I saw this video from two Chinese travel vloggers BrokeBros showing what they filmedin secret inside the Yasukuni Shrine. It gave me much to think about. Highly recommended to watch if u speak Chinese. A thread on some key moments in vid. 1/n Link to vid: https://t.co/ASIsz3SUIc

pEaCeFuL pRoTeStErS 🧐

WHY… https://t.co/khvHem1NaG

Tweet from the husband of the Karachi suicide bomber saying he’s “beaming with pride”. The attack killed 3 Chinese language teachers and their Pakistani driver. I want to see how long Twitter leaves this up.

American who murdered a Chinese girl last year got death penalty 👏

Time for a general update🧵on what's going on in Shanghai. This will probably be my last one, since my personal situation has largely stabilized and I don't have personal experience from the rest of the city to try to tell you what's going on. Today is Day 19 of lockdown for me.

People made China, and China is made of people

P.S. the takeaway ofc is that SH local gov needs to get their shit together and transport the positive cases to reasonably functional, equipped, and livable quarantine facilities, if that wasn’t clear. The solution isn’t “let’s just give up.”

1. The risk of exposure is clear and present 2. It’s a huge waste of human resources and volunteer bandwidth/goodwill, which all are already running low 3. It has no effective impact on the immediate control measures a neighborhood/building can take 2/2

I’ve heard similar things fm relatives & friends who’re volunteers. I’m no public health expert and I could be wrong, but I think until SH local gov can effectively & timely relocate positive individuals, blanket Covid tests are counterproductive. 1/2

She can’t possibly be awesomer.

Kind of stupefying how hate for 0 Covid is warping story about how Shanghai ended up in lockdown. It’s not dogmatic adherence to 0 Covid that led Shanghai to current predicament, but attempt to *leave* 0 Covid, go with a lighter disease control strategy that put them in lockdown.

P.S. I’m not gonna go into why I think home isolation doesn’t work. A lot of factors have to be considered there such as population density, building code, and logistics. The two comparable places that tried it, Wuhan in 2020 and HK recently, both didn’t succeed.

TL; DR: the people who tested positive are required to go to centralized quarantine to prevent them from infecting others, not to get treatment for themselves. So “look at them they are all asymptomatic” doesn’t undermine the necessity/effectiveness of centralized quarantine. End

One can, however, sufficiently prevent self fm spreading disease through strict quarantine. It’s perhaps ultimately a question of fair vs equal: not fair to require mandatory quarantine of the less vulnerable to protect the more vulnerable, but it equalizes the protection. 6/

IMO an individual is not equipped to fully protect self when the viral spread is uncontrollable, esp ppl who can’t vaccinate or are more vulnerable. “Positive responsibility”, when done right, will give them more protection at the cost of econ loss and/or collateral damage. 5/

It’s possible to explain “positive responsibility” from trad Chinese philosophy & ethics. It’s also clearly diff fm the “norm” of rest of the world & may be hard to accept. You don’t have to agree with it ofc. But I do believe it is the underlying logic for many policies. 4/

Since it’s impossible to evaluate or enforce compensation for the damage one may cause to others & public wellbeing by spreading the virus, the only solution under “positive responsibility” is mandatory & quarantine in controlled environment - AKA centralized quarantine. 3/

It implies that one should bare the responsibility (moral and civil) for transmitting the disease to others. This is diff fm “negative responsibility” where Covid negative individuals are responsible for protecting self against potential sources of infection. (Rest or world) 2/

The key concept to understanding China’s zero Covid policy is “positive responsibility”, a term that came out of my discussion w/ a friend. It essentially boils down to anyone who’s Covid positive must proactively prevent from spreading the infection to others. 1/

Seriously? This is the angle they want to take?