[ExI] chinese fires, was:RE: book review

[spike at rainier66.com]

…> On Behalf Of Stathis Papaioannou via extropy-chat



 

 

 

On Thu, 1 Dec 2022 at 02:34, spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org <mailto:extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> > wrote:

 
Clearly their system isn’t working.  I suppose that would depend on how one
defines the term “working.”  …

 

>…It’s the classic way of dealing with an epidemic. It’s how the original SARS was stopped. It’s what they should have done as aggressively as possible, but didn’t, at the start in Wuhan. The two problems now are that it isn’t working because the infectivity of the current strain is too high and, on a cost - benefit analysis, the cost of the ongoing lockdowns is too high.

-- 

Stathis Papaioannou

 

 

 

Ja Stathis, I see it as a kind of solution.

 

My Chinese neighbor who witnessed the Great Leap (no particular direction specified) has educated me.  He really does have a fundamentally different mindset, a very different attitude toward government than a typical American.  From his point of view, if the government says do something, you damn well do it.  He continues to be amazed by me and his own American-born son who go off asking if the order is legal.  

 

The son is American to the core but his Chinese father doesn’t really get the whole differing levels of government with differing rights and powers bit.  To him, any official is government and it is all the same.

 

I am imagining Chinese apartment buildings full of guys with his mindset.  They are being locked into a tower with no egress allowed, even in a fire, authorities under orders to use lethal force to protect the proletariat against… a mild flu.  

 

My fond hope is that the outcome of all this is at least a big change in attitude.

 

spike

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