Foxconn halts production as Shenzhen goes into lockdown | Hacker News Reader

Foxconn halts production as Shenzhen goes into lockdown

theverge.com

1.4B population 3400 corona cases

Why lockdown 17.5m in Shenzhen? What am I missing, because it has to be a lot

Hard lockdowns and aggressive contact tracing are incredibly effective when case numbers are very low. Contact tracing in particular becomes significantly less effective as case numbers climb.

What they are hoping to accomplish with these measures is to stop the current outbreak in its tracks and return to low-to-zero daily case numbers.

At some point they will fail to contain an outbreak (either intentionally or accidentally) and then the case numbers will skyrocket in a very short period of time.

In my opinion lockdown works best at early time, when the number is low. There you can have very short time lock down, eliminate the cases and go back to normal.

I haven’t been following COVID closely enough to know, are there any instances where this has actually worked in the long term?

It only works if everyone is doing the same, meaning other countries would also eliminating the virus. China still has the borders closed. It is a virus, if you cut the spreading chain, it would stop spreading, it is logic. Lock-down works or not depending on the application of lockdown, if it isn't implemented fully, probably it is better not to have a lockdown (contact tracing, isolated cases with massive tests and so on).

Again, you cannot hide massive breakout of a virus, if you didn't hear it, it didn't happen

It worked in China (seemingly) and New Zealand for a couple of years

>It worked in China (seemingly)

No, it didn't, they've just been censoring their cases and deaths, and arresting journalists and activists who try to report the truth.

https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor...

https://terminus2049.github.io/

Even if it did "work" in China with their draconian lockdowns, that was against pre-Omicron variants. Omicron is so much more infectious that's it's already too late for lockdowns if they have several thousand confirmed cases already.

As an aside, if there was something you were considering purchasing over the next 12-18 months that is made in China or has components made in China (so pretty much anything) I'd suggest getting your order in now.

That's why I added the seemingly. Although those reports are from early 2020, when it was widely assumed China was fudging their numbers and was about prelockdown results. The question was about the efficacy of lockdowns. Since then China seems to have done okay with sporadic lockdowns. They could have been covering up major outbreaks (I don't speak Chinese, so I cannot read the terminus github)

>I don't speak Chinese, so I cannot read the terminus github

Chrome has a translate feature.

There's also a web translator that doesn't require installing google software. But when last I used it it didn't seem sufficient to rely on for censored headlines.

So they just did it for no reason and for the fun of it?

It seems odd that two random links are the "evidence" that it didn't work. The lockdowns came with a heavy cost for China, so honestly, what you're saying doesn't really make sense.

It's the data which doesn't make sense, as a starting point. Look at their reported death data before and after 4/19/20 and tell me if that makes sense to you? It's laughably obvious

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

It does actually make a lot of sense considering

1. Early days of the pandemic, some of our interventions made death far more likely.

2. The outbreak was in one region of China, and that outbreak was stopped REALLY fast with the lockdowns.

3. The early strain was far less deadly than, say, delta.

Getting access to info on China isn't as hard as you think. They might've hid/miscalculated a death here and there, but nothing on the scale of what you're suggesting.

How do you explain a skyrocketing death count that flat lines to zero the same day people were getting arrested for reporting on the censorship and coverups that had been going on since late 2019 when Wuhan doctors were raising the alarm?

Do you genuinely believe China has had zero covid deaths since 4/19/20 and has not done any coverups or censorship regarding covid?

Lockdowns never made sense which is why WHO recommended against them until China started doing them.

the exponential nature of disease spread. This is how China has largely stayed covid free.

>This is how China has largely stayed covid free.

Do people actually believe this? If you look at their reported numbers from early on in the pandemic its plainly obvious when they decided to start hard censoring their true numbers.

Look at the reported deaths before and after 4/19/20.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

Note that 4/19/20 was also the same day they were arresting activists who had been reporting on the coverups that had been going on since late 2019.

https://qz.com/1846277/china-arrests-users-behind-github-cor...

>Do people actually believe this?

I was in Beijing for most of 2020 and spring of 2021 so yes as life was normal. I mean I don't doubt the numbers are unreliable or off by 5-10x or something at the beginning of the pandemic but I didn't have a single case at work or my social circle for the entire year of 2020. So at least from the summer on I consider it fairly accurate.

Frighteningly, the Chinese official numbers are used in studies and analysis of Covid spread, despite them being entirely unreliable.

I was in the Netherlands for the first year of the pandemic and the local CDC was very hostile to testing until rather late. I believe good studies take that into account.

Look who's financing these studies...

I want to know what their future plans are... Do they plan on doing rolling lockdowns forever? Are they hoping to develop a better vaccine that prevents the disease spreading? (As opposed to merely reducing death rates as all existing vaccines do?)

They might be going for the NZ and AU plan that seemed to be to keep things at bay for as long as possible while the virus hopefully mutates into something less dangerous. Lockdowns can't go on forever but if you can keep them going until falling below a certain threshold of danger from being infected, you might be able to avoid the worst impact of the virus itself. Of course the lockdowns and other measures might end up being worse than what the more dangerous variant of the virus would have done but that's the kind of thing that will debated for decades to come.

You know the answer.

All the articles predicting the end of the chip shortages may have been too optimistic.

Yeap. Still holding dearly the last four Raspberry Pi's in the Western Hemisphere...

How has this affected Apple in the past? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30670170

"Tell HN: China Is Entering Lockdown" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30658886

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