comment: >
  
  I’m no mathematician but that seems higher than zero to me.
context: You are in China? >
  
  They are an American working for a Chinese company in Shanghai apparently. >
  
  This is more common than you think. China actually owns a lot of our country - a handful of Chinese conglomerates own $120 billion in American assets. Everything from food production and farming to entertainment and movie theaters.
  It's unfortunate that the only people who seem to actually be concerned about this are right-wing pundits who are typically actually being paid by those exact same Chinese firms. Namely a colossal asshole whose name rhymes with "Cucker Tarlson". I, for one, am not comfortable with the products of American labor being sold off to a foreign dictatorship, but I'm also certainly not going to join the team that whines about how M&M's aren't sexy anymore. >
  
  
  the team that whines about how M&M's aren't sexy anymore.
  
  I...I think I missed something. >
  
  Oh I'm so very sorry to have to be the one to tell you about this debacle.
  Tucker Carlson has an ongoing segment decrying how M&M's have "gone woke" and was particularly upset that the green and brown M&M's now have less sexy designs. >
  
  What in the fuck is wrong with this planet >
  
  900 million is only slightly less than the official CCP estimate of 5,000 cumulative cases since  2020 >
  
  It’s gonna increase even more with CNY around the corner >
  
  Yeah, largest annual human migration in the world. If covid isn't already ravaging the rural towns and smaller cities across China, it's just about to. There's no way people won't return to their families, even if it means expanding the spread of the virus. It's simply too ingrained in Chinese culture.
  CCP have been lying about numbers since the start of the pandemic. Unfortunately, for them misinformation and obfuscation is the rule, not the exception. >
  
  Man it’s just crazy reading these exact same sentiments from last year. Not diminishing anything you said, but it really does seem like we will go through this global surge once a year, get a new mutated strain from china, and have it insipidly wreak havoc in waves until the following years surge. 
  What the hell do we do to break this cycle? >
  
  CCP working with the West to use the West's vaccine would be a start. >
  
  Oh the CCP would love to use western vaccines, on the conditions we allow them access to the facilities where it's made. Then they can simply make it themselves, using technology they'd copy from those facilities. 🧐 >
  
  Which is just plain weird imo. The West would be giving them lifesaving medicine that they desperately need right now. CCP is in no position to be making conditions in return for that help. >
  
  Have you seen the guy who goes to McDonald's and takes a hundred ketchup packets and plastic cutlery back to his luxury car?
  That's China. >
  
  And culturally has evolved into thinking that it’s totally okay behavior >
  
  "What?  I'm a paying customer." >
  
  didn't realize how big china was before seeing the title saying 900million people and 60% in one sentence >
  
  If you’re one-in-a-million, there’s 1,412 people in China just like you >
  
  Now i feel bad for those strangers. >
  
  don't worry you're not one in a million /s >
  
  That means there are even more strangers to be worried about >
  
  A lot of people are going to die :(
  My mother, her sister, and her brother, all died within a span of 6 months before vaccines existed. >
  
  Im 41 and i had a bag case of Long-Covid lasting 6-7 months. Life was hell. I was vaccinated twice as i got it in November 2021. 
  I get mad when people still say the pandemic was a fraud and nothing but a mild cold. This 70 yr old guy at my gym wanted to lecture me about Covid two weeks ago. It was so hard not to slap him some senses of reality. (I did not, i just cut him off and said i dont wanna hear it).
  My condolenses to you. >
  
  This is why I don't talk to people at gyms. >
  
  Come to think of it, I’ve had several weirdos approach me at gyms and want to talk about whacky politics or some other bullshit. What is it about gyms? >
  
  Saying this as someone who goes to the gym 250+ times a year. Average person who gyms often is an idiot. There's a lot of normal intelligent people, but idiots are overrepresented. I'd guess gym atracts people who are narcistic, not very social, very vain. Good predictors of being a dumbo. >
  
  This right here. I'm really big into working out/fitness, etc, and always have been playing sports my whole life. That said, I tend to not to talk to anyone in gyms because a majority are idiots. Then, they see someone who can throw weights around like them and wanna chat it up and it immediately devolves into a dumb fucking conversation about what the fuck ever. I think they see someone like me and want to find similarities and I just want to start every conversation with "I know it may look it but I don't share the same prejudices as you." And put my headphones back in. >
  
  I can always tell when someone is going to try and talk to me at the gym. I just try not to make eye contact because that is usually when they commit. Same with guys who need a spotter. I know I look big and can throw around a decent amount of weight, but I'm not good at knowing when you want me to grab the weight and my back is all sorts of fucked up. So if I tweak it while trying to pick up a weight that is obviously way too heavy for you to be lifting alone, you will have to carry my ass out of here. >
  
  Is this why the "population of India to surpass China" date keeps sliding closer? >
  
  Nah, it's because Indians kno how to... checks notes, "get down"! >
  
  What is this a reference to? I had this weird Deja vu where every time I see these comments about india surpassing chinas population someone says this exact thing. I feel like im losing my mind seriously please help me im freaking out. Its happened 3 or 4 times now and each time I remember the other times it happened. This is like the strongest deja vu I get. I dont understand whats happening >
  
  News headlines the other day just stating that the population of India will be larger than that of China's >
  
  No the check notes thing and "indians know how to get down" the first time all of this happened was like 2 years ago >
  
  Well if it's any consolation, I was gonna say "fuck" - but then realised that would break the infinite reddit comment loop. >
  
  No this makes it feel like im going insane. If it isnt a reference to some media or something I have no idea why this exact comment section and its replies have happened 3 or 4 times over the past 2 years and I saw all of them. And each time its like "heres the india surpassing china check notes indians get down thing again" >
  
  I hope you're OK there. Maybe step back from Reddit for a bit and take a breather or go for a walk if it's nice outside. >
  
  or even try to... checks notes get down. >
  
  Their vaccine campaign is the au naturale! >
  
  They could always ask the west for a functional vaccine… >
  
  The issue is that China claims the rights to IP for every product they import or manufacture. They won't distribute mrna vaccines unless they're given the recipe, and the pharma companies understandably don't want to disclose it, since China is somewhat infamous for producing cheap versions that undercut the developers of technology.
  Edit: all the people replying about how intellectual property shouldn't exist: you are welcome to go invent your own mrna vaccines and give them away. >
  
  Ok what happened with Sinovac, I'm assuming it was shit? >
  
  Two different products, one was pretty shit and the other was much better but still not as good as the western ones.
  Then they ran up against a population and especially the older population that just didn't want to get vaccinated. They believe in 'Eastern' medicine (aka not medicine) more than the real stuff and have an odd fatalism about diseases that they don't already know.
  The younger population are pretty good with getting vaccinated and while the Sinovac stuff isn't perfect, it is in line with our earlier vaccines at least. The mid to old population is having nothing to do with it though and the CCP can't push it or they'll look weak when the elders simply refuse. >
  
  Yep. It's a joke among Chinese people, Chinese boomers and older will pressure their heirs to be doctors, but won't trust a doctor once they're ill. 
  Even if Pfizer manages to get inside the Mainland in full force, I doubt the older generation would care.
  Right now, it seems they'd also prefer Japanese medicine as well over the boosters being offered. >
  
  More like they want their kids to new doctors to take patient’s money, but they don’t want to give doctors money >
  
  I wonder how this will affect the rate and type of mutations >
  
  Prior to the vaccine being available, that was my mantra too.  We want less people to get infected, not relying on building "natural immunity", because every infected person is a few billion more rolls of the dice to see if a new mutation crops up.  This is how COVID-19 Alpha got to Delta, which was way more severe, and much more infectious.  So this many new infections, more chances for a new variant that out competes the current strain.  Damn it... >
  
  Why have a zero Covid policy if you’re just going to have a billion Covid policy right after it? >
  
  There were some protests in China against the strict measures. It seems like the government went “you get what you asked for” and let covid spread like wildfire to prove a point. >
  
  I genuinely think that’s what they’re doing >
  
  Isn’t more than half the population considered to have been infected in every country? >
  
  Not in China, because China never actually reopened until about 2 months ago. So remember that massive COVID spikes we saw from the UK about a year ago when they reopened? This is likely happening in China right now. >
  
  Except in the UK we'd all been double or triple vaxed at that point. >
  
  New variants spread 5-10x faster then the original one and everyone in China basically lives in big cities... Not surprised especially when people are actively trying to get infected so they can get it over and done with. We can say the original was 1 spread to 2.5 Now we can say 1 to 25. 25 the original speed exponentially It took about a whole year or so for 200mil people in the USA to be effected. 1 month 25 times 2 years 400mil people now those that done it on purpose 800mil in a month seems possible. >
  
  Covid infection doesn’t yield immunity from future infections. They have to know that. Don’t they ? >
  
  You must have some immunity to the variant you had or it would never go away >
  
  COVID is a multi system and primarily vascular disease that deranges the immune system. It is not the flu or the cold. Every time you get it, regardless of vaccination status and severity, there is accumulating damage to major organs including endothelium, the inner lining of the thousands of blood vessels in your body, which is responsible for managing immune response. In those reinfected that have died from even subsequent mild cases, they have been shown to have t-cells exhaustion likely from sustained upregulation in activation markers (a little different from AIDS, which directly attacks immune cells but still not good). To act like it's 1999 is irresponsible.  
  This is why COVID is a public policy failure when billions of people around the world who can't be bothered to read online for a few hours get to play with basically the perfect plague inc virus of attrition. >
  
  i’m dumb, what does this mean for us in a practical sense? >
  
  Every time you get COVID you accumulate damage to multiple parts of your body, including your immune system. That damage may not be noticeable to you but it's there. It makes you more vulnerable to every new infection.
  The damage to the immune system specifically works by having it be on alert at all times, basically exhausting it.
  Basically, every time you catch COVID you get a negative health status effect, and it's stackable. Not catching COVID, especially if you've already had COVID, is pretty important if you want to remain healthy. Even if you're vaccinated and otherwise in good shape. >
  
  damn, that’s messed up! why isn’t this more widely known? >
  
  I'm not sure about elsewhere, but where I live public health agencies have not communicated much of this to the public, presumably because the governments in charge of them want to be done with enforcing  lockdowns and safety precautions. Also, I think people just want to believe that COVID is mild and/or over now (understandably so), so they don't seek out information that contradicts that belief, or gloss over it when they do see it. 
  It's the same trend as our climate emergency. We should, as a society, be taking much more decisive action if we want the planet to remain livable, but governments find the crisis inconvenient so it doesn't get as much airtime as it should. >
  
  So if everyone can catch it again and it causes accumulative damage to everyone who gets it, could it eventually wipe out the human race? >
  
  That sort of estimation is beyond my layperson knowledge. From what I understand, this could become a mass disabling event (if it isn't already), which would at the very least have significant effects on societal stability/make life a lot more miserable. Significantly more people unable to work, more overloading and potential collapse of our health and support systems. Greater potential for new viruses to devastate an already immune-damaged population.
  But that's just speculation on my end, and I'm just some person who vaguely keeps up with COVID research news, not an expert in anything. >
  
  So 40% more to get herd immunity? /s >
  
  LongCovid is going to be so bad for these poor people on top of the fact that they got slammed by Covid in early 2020, then locked up for 3 years, now they are dying again. >
  
  But the death rate from current variants is much lower. >
  
  We're comparing apples and oranges. There was zero herd immunity in the first wave of covid. Nobody vaccinated, and no prior infections. China does not have the same level of herd immunity, so even if the current variants are a little less deadly, it will still result in mass death in China.
  Also it's really difficult to gauge how deadly current variants are, because we've been through multiple waves, most people are vaccinated or have had multiple infections - and the millions who have already died are not alive to experience it. So while they may be less deadly to us, that doesn't necessarily mean they will be less deadly to a place like China.
  But what we do know is that in an unvaccinated or poorly vaccinated population like China, with a high population density and far more infectious variant(s) - combined with an inability to deal with the current level of infections in their healthcare system - it will be absolute hell and millions will die. >
  
  Yep, either you got the vaccine or Covid, in the west, so our immune systems are primed now for the “weaker” strains. Any straight from Covid 2.0 onwards in China is bad. (Covid 3.0 being omicron). >
  
  It seems China is only capable of either extreme tyranny or extreme negligence.  They don't seem to have the capability of making policies that are in between, based on knowledge, using facts and evidence and listening to doctors and scientists.  It's backwards thinking.  China is still so far behind the rest of the world. >
  
  It's usually tyranny with extreme negligence. They are decades behind in nearly every area and mostly advance with IP theft. We don't need to worry much about the economic or military threat because of how incompetent they are. >
  
  
  They are decades behind in nearly every area 
  
  Such as what? You're making shit up. They're the world's 2nd largest consumer market, 2nd highest spender on R&D, they have better city infrastructure, and they provide affordable healthcare for their people. What are you going to say, they're decades behind the US in freedom and free speech?
  
  mostly advance with IP theft
  
  Wow, just like every other developing country ever, including the US.
  
  Historically, rapidly growing emerging market economies tend to be cited as they transition to higher income levels. For example, decades ago Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan were each perennial Section 301 violators until they reached a per capita GDP of about $20,000-$25,000
  ...As a country evolves from a net acquirer of IP to a net innovator, its calculations change, and strong protections are more attractive.
  ...During the early days of its industrialization, the United States was a world leader in IP rights violations, a fact often overlooked in the current discourse. Most notably, the businessman Francis Cabot Lowell helped launch the United States’ industrial revolution by copying and adapting the British power loom, one of the most impactful inventions of the 19th century. (Source)
  
  This is a common myth that is not backed by the statistics.
  
  The most accurate measure is to look for competing products. If there aren’t any, the harm to the victim is zero. A country could steal “$600 billion” in IP and not gain $600 billion in value. Can we point to products made in China with stolen IP? This explains the difficulty China has faced in its efforts to create a domestic semiconductor industry. Making high-tech products requires “know-how” that can’t be obtained by stealing IP. At the high end, there are products in telecom hardware, high-speed trains, and solar power. Copies of designs for consumer goods—furniture, toys, clothing—do real damage to Western companies. However, these losses, while troubling and harmful are not the issue anymore, and IP theft does not explain China’s advances in technology. (Source)
  
  International businesses do not care anyway and consider IP theft from employees and cyber hacking to be equal/greater concerns:
  
  ...only 8% of respondents to a foreign industry association survey in the lead up to the trade war reported that expectations of technology transfer in China were a top IP challenge for them. “Theft” of business secrets by employees and cyber-hacking, behavior which is distinguishable from FTT policies, may also be more sporadic than many assume:  13% and 8%, respectively, of respondents on a recent foreign industry association survey reported that they faced these issues in China. (Source) >
  
  Source: dude bought some knockoffs from Amazon and Habor Freight Tools because he cheap, and think China is only capable of making these craps. >
  
  Yeah, everyone knows the US's copyright and IP laws are shining beacons of fairness and modernity 🙄 >
  
  On the OP: China's Covid policy is a failure, highlighting the dangers of allowing politicians making decisions using dogma instead of data >
  
  Everything china says is fake so we can confidently be sure that they have at least 9 billion cases right now >
  
  No-no. Here's the reddit truth chart.
  - China bad? Then the numbers are good.
  - China good? Then the numbers are bad. >
  
  Thing is usually the "China bad" numbers aren't coming out of China, and the "China good" numbers are. People just don't trust Authoritarian regimes famous for restricting any and all information coming out of it to accurately report their numbers. Which I can get. >
  
  Did you read the article? It's an estimate from Peking University. This is literally coming out of China. So why are you trusting this number more than the others? >
  
  This shows the fundamental mistrust between the Chinese people and their government. The government has the brute force ability to lock down whole cities but could not persuade its citizens to get vaccinated - even with their inferior vaccine. >
  
  Covid Vaccine Tracker by NYT
  Vaccinated  Fully vaccinated    
  Mainland China  94%    91%
  ...
  United States   80%    68% >
  
  I suspect those numbers for China are about as accurate as a survey in a guys locker room asking how many women they’ve slept with. >
  
  Do you believe the article you're commenting on? >
  
  As general principle, when it comes to Chinese data on anything you should doubt it twice before trusting once. >
  
  Except when it paints China in a bad light then its true and if someone tries to debunk it with facts then downvote, ask how much the ccp is paying them, perhaps throw in a racial slur or two and move  on. >
  
  Heard immunity or herd immunity