News Brief: NYT's Melt Down Over China's 'Zero Covid' Policy Has Nothing to Do With Liberal Rights

I'm really happy you've made this news brief, it's a very welcome breath of fresh air from the media spin around China we've seen. It's summed up very well in the episode as "imperial neuroses." If China is successful in combatting covid, then it's evidence of their sinister intention, whereas if they failed and let it rip like in the US, then it would be proof of their incompetence. Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

Jonathan Tong

mankind is confronted with two possible responses to the pandemic: The ruling class’s demand for mass infection, under the guise of “herd immunity” and “endemicity,” or the demand of the working class, articulated by the Socialist Equality Parties and the World Socialist Web Site, for the global elimination of COVID-19. https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/10/pers-f10.html.

Terry Stack

Wonder if the NYT will package their daily scare story with our daily Wordle puzzle whenever that eventually gets put behind the paywall.

Tom Kelly

would also love to see some Ukraine coverage!

Interesting episode cause I def noticed these weird headlines but didn't think much about it honestly. Sort of reminds of the china "tech crackdown" narrative the last year or so, which only serves Chinese capitalists, and their American backers, while ignoring all the very real harms of firms like Tencent and Alibaba.

David Turner

in the meantime you might enjoy TrueAnon's coverage.

One time I was out in the parking lot tryin to remove my excess earwax with a golf pencil when I see this guy Marty

Are you guys gonna do a news brief about Ukraine anytime soon? The disconnect between Ukrainian doubts about the possibility of a Russian invasion and the non-stop American hysteria about an endlessly IMMINENT INVASION is really dizzying, and I think worthy of some analysis, especially considering the stakes! The media has been playing a completely one-sided blame game for months, ignoring NATO's aggressive history, and they've been pleading for more and more destructive sanctions- even "preemptive sanctions" to "deter" Russian aggression! Not sure how that's supposed to deter Russia, if they're gonna get sanctioned no matter what they do, but I guess Russia deserves it for looking at us sideways, or something.

Sean L Byrne

I think he means China does not have a huge swath of the population that is inherently distrustful of vaccines like the United States does.

Sean L Byrne

?? We mention China has a vaccine and only mentioned a contagion taking off RE: Omicron or Omnicron-like because it’s so contagious. And we absolutely did not say they would simply let it go without any other interventions. In fact we explicitly said the opposite and noted that the “zero” framing is a canard not a term they use.

Citations Needed

Also, what does “the Cletus Factor” mean?

Brian Stewart

Might be worth revisiting the assertion that the efficacy of acquired immunity is “unknown” at this stage. There has been a lot of research work done on this across multiple variants. We know enough to know that a policy claiming to rely on it for “protection” is using it as a fig leaf. This was identified by ethical epidemiologists early in the pandemic when UK, Brazilian and some US leaders were outspokenly using this pretext to enable mass death of people they ideologically consider to be “excess population”. Even then, honest scientist knew it was a deception, but now we have empirical data specifically regarding SARS-CoV-2. Let’s underline this point! If the left doesn’t name and record these eugenic crimes, who is going to? You also don’t mention at all that China also has its own vaccination program—you take for granted the eugenicist pigs’ assertion that China’s “zero COVID” strategy could result in a catastrophic outbreak among a huge immunologically naïve population (no acquired immunity or vaccine). This assumes China will simply one day totally abandon containment policy, rather than gradually needing it less and less as vaccine quality and vaccination rates approach the levels needed to deter transmission. First, nothing about Xi or the Chinese government suggests to me that it is likely to take such a drastic step unless its hand has been forced in some way (NYT’s brunch hogs present no such argument). Second, according to a quick Google, China is 87% fully vaccinated. Its vaccines seem to have lower effectiveness against infection than some Western vaccines (the effectiveness against hospitalization is still quite good), but the population is not immunologically naïve, and the vaccination program is ongoing. SARS-CoV-2 vaccines are very likely to become seasonal as we see with the flu, and as many epidemiologists predicted in early 2020.

Brian Stewart

I think the subtext in these articles beyond the freedom to die rhetoric is they want to discredit a centrally planned economy. If China didn’t use strong central planning I think what they have done would have been impossible. Being able to stop capital from throwing a hissy fit really does wonders.

Ben Gialenios