Residents in Shanghai are suffering under China's draconian Coronavirus restrictions.

 

An almost deserted street in Shanghai. The Daily Beast/Vcg

Residents in Shanghai are suffering under China's draconian Coronavirus restrictions. The Daily Beast. Shanghai is China's largest city and has been under lockdown since April 5th. Residents are not allowed to leave their homes even for food and are relying on the government to give them rations. Anyone that tests positive for the virus are sent to quarantine camps. People had little chance to prepare for the lockdown as it happened quickly, with no chance to stock up on supplies. The lockdowns are in response to elevated Coronavirus case levels with almost 30,000 cases reported on Sunday. However, the vast majority of cases are asymptomatic. China has admitted that food deliveries have been a mess. Video from the city has shown people screaming in the night, fighting with police and drones telling people to remain in their homes. 

What the?? This video taken yesterday in Shanghai, China, by the father of a close friend of mine. She verified its authenticity: People screaming out of their windows after a week of total lockdown, no leaving your apartment for any reason. pic.twitter.com/iHGOO8D8Cz

— Patrick Madrid ✌🏼 (@patrickmadrid) April 9, 2022

As seen on Weibo: Shanghai residents go to their balconies to sing & protest lack of supplies. A drone appears: “Please comply w covid restrictions. Control your soul’s desire for freedom. Do not open the window or sing.” https://t.co/0ZTc8fznaV pic.twitter.com/pAnEGOlBIh

— Alice Su (@aliceysu) April 6, 2022

food riot in shanghai—china’s largest and wealthiest city—under covid lockdown. pic.twitter.com/w0kBR2Pbmp

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 9, 2022

My Comment:

As you can see things are not going well in China today. This lockdown is a disaster and the insane thing is that it appears to be for no reason whatsoever. The current strains of Coronavirus are extremely weak, somewhere between the common cold and the flu in terms of severity. It can still kill some people with health problems but that's about it. The solution is to protect those people, not shut down an entire city.

Keep in mind this is at a time when the rest of the world has almost entirely dropped their coronavirus restrictions. Indeed, outside of the news I haven't thought much about the virus in months. There isn't a thing that I did in 2019 that I am not doing now, there are no restrictions that affect my life that I am aware of. For all intents and purposes the pandemic is over. 

But China? They are going all out. The restrictions they are putting their people under are above and beyond even the worst excesses we saw in blue state America and Europe. These people aren't even allowed out of their houses to buy groceries. Nobody is working and everything is shut down. How are people going to handle that?

It's clear that they are not. The people are losing it and for good reason. People can't live like this and they are showing that they can't. They are afraid of starving to death and with good reason. The Chinese people have a long history of being starved to death by their government and it's not impossible that the same thing could happen again. And that's why they are starting to riot.

I just can't get a handle on this. Is the Chinese government acting out of incompetence here or are they doing this on purpose? I mean, every other country in the world is dropping restrictions and the world is not falling, well other than the war in Ukraine. Things are mostly back to normal and China is pissing away billions of dollars, infuriating their people and causing untold amounts of damage. And for what? A virus that isn't anywhere near the threat it used to be?

So what is the reason? Part of me thinks that the Chinese know something we don't. They are sticking with a zero covid long after the rest of the world has given up. Does this mean that the virus is a bigger deal than we know? After all it did come from one of their labs...

Still, I suspect this is just China being China. They are a communist country and communists are not known for subtlety. They don't now how to deal with a problem without being tyrannical, it's in their nature. 

This will have knockdown effects throughout the global economy, some of which we are already seeing. Not all of these effects are bad however, gas prices have collapsed lately and I think this is a major reason why. Lockdowns have reduced the demand for gasoline and we have seen a nice drop, that is probably temporary. 

The real problem is that the logistics nightmare the world has been undergoing since the pandemic began will be even worse. Shanghai is a major city that produces a lot of product and right now that is all shut down. This is already having effects on cargo shipping as ships are starting to pile up. Given how dependent our economy is on China's that's going to hurt.