@Pat Looks like that article is from 2020. It's far from succesful nowadays. Kinda funny how that turns out.

@trinsec

What's the current infection rate and death rate in China? What's the death rate in the US and Europe? How many people have died in total in China versus other countries? Who is more free to go where they want, a Chinese citizen living in a relatively virus-free country, or someone in the US who can't walk across the room without losing their breath?

How do you measure success?

@Pat

As a pro statistician I can say this is a very common failing people apply to tons of subjects... You can **not** compare absolute rates between countries and presume it is the result of a policy, thats considered invalid analysis.

When we analyze policy we look at the rate of change in the background incident rate immediately following a change in policy. You must compare the country to itself at an earlier period before the policy was adopted. It is the only way to reasonably hold most other factors constant.

@trinsec

@freemo

Results speak for themselves. Who did a much better job at protecting their citizens?
China.

@trinsec

@Pat

No, they dont, again, invalid analysis... There are **tons** of other factors, many of which have nothing to do with decisions the government or the people made, which may attribute to the absolute results... assuming there is causation is known-bad-analysis.

@trinsec

@freemo @trinsec

>"...There are **tons** of other factors, many of which have nothing to do with decisions the government or the people made.."

Like what? The weather? It's more than 100:1 difference in death rate. Other countries that also had zero-Covid strategies did very well, too.

@Pat @freemo @trinsec Not easy to take a stance here - it would take quite some time to get enough information.
I know nothing about the relevant factors.

What disappoints me, really, is that our gouvernment in germany does not even try.

They took the bad part of china at times, with curfews (that i still have not heard any reasonable explanation about in how that would be helpful), but now just... give up.

A bit of masking indoors, maybe invest in some tech for hotspots like schools for distance learning (haha, as if they would invest in schools ever). Testing is not perfect, but can help some.

They do none of that anymore. 100% populism, no regard for scientific recommendations.

@admitsWrongIfProven

Weather, genetics, access to water, food, nutrition, physical fitness of the population, age distributions, insularity, there are hundreds if not thousands of factors.

More over it is the factors we dont know.. there is a raeson experts in tthe field do it the way they do and reject the analysis approach you did.. just because you cant think of the hidden confounding variables doesnt mean they arent there.

@Pat @trinsec

@freemo

The quality studies on the effectiveness of respirators show that they are more effective than the vaccine. And unless you have evidence for transmission via some quantum nonlocality mechinism, isolation prevents spread of the disease. Those techniques are proven effective. China used them, we didn't. And the results show it.

@admitsWrongIfProven @trinsec

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@Pat @freemo @trinsec Hmm. Does this hint at something?
I would propose you talk about two different topics.

Pat says China did one thing right, says nothing about things China might have done wrong.

Freemo says that China had different conditions, and you can not compare the outcomes just like that.

Could you both be right?

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