I know people are saying Shanghai is a shitshow because of the local government. But do you think it might have been a bad idea in general to deploy such a harsh policy in the country? (asking in good faith as someone who would not mentally survive such long lockdowns)
If you look at other third world countries, they have had pretty lax covid policies and the results have been catastrophic.
India had a pretty strict lockdown at the beginning but because of zero social support networks and rabid neoliberalism it was not viable in the long term. Currently the official death toll sits at around 521,723. However, excess mortality studies have shown that the actual death toll is 5-9 times of this.
Same goes for other third countries like Brazil, Russia etc. though I am not sure of the actual numbers.
Now the question is what should China do instead of enforcing a zero-covid policy? They can take the “let the poors die” that the rest of the world has done. The result of this will be that a cool 2-5 million people will die. This is not even taking into account the long term effects of the disease on the survivors. How is this any better than what is happening in Shanghai currently?
The correct approach seems to be to ensure that their zero-covid policy is enforced better. There is loads of room for improvement, like taking proper steps when an outbreak is detected for the first time, to more humane approach to lockdowns, like ensuring that basic material, mental and emotional needs are met.
Here on brasil more then 600.000 people have already died (those are the registered numbers, its probably a lot bigger) but by now most of the population is vaccinated, 75% already have the second dose, and its only now that most states are lying down the most severe laws. If we look at the state of our goverment, its a miracle that we are not in the sad state of the US by now.
I would still prefer 10 times more the china laws then what we got.
From the same Lancet study, it says that Brazil’s covid toll when estimated from excess mortality is 1·28 (1·18 to 1·37) which is not too bad. (Link to table.) I expected it to be a little bit worse.