own through some “invisible hand” or other fixing everything.
“China lied to us” is the lamest excuse ever. China also provided actual real info quickly, which was good enough for anyone with a shred of rationality and efficiency–i.e. all of the Confucian neighbors. The fact that today’s West has dipped below basic competence even when compared to 2010, not to mention the golden age that lasted until circa 1999, is something that needs to be accepted if it ever gets fixed.
The first step to fixing a problem is to admit you have a problem. Then you analyze the situation and in this case–make a choice.
Is it:
a) Realistic to try and get the West to return to the level of it’s last golden age (1980-2000), or the previous one (1950-1970), or
b) More realistic to try to engineer a soft landing to the levels of today’s Russia, Turkey, and Iran, in order to evade an actual collapse and civil strife
It would be great if different teams were looking at facts objectively, and one team was working out the possible ways of re-injecting the West with vigor and competence, and another team was working on the most painless soft landing, as a “Plan B”.
But for now we’ve got the leftwing half gibbering about Russian agents under their bed, and the righwing half gibbering about Chinese agents under their bed.
Sad!
I think they will top out at Slovenia or Slovakia levels, and Slovenia or Slovakia is a pretty pleasant place to live in despite having barely a third of US per capita GDP.
For disinfencting airtight plastic packages I’m just literally throwing them into a bucket full of disinfectant at the door for about 5 minutes before bringing it home. For easy making that full bucket I’m using Chlorinex tablets:
https://www.chemi-pharm.com/images/products/CP_Chlorinex_300pcs.jpg
https://www.chemi-pharm.com/en/surfaces/surface-disinfectin-concentrates/chlorinex-60
Also when going outside I’m dressing simple disposable cheap painter XXL sized coats on to regular clothes, but two at once, cause they are quite brittle and prone to tearing. Coupled with gasmask and rubber fisherman boots, these days I’m looking like Winter War sniper at some Chernobyl store, lol:
https://www.ermitazas.lt/out/pictures/generated/product/1/700_700_90/246943.jpg
Much of your criticism of America is accurate but China has its own problems that are almost as serious — even if temperately trending in the right direction. America’s ‘joke of an undergraduate education’ is still mostly better than China’s and I’m sure it was not an accident you specified UNDERgraduate.
Not sure it is the American degrees causing these VERY RARE traits.
One of the West’s biggest strengths and weaknesses has been self-criticism. China is indeed an old civilization with a deep culture. That culture was largely destroyed by Communism and will need to be rebuilt. If Chinese can’t be honest about this or other challenges they face because they are scared of losing “face”, the smartest Chinese will continue to leave for the West — at least until it self-districts.
It is very risky to extrapolate from the numbers, the variance in time, geography and accuracy is very substantial. We also don’t have the precise number of deaths, nobody is testing most people who have expired in the last month. The numbers came from a TV statement by government, I have not seen a linkable article (definitely not in English).
What the numbers show – and it could be very different in other geographies – is that around 4-5% have anti-bodies to corona suggesting that they were exposed. An overwhelming majority either had regular flu symptoms or none at all. A small percentage show a dramatic deterioration and large majority of those (probably 90%+) are elderly and had pre-existing health issues. In main cities and among the travelling class the exposure rate has to be much higher, possibly 20-25%.
The binary choice of ‘pandemic’ and ‘regular flu’ is deceptive. This is a continuum and so far it looks like a 2 on a 1 to 10 scale. It can rise to 3 or 4. It is bad, an it is not ‘just a flu’, but some of the drama in the media is overstated and creates unnecessary panic.
Course you are
Japan is also being accused of lying…. Well isn’t the burden of proof on the accuser???? Plus I would like to know which country you find truthful… This will be good to hear.
Please remind me why North America wasn’t blamed for not letting H1N1 spread around the world…. The majority of the world understands that. They also understand western incompetence versus Asian competence in actually containing spreads within their own borders.
But the answer to your issue is that you were sino-phobic from before.
Romania has nothing to do with a China-Germany road. The road doesn’t go there, no matter how hard you distort it.
Moreover, I commented just this week on the way Western propaganda is weaponized an imaginary need for more roads in Romania.
The bottlenecks are Poland in the North and Bulgaria in the South.
Newsflash – most bodies are cremated in China. You believe too much fake news. Anyone can get on YouTube and edit how they want.
Did the US stop citizens leaving when H1N1 took off in the United States??? Name one government that ever did so right away….
So in societies where people can openly blabber their mouths – this disease is spreading like wildfire. You political trope makes no sense. The doctor was admonished for spreading rumors on social media. At that point a coronavirus was NOT confirmed. It turns out he was right (though he said it was SARS) – and he was apologized too. But just as in Singapore and a few other countries – you can’t just make any statement you want. You are expected to use proper channels.
By what evidence is China lying about the death rate???? China’s death rate is lower than most western countries but higher than it’s Asian neighbors… So where is the evidence??? just a “hunch”??? The US is reporting a death rate half that of China..
Overpromotion of China’s economic and/or cultural assessment – can be a result of a number of misunderstandings.
Some negative thoughts:
People don’t think about “low base effect” in economic growth numbers.
People don’t understand a difference between technology importation (which has been a predominant driver of economic growth in China in recent decades), as opposed to technology innovation (which had been a larger driver in the most advanced countries of Western Europe for centuries – France, England, Germany, Italy; in Japan to some extent for around a century; and at extremely high level in the USSR and America in the 20th century, with America continuing innovation in the 21st century, while Russia returning to the technology import model).
People don’t understand manufacturing is outsourced to China, because of comparatively low wages in China. This is comparative advantage of labour cost, not an indicator of ability. Moreover, e.g. Japanese companies outsourcing manufacturing to China, are often supervising production carefully, and despite this quality control in products manufacturered in China falls, compared to ones manufactured in Japan or Europe.
People who did not become angry, after having to work many hours with Chinese imported electronics – or finding Capxons in things you bought.
People with low cultural level. E.g. If you don’t have musical training, or experience with music theory – then perhaps you will not understand how spectacular and rapid European cultural development had been. Acceleration from Mozart to Schumann, is only a few decades – yet it feels like a total transformation to your hand on the piano.
Similarly people with low cultural level – do not understand the amazing speed and innovation in development of a literary novel in Europe, where it would transform with every few decades in the 19th century.
Low cultural level, results in people who do not understand what high cultural achievement is.
China’s recent history is of predation by world powers, combined with internal disasters. The fact it is stabilizing itself at all (even to a quite basic level), is something to welcome.
Today, China is the world’s largest market for sale of pianos. Chinese, perhaps even in a per capita way, show strong appreciation for classical music. In this sense, there might be more consumption and reproduction of classical music in China, than in Europe.
This is the opposite of the trend in countries like Russia (where in music schools are closing and piano sales collapse), and in Europe as well.
I can easily imagine that by second half of the 21st century, we will be travelling to China to go to see the best performances of classical music.
Similarly with original music production. Even the greatest 20th century music innovation and American contribution to the world – Jazz music – is now some kind of museum artifact, rather than living artform.
Cultural infertility is quite universal of our time – so it is not fair to criticize the cultural infertility in China, when even far more advanced countries are experiencing infertility.
There are a lot of cool little Chinese companies emerging nowadays. Personally, from aliexpress I enjoyed things like the Khadas VIM, and am a collector of HiFiMan headphones (which didn’t all snap).
I still predict, based on Taiwan, that China will be topping out at the level of Slovakia or Slovenia, or Greece, before its GDP growth decelerates to a 2 to 3 percent range, like what we see in Taiwan or South Korea, do you have any reasons to see likewise? So China in market exchange rate terms will be about 130 percent the size of the US in GDP before converging at about the same long run growth rate as the US.
That was not the point I was making. I was pointing out the the first instinct of European leaders was PC virtue signalling, not dealing with the contagion.
I don’t there’s anything there I haven’t already covered: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/corona-wishes/
Overall a nuanced comment that I agree with.
I agree that current Chinese prosperity is based on organizing labor for the use of others, and is not an indicator of the ability to design and develop oneself – however, it is an indicator of a not unimpressive level of capacity for organization and coordination.
With the deterioration of the Western world (a natural and expected relaxation after 500 years of astonishing creativity), I can imagine a situation where Western High Culture is more prized in China than the West. I do expect the West to eventually recover, as ups and downs are natural.
We should thank China for “holding onto it” for the West in the meantime, if that does happen.
I do expect China at some point to have a cultural efflorescence – these always happen, unless s culture is dead and its people scattered.
I just don’t think it will be the kind of “genius” we expect from the West, with great scientists and mathematicians etc – I think the time for expecting that from China is passed.
We will probably get a revolution in ways of living, in our attitude to nature and ability to live with it, technologies that incorporate these themes, etc. But this is far on the future, I think.
Agree. But with a lot more pollution, crowding, petty oppressions, and inequality than Slovenia.
I was thinking of the sabotaging of the prospective South Stream passing through Romania to Trieste, of the less than honorable role Romania played in the destruction of Yugoslavia, of the ridiculous “Occidentul… e cu ochii aţintiţi asupra noastră” mentality (therefore Romanians must show the ‘Occident’ how ‘Occidental’ they are defending it from the Bear and the ‘Oriental’ hordes – making themselves imbecilically the prime target of the Bear’s rockets).
ROTFL.
Now, this is turning into comedy.
Chinese factories nowadays have been able produce acceptable things, but it is still usually only if they have foreign supervision, and work to foreign designs and technology,
So if there are Japanese and German masters supervising the Chinese workers in such factories, then there can be an acceptable level of quality. But same is probably not less true in Mexico and India. So I still do not make a judgement about whether this impressive or not.
Chinese workers, might not overnight become conscientious and careful Japanese or Germans. Leopard of national characteristic, doesn’t usually change its stripes – but (apologies for horrible mixing of metaphors) they might at best sublimate their flaws.
I am a fan of some cool innovative little Chinese companies like e.g. HiFiMAN, which make their own designs of headphones. Quality control is still very bad with HiFiMAN and they have reputation for low quality, despite high prices. But design can be interesting and original, and I have managed not to break any (by carefully only holding them on the wire parts). Perhaps these strange hipster companies will be what we appreciate from China in the future.
And then there’s other great things from China like Aliexpress, which is more fun (because “Wild East”) shopping experience than Amazon or Ebay already.
So this where I am most optimistic about Chinese – they value music. On the other hand, even in their appreciation of European and American music, there is a comparative lack of sophistication and connoisseurship – compared to in races like Italians, Japanese, French.
For example, if you compare to Japan, and how quickly Japanese always respond to high culture produced abroad. Japanese were recording Art Pepper’s later albums and Wynton Marsalis’ first album (half of it was recorded in Tokyo).
A lot of vanguard Western musicians were more valued in Japan, than they were in their home countries (you can read Miles Davis writing about this topic).
While so far from Chinese, there is only indication of a less sophisticated appreciation of the most obvious or accessible aspects of world culture – although this universalism is partly an indication of greatness – like Mozart. There is not an indication of connoisseurship, or appreciation of new and vanguard artists.
Another difference of Japanese, is they rapidly absorb Western influence, and then surpass it, through obsessional connoisseurship. Concert piano reached a mature final form around 1860s-90s Germany. Yamaha was producing pianos in the 1890s, and Kawai soon after. (Although in the expensive part of the market, Yamaha only managed to match Steinway and Bösendorfer, after they bought Bösendorfer).
On the other hand, China still couldn’t make a good piano in the 21st century. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/2181819/chinese-love-play-piano-even-if-their-locally-made-instruments
I’m sure China will become a developed country in the future decades, and this will be a very positive development for mankind (as a large part of the world’s souls can live at an acceptable standard of living). .
In the more optimistic scenario – perhaps they will be like Taiwan and South Korea. These are developed countries that contribute positively to the world, although lacking the genius or soul that we see in Japan.
Intellectually and culturally, it would more interesting to see India become a developed country – as it is civilization with far more profound and interesting dimensions, and real philosophical achievement (although sadly this will probably not be in our lifetime, or we will be very old men by that time).
Somewhat even envy your naive scepticism now as I would be the most happiest man in the world if I didn’t have to wear all this ridiculous shit in nice spring when going to the drugstore to buy prescription meds for my elderly parents. Ignorance is really a bliss.
I’d say that India’s ceiling of development, as measured by the ability to produce and organize in the Western manner, is “Turkey”. India’s ceiling is being a huge, nuclear, space-faring Turkey.
Which is none too shabby. Very solid second-tier level.
China’s ceiling is a huge, nuclear, space-faring Taiwan.
Russia’s ceiling is a huge, nuclear, space-faring Slovakia.
What is more interesting, perhaps, is what is the ceiling of the US, Germany, and Britain, currently. Is the ceiling in the future? Or is it back in 2000?
Even with a declining population, there are still a lot of Chinese. Only a tiny proportion need to move to massively alter the demographics of smaller countries.
Also, how much do those artificial islands in the South China Sea cost? Why antagonise Japan over the Senkaku Islands? No one even lives there. If you are only thinking in rational economic terms, rather than emotional ones, why not let Taiwan have its independence? That would be unthinkable in China because unity is a religion. Mao considered Outer Mongolia legitimately Chinese, but was in no position to push his claim.
China and Russia are allies now. That could change very quickly.
The West is now in real trouble. Insane immigration policies, gangster capitalism, rampant low-level drug abuse and a bizarre obsession with pointless crusades like transrights means that we are entering a new and very unpredictable period in history.
I can’t see China not making a bid for the position of top dog.
You can help India’s development along by avoiding beef so it doesn’t have to waste bullets on you।।
South China Sea and East China Sea are next to most of the big populations centers of China.
Dominating them (and that includes controlling Taiwan) is the rational choice for China.
It would make sense, even if there weren’t large oil and gas deposits.
At the end of the day, is the US going to go to war with China to protect some other country’s off-shore mineral rights? And can a country like the Philippines or Vietnam safely oppose them? The answer to both questions is, of course, “No.”
Great point. Would love to see India go through a cultural renaissance 🙂 I owe a huge spiritual debt to that country’s ancient writers, and I can only imagine what fascinating and weird things they will come up with in modern times.
Truth is, I owe a spiritual debt, a great one, to the ancient Chinese writers as well. I wish them well. I’m just not impressed with modern China, not in te3ms of modern values or ancient values.
Agree with most of the rest of your comment. Lots of good stuff.
https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/885586590600491010?s=20
https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/885585547665842176?s=20
https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/1161393087584899072?s=20
Essentially, the King determines Varna||
Indic civ became more theocratic in the Medieval era, You notice this in Titles
MahaRana or Gajapati means Prime Minisiter ie of Deva who is True King||
The Revival is Khalsa, a Theocratic Institution which governs society psyco-spirtually and re-arms the common man||
https://twitter.com/Parikramah/status/1161400890860998658?s=20
This whole thing has always seemed fishy to me. I wasn’t worried at all at first, because I was given to understand that it mostly affected the very old who regularly die of pneumonia and such.
Now, they’re still pretty much saying that, but they have shut down the country and will cause no telling how much economic pain, which leads me to believe that the virus may be more of a threat than they’ve let on.
Otherwise, the draconian social distancing measures seem disproportionate. I don’t know what to believe just now. Part of me would much rather be safe than sorry, but then, Mr. Rosie and I are in a better position to whether this than most.
I fear an epidemic of suicides among White men ashamed and despondent that they can no longer support their families.
So boy am I glad I moved out of NYC. Talking to friends. Ambulances you can hear during certain times of day one after another. My friend, his wife and kids all went through corona chan no problem. Kids had fever. Wife got it first and had it the worst(sore throat).
Large percentage adopted mask wearing. Mostly spearheaded by Asians in the city.
Hospitals/EMT system are being overwhelmed by certain type of demographic that likes to use an ambulance as the taxi service.
As of a week ago or whenever they had the shelter in place order traffic disappeared. Still you see a lot of essential workers on the road or returning home.
Some smaller stores you take a turn to walk in to shop. Other bigger stores just as usual. Still missing toilet paper and hand sanitizer. Milk and eggs rationed but not missing.
Where I am now we are also closed down. NJ is pretty good at hounding people. Two parties were broken up and arrests made. Price gauging was slapped down hard in the first days. One store got 90k fine. 10k per infraction.
Glad to hear about about such easy course of disease, but they need to be very cautious, if duration of the sickness was short, cause the most problems seem to arise only 3-4 weeks from the onset of light symptoms. If such time already passed they should be fine, unless reinfectiona are indeed possible, which remains very controversial issue atm.
btw, so much for CCP China “triumph” where it really matters as 74% of Taiwanese favor removing ‘Republic of China’ from passport now:
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3907124
First disease of social media era, many want major outbreaks in Russia, India, China to prove leftism (westernism) correct||
Also realized feminism is sacrosanct to christian women the way mohammad is to inbreds||
https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/
Christian women beeen sluts, Muslim women beeen prostitutes||
Female sexual autonomy is not a political position but an act of war||
The church father usurped the authority of the biological one||
Wouldn’t the CCP just perceive that as positive?
Given that CCPied China is extremely butthurt about any official sovereignity hints regarding Taiwan, somehow doubt it.
China seems to have increased control of the WHO though?
China reported low numbers of deaths, but all netizens with IQ above 50, could see these numbers did not make sense, considering certain aspects of China’s reaction in January.
Therefore, you can infer the virus is a bit worse than the rosy glasses reports by Chinese authorities.
E.g. why did people reporting about the epidemic disappear
Even though you are young people, becoming infected with the virus is still a like playing a bit of lottery with your health, for which there is no particular reason.
Just wear gasmask outside and you eliminate the risk.
After the synchronous epidemic around the world, the economic collapse will be massive.
However, when the epidemic is safely finished, economy will alsorecover faster than people expect, because this is going to be a depression created by people pausing their lives – and economic solution is unpausing.
Israel is an example where you can see what happens from pausing of economy for shorter times (a few weeks to a month), during wars, because people stop working while there are rockets.
So if you look at 2014, Israel has a war for in July 2014 (it is 3 weeks with general pausing of economy). However, when the economy is allowed to restart, then there is compensatory growth (e.g. Q4 2014)
https://i.imgur.com/nqUEGKD.jpg
A problem is that there is indication, people might continue to shed the virus in immediate weeks after recovery, and then can potentially infect someone else.
That’s probably a difficult thing to control people about, because people will not be habituated to quarantining themselves for additional weeks after they feel like they completely recovered from an infection.
This is why I spend a lot of time on AE’s blog. I don’t have to deal with deranged lunatics like this who advocate for sexual commodification of half the human species.
Ok christcuck||
You’re not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, are you? You do realize “Rosie” is girl’s name, I hope. I certainly am a Christian, but I don’t think girls can be cucks of any sort.
You cannot compare a low grade war in a tiny country with the economic damage wrought by corona globally. In addition to the fact that much more economic activity can go on during what you call “war”, you don’t have the integrated supply chain issues, massive deleveraging and wholesale demand destruction. There won’t be a quick recovery, nor will there be a compensatory boost in global GDP.
Hmm, there is a form:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckquean
I clicked “Agree”, but I have to take exception to
That thing was 1000 pages. That’s about 999 pages of Democrat special pleading. No one other than Dem staffers read it (i.e., the same people who wrote it). I have no doubt that in the coming years we will “discover”, to our chagrin, just how much poison is now federal law.