Conversation

Still can’t believe the official Chinese Covid fatalatity statistics of just over 4634. Even if it’s “only” an order of magnitude off and the real number is 46k it’s still unbelievably good. Hard to believe authoritarian control works that perfectly. Anyone have alt estimates?
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Of course they also have a full digital and socially-integrated police state. Almost all payment is by phone, they have social credit scores derived from their digital footprints, backed up by local human surveillance. I can believe this makes a massive behavioral difference.
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China is a colonial organism, while the US, esp. the greatest generation, used to be an optimized composite or mutual organism like lichen or coral. Colonials either get it really right (now) or really wrong (Mao) because they’re hierarchical. Composites need trial-and-error.
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Yes, I see what you’re saying, at a general level. To point to a specific for a moment, the US developed a national pandemic response plan post-SARS, which the current admin dismantled. Not clear how “prompt” it would have been, but would prob have delivered a second term.
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