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This plus too many elderly trusting in "traditional medicine", what in the west tend to be called alternative, e g. Acupuncture

Almost 2023 now...

>arrogance

Nationalism too!

I just think it's odd that China draws the line at mandating vaccines. One-child - ok. Shooting protesters, ok. Selling organs from political prisoners: why not? Genocide: it's on the table. But requiring obstinate old Chinese to get a lifesaving shot? Perish the thought, we're not monsters!!

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So will that result in shortages around the rest of the world? Seems impossible to use only paxlovid to combat this.

My only guess is they don't want to set themselves up where they fail. All those other points they've been quite successful. Getting people vaccinated? Doubt they could succeed on a reasonable time frame. While stockpile vaccines when you have zero covid?

Too late for the dead, but not for everyone else.

It's a combination of factors in case of Pfizer. Yes nationalism is an issue but they also want complete immunity in cases from any side effects of the vaccine

Plus the vaccine needs ultra cold storage which wasn't the case for AstraZeneca or local made vaccines (at least in the Indian case )

Plus the vaccines imported would be costlier compared to the ones made in China or local countries

Ofcourse this is not to takeaway any advantages that the Pfizer vaccine has but there are 2 sides to every issue

Maybe I'm cynical but maybe they want old people to die off to lessen their incoming population collapse from 1 child era policies?

Finally, Xi or someone convinced Xi to stop being an idiot and start using western vaccine. Too many people unnecessarily died though.

Now, people have fighting chance for survival which is way long overdue.

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Beijing doing what Beijing does best.. Propaganda.. Nevermind the independent journalists that disappear all the time and are forgotten about.. Nevermind the recent protests just weeks ago..Tiananmen Square never happened.... right.....

It's not vaccine. It's Paxlovid, an antiviral drug.

Actually, China did try to get Moderna's vaccine. But they wanted Moderna to make it in China - presumably to steal MRNA tech. Moderna smartly refused and potentially gave up on millions.

Edit included link

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/moderna-refused-china-request-reveal-vaccine-technology-ft-2022-10-02/

Meanwhile, U.S. with their babyboomer population was looking for solutions too. Sure would save Social Security.

Don't confuse idiocy with malicious intent

This is big news because they have refused to administer US Covid Vaccines, instead opting for their poorly made SinoVac

My guess is that due to the fact that the older population tend to be staunch supporters of the CCP, they don't want to upset them by mandating vaccines.

Also they've stoked the traditional medicine fire too much to now go back and say that they actually need real medicine.

Fair on that point though I'd argue the support of CCP, or at least nationalism, is big among younger folks. Seeing 30 years of fantastic growth that you grew up with would make you a believer. Fair points though, especially on the traditional medicine.

Thanks for the info. That answer some question as to why China did not distribute western vaccine sooner.

Though Moderna did lose millions I agree that it was good decision to not manufacture in China itself.

> presumably to steal mRNA tech

It's sad that this is such an obvious truth, as opposed to say, saving Chinese lives.

Dictators gonna dick, I guess

On Monday, Chinese state media CCTV quoted President Xi Jinping as saying the country needed a more targeted health strategy to protect people's lives as the Covid situation in China changes.

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Paxlovid is an anti-viral drug treatment prescribed to Covid + patients, not a SARS-2 vaccine.

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Yep you're right. My point was more that its US made but that wasn't very clear

They seriously weren't using this before?

It's like step one for high risk patients

Moderna is also a relatively small company that likely didn't have the means to ensure quality was met by their company standards. They even had a hard time getting going in the US, despite being US based. The covid vaccine is their first product to market

That's why they're so bullish on patents- this is the first time they've brought in actual profits after over a decade of investing into this technology

Remember the CCP has a tenuous grasp on power. The things you mentioned, other than one child which has been relaxed, don’t impact the population as a whole. Mandates that impact the average citizen have to be carefully considered as to whether they will cause discontent or not. Witness the 180 on lockdowns once the population had enough of that shit.

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Haha, that's a solid point! But I really wonder bout our leaders.

Beijing has been trying real hard to push their traditional Chinese medicine for many years now. The problem with TCM is that it literally doesn’t work. Medically, it’s complete nonsense. Still, they put it above western medicine for ideological reasons.

Chinese medicine most definitely works. It's not a fix all and sometimes you do need to embrace western medicine but there are many many many studies showcasing alternative medicine treatments.

It's fairly obvious now a days that big pharma controls the feasibility of natural medicine.

We have come to a point where if a person wears a white coat, we trust them and the science... That's a disservice as there are many natural medicines that can be used instead of medication or treatments with horrible side effects.

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You know what Chinese medicine would be called if it worked? Medicine. Without the qualifier.

I don't understand what your point... It's called that because it's not Western medicine. Should I have described it differently?

TRADITIONAL Chinese Medicine. Not Chinese Medicine. Very big difference. One is science based the other is superstition.

You're wasting your time. When Redditors have collectively decided that "China bad" no matter the circumstances, they will regurgitate any conspiracies conceivable to reinforce their bias.

Oops. My fault then, I wasn't aware there was a difference between the two descriptions of the medicine.

>Plus the vaccines imported would be costlier compared to the ones made in China

Well...yeah...but they also actually work, which seems to be the ultimate deciding factor here.

Paxlovid is provide free to US senior citizens that test positive for COVID 19, may be prescribed over the phone and promptly delivered. The US federal government as well as some state agencies are very committed to saving lives and hospitalizations for at risk groups including those with asthma, heart conditions, senior age as well as other comorbidities.

Yes in this case they are more superior but I was just discussing alternative reasons as mentioned above

Its about money. They don't want to pay all that vaccine money to western companies.

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In retrospect, mainland china’s lockdowns were for absolutely nothing. Lives, suffering, time and money wasted. SNAFU.

… but some people did profit, in particular the testing companies and the corrupt officials that backed them.

Now since the mainland government can’t make their own decent COVID treatments they will be forced to eat humble pie.

Also, currently foreign residents can have western vaccines in China. Eventually local Chinese population will adopt western made vaccine too imo… when the government realizes the scale of their fuck up on the economy.

Which is crazy because historically getting vaccines was just about the only thing communist countries did right. To this day the former East German states have a better vax record than former west German states

Calling TCM superstition is weird. Did china have imaginary doctors through out history or something?

Side note - I took paxlovid when I had COVID. That shit was pure magic.

Thanks for all the sources

I wasnt aware I had to provide any... it's used globally. Maybe step outside your bubble and look into things not handed to you in a pill.

Edit with source

Here is a source from CNN which gives clarity to both sides of the discussion:

https://www.cnn.com/2019/05/24/health/traditional-chinese-medicine-who-controversy-intl/index.html

Maybe you should shut up about traditional chinese medicine if you needed to google it only after people pointed out your errors.

Traditional chinese medicine doesn't include just the use of herbs and natural ingredients, it includes alternative treatments that can be described as just quackery in modern science. Shit such as cupping therapy, scraping and acupuncture have zero proven effectiveness despite large number of studies done on them.

Can you imagine scraping your skin with a hard object until it turns bright red? All it would do is cause bruising on the skin but traditional chinese medicine claims that it improves health by stimulating regeneration which is a load of bull.

A large part of traditional chinese medicine is centered on the flow of qi and life energy, balancing the positive and negative energies. It's what you would find in shitty martial arts films.

I wasnt aware I had to provide sources for something like this.

You need a source to prove the sky is blue too?

Thanks for your sources as well!

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Annnnnd they’re gonna re-open the borders and drop the quarantine. Eeeesh

The CCP is made up of a bunch of old farts who thinks traditional Chinese medicine is legit...

>Oops. My fault then, I wasn't aware there was a difference between the two descriptions of the medicine.

When you've admitted you didn't understand the difference between traditional chinese medicine and chinese medicine? Yep it's clearly out of your league.

You've learned today that traditional chinese medicine is fraught with pseudosciences such as qigong, scraping, cupping therapy, acupuncture, and the consumption of rare animal parts such as horns of rhinos, deer antlers, tiger bones, pangolins and animal reproductive organs which created blackmarkets for illegal poaching and smuggling with no proven health benefits at all.

China's national health commission recommends bear bile product injection as treatment for covid. Second source.

Traditional chinese medicine gained popularity because of mao's propaganda to use folk medicines during his failed cultural revolution, because china was struggling with supplying people with real medicine.

You're welcome.

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Um, re read my sentence... I said I wasn't aware of the difference between the DESCRIPTIONS of the medicine. It does not mean I wasn't correct in the rest of my comment.

I don't understand your visceral response to my comment, but sure I always enjoy a good conversation.

First... Wikipedia links are NOT proof or sources of anything. Especially for medical discussions.

Do you use WebMD for medical diagnoses? For someone who is accusing me of googling my sources, linking Wikipedia is laughably ironic.

For actual proof from a truly recognized and respected medical source:

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/chinese-medicine

How about you take some time and do some actual research and reading before being so rude and insulting.

TCM is superstition in the same way the four humors theory that medieval doctors worked with was also superstition.

Because it's the truth. You can't deny that large parts of traditional chinese medicine is made up of fake science. Stop defending it.

It's also kinda laughable that the "respected medical source" you provided showed that it has no proof of traditional chinese medicine's effectiveness and has a warning telling people to not take it as replacement for conventional medicine. In other words we're telling you about this thing but can't prove it works.

Fact that it included cupping and acupuncture in the list of treatment showed that it has no scientific basis and is simply a short explanation page on what traditional chinese medicine is instead of being a vouch for it.

>In 2004, for example, the FDA banned the sale of dietary supplements containing ephedra and plants containing ephedra group alkaloids due to complications, such as heart attack and stroke. Ephedra is a Chinese herb used in dietary supplements for weight loss and performance enhancement.

Using banned substance with heart attack risks?

>It is believed that to regain balance, you must achieve the balance between the internal body organs and the external elements of earth, fire, water, wood, and metal.

Peddling nonsense about five elemental energy balance?

>Acupuncture is a component of TCM commonly found in Western medicine and has received the most study of all the alternative therapies.

Talking about treatment receiving studies but not the fact that the conclusions of the studies showed no health benefits? Very honest and informative.

>Its basic concept is that a vital force of life, called Qi, surges through the body. Any imbalance to Qi can cause disease and illness. This imbalance is most commonly thought to be caused by an alteration in the opposite and complementary forces that make up the Qi. These are called yin and yang.

Positive and negative energies balance and qi?

Yep very respected medical source. I see nothing wrong there and totally believe that imaginary positive and negative life energy exists and is balanced around five elements. What is this captain fucking planet? Fire earth and water?

Thanks for proving that it's pseudoscience.

Yes, Placebos can help. Even though the alternative medicine do as much help to your health as a sugar pills it is still something.

While science still have long time to go, it is better in every way except for accidentally killing the patient.

And they'll unironically use sources like the Epoch Times and Radio Free Asia to back up their claims while deriding anything that comes out of China as 'propaganda'.

It's partly the TCM and partly their insistence on Sinovac / Sinopharm vaccines instead of Western jabs.

Eh, I'd be surprised if many of the guys at the top haven't already gotten Pfizer / Moderna jabs.

How is an established history of treatment a placebo? People have been treated using this method successfully for thousands of years. Are all those patients and doctors in on it too?

Maybe China is bad.

And guess who owns reddit

They are over confident with lock down and testing but neglected in vaccination and treatment. It is time to swallow the bitter pill.

It’s about pride, the west doing something that China wasn’t able to.

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I have a good story about that! A brilliant scientist named Tu Youyou went through TWO THOUSAND Chinese medical herbs purported to treat malaria. She found one, now known as artemisinin, earning her a Nobel Prize and saving millions of lives. This is a fantastic true story, but look at it another way: out of two thousand supposed cures, only one was provable, a 0.05 percent success rate. It is extremely unlikely that a herbal cure will be effective.

Here’s the Wikipedia article

Can the buy vaccines from Pfizer or moderna if they wanted to? No idea how that works

I doubt the higher ups really need to worry about domestic Chinese laws. Or they pay someone who's smuggling them in.

Did it cure your small pee pee?

Seems like some folks are very honed in on the fact it’s called “Traditional Chinese” Medicine instead of it being simply named medicine. Word games? Kinda pointless to discuss about it in this case.

On the other hand, isn’t a lot of our medicine derived from ancient sources (herbs and all) - so… I’m sure there’s some element of viability to TCMs. Perhaps not against COVID, as it’s too novel? I don’t know. Would need to do some actual research and reading up to find out more instead of blindly believing the crowd and current sentiment.

"Successfully"

The same way my ancestors "successfully" prayed to St Brigid to protect them from the plague

Did you READ the doc linked above? It casts China in such a brilliant 'good guy' light /s

considering most of the the things on your list were fabricated by the West, not really

Oh no no no. Your mom ended up being the best cure!

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>Plus the vaccine needs ultra cold storage which wasn't the case for AstraZeneca or local made vaccines (at least in the Indian case )

Moderna can be stored at <5F (<-15C), which is totally attainable with an ordinary freezer.

Everywhere had superstitious and totally useless (and often actively harmful) doctors until very recently, with the advent of scientific medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine is just as useless as the four humours or the miasma theory of disease.

China is just holding on to theirs a bit longer.

TCM isn't the reason why they insist on using domestically produced versions of the COVID vaccines which are significantly less effective than the foreign produced versions of the same vaccines.

The issue isn't that they're pushing TCM but that the actual medicine that they do use are just less effective than their foreign counterparts.

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Why would it be weird? How would you describe it?

There isn't. Tradional medicine is not scientifically proven in any way. The distinction should be medicine and and superstitious/unproven treatments.

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Not that i'm an expert or anything, but I guess I would compare western medicine and traditional chinese medicine in the sense that western medicine works directly to suppress/fix symptoms and let the body heal, while tcm tries to boost the vitality of the body and let it heal? I may be completely wrong but thats what I think.

there may be people who don't know what they're doing with traditional chinese medicine, but I'd wager the royal families in history would have executed all the imperial doctors if no one could do anything to heal them?

Canada had refused as well at times.

Nope. I have friends in different parts of China and despite having access to personal high-end doctors they can't get Pfizer or Moderna despite trying for months. Most of them have had covid in the last month. Almost everyone at their firms has also had covid in the last 30 days. It's almost like they are speed-running it. Unfortunately, if you're over 65 and have some sort of issue you have a high chance of not making it. It is a shame how many grandparents have been lost recently. I've researched trying to ship them something from here but getting through customs is..... an issue.

C-C-P leadership purchased, imported and vaccinated themselves with 5000 Pfizer jabs as soon as they could back in 2021 and screwed the rest of the nation.

I wouldn't be surprising at all if some doctors in ancient China got executed for reasons like that.

But it's essentially the same as in Western medieval ages. There were certain things doctor's knew how to do, and they actually managed to help - those are the things that got developed further into modern medicine. And then there was a bunch of stuff that people just made up due to lack of scientific standards. But nobody knew better, so they still did it, especially to noble families (as they could afford doctors). Think about blood-letting or cupping therapy.

Medicine, Western or not, needs to be evidence-based. Meaning that you need to be able to scientifically measure success of what you are doing. If you can't measure any success, it's superstition and pseudoscience.

The reason why any alternative medicine - traditional Chinese included - is "alternative" is that it's impossible to proof any positive effects beyond placebo. In other words, it's not working. It doesn't have any effect.

The reason why it's called "Traditional Chinese" is because most of it is not working. Otherwise, it would simply be medicine. But it's not for a reason.

And yes, of course, various modern medical knowledge is based on ancient research. But those things are part of "normal" medicine because they work. You don't need to look for "Traditional Chinese" to get those.

And then create new strains of virus that are immune to the antivirals, rinse and repeat. Thanks Bin Laden

Some one at Pfizer just jizzed their pants at the news they need vaccines !

Almost-in-time-delivery

They tried to play geopolitics with their own vaccine before, so they only used that basically on their own population and sold it to suckers like Hungary.

And here I thought that the CCP really believed the propaganda crap their own troll farms were spewing about Pfizer vaccines having microchips in them and the 'murican government was installing 5G into their citizens.

Can't let that security risk happen in China /s

> and screwed the rest of the nation.

*still screwing.

They won't get off the Sinovac train. Even though the West, which had effective vaccines (Sinovac was marginal, at best), they freely admit that with the new strains that have developed, the 1st gen don't cut it. Xi won't admit this, god knows why. So, they double down on Sinovac, lockdowns, etc.

If I were more cynical I would suggest a correlation between a significantly weaker economy and the advantage of having a lot less mouths to feed that contribute little to said economy.

> The reason why it’s called “Traditional Chinese” is because most of it is not working. Otherwise, it would simply be medicine. But it’s not for a reason.

What do you even mean by this? You are simply playing with semantics.

Traditional medicine has been used and is still being used across the world in regions where modern medicine is not as accessible. To say it’s completely quack is just discounting billions of people as fools. What makes you think traditional medicine do not work at all?

If you want to argue with definitions:

> medicine, the practice concerned with the maintenance of health and the prevention, alleviation, or cure of disease.

Some articles:

• To what extent can traditional medicine contribute a complementary or alternative solution to malaria control programmes?
• Traditional medicinal plants of cold desert Ladakh—Used against kidney and urinary disorders

Here’s more: https://scholar.google.com.my/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_vis=1&q=+traditional+medicine+effectiveness&btnG=

Sorry to interject in your conversation. There is no such thing as "western medicine". It's just called "medicine" and comes from scientific research, not from "the west".

Vaccines are just accupunture with extra sauce.

>Xi won't admit this, god knows why.

Hard to justify being an authoritarian when you get it wrong.

How could you say that, when he was clearly just reelected in a free and fair system?

>god knows why

Actually many Chinese experts will tell you why: when you spend two years painting the picture that the decadent west is still suffering the deaths of covid, that opening up is not the way to go, and that the Chinese way is the superior way, admitting that you can't yet produce mRNA vaccines (thus needing to import them) is a turnabout Xi can't afford. Both on a personal level (loss of face is massively embarrassing in Chinese culture, and it'll taint him personally as the embodiment of the Party), and structural level (the deal is that the Chinese Communist Party will take care of you if you follow the rules), Xi is stuck between a rock and a hard place. I think the approach they seem to have followed is to throw their population under the bus rather than admit their mistake: "oh you're protesting the lockdowns? fine, we're opening up, just don't complain about the hundreds of thousands of deaths" and be done with it. They haven't stocked up on medicines (except for this most recent one), spare hospital capacity, or anything to deal with the certain upcoming wave. It's going to be a human tragedy in absolute numbers on the scale of the US or India. Very sad.

The implication that young people understand as much or are that appreciative is pretty funny.

Yea, sure, they're not slaving away on a farm doing hard labor. Instead, they're a recently graduated worker who can't find a job because of a shrinking white-collar job market that is due to government policies like driving away foreign employers, destroying the tutoring sector, crushing their own big-tech companies, etc. They're a lonely and desperate young man who can't find a wife because of the imbalance between the male/female populations created by the one-child policy. Alternatively, they might just not be able to get married because owning a house is often seen as a requirement for marriage and housing prices are out of reach. Maybe they're a one-child policy single child saddled with the pressure of needing to take care of 2 aging parents. Maybe they're a young couple who can't afford to have a kid because of the cost of doing so.

Young people in China have gotten fucked in the ass by the CCP.

Not exactly. China wouldn't approve Pfizer's vaccine unless they agreed to hand over the technology to manufacture mRNA.

They sold it to Thailand too. Then Thailand also bought Moderna and Pfizer once it was available. They went from encouraging the Chinese vaccine to telling people to get the others within a couple of months lol

Alternatively, it would've been such an American/capitalist thing for Moderna to give the technology to China for profit when that technology was funded by American tax dollars.

CCP only allowed the homegrown Sinovac and Sinopharm vaccines, and they’re only around 50% effective.

Part of the appeal of TCM is that it actually gets Chinese people to come in for health checks early about anything that's wrong with them.

Headache? They go to TCM and have it checked out.

If it's serious, they'll get referred to actual medicine. So in away, it's a cheap way to funnel people to where they need to be. Don't have to take expensive tests when all the patient needs is to drink plenty of fluids and take a nice placebo.

If you go to a TCM place, you'll see tons and tons of shelves of dried herbs and parts of animals. It's not like a pharmacy where you get pills.

That just shows you don't understand Chinese elections.

Xi's reelection was not "free" or "fair." There are no national level elections in China. It is a one-party political system with indirect elections for all higher level officials.

When the candidates at the local level are already filtered by the ruling party, that is not free. When those candidates are in turn used to insulate all the higher ranking levels from accountability, that is not fair.

that just shows you don’t understand sarcasm

I'm not playing with semantics. "traditional Chinese medicine" is used to refer to a certain set of approaches, and many of those are not working. If they were working, there was no need to refer to them in a specific way as they would have been included into modern medicine. That's not only true for Chinese traditional medicine - you see similar issues all around the world. People are good to see patterns, and tend to see patterns where none exist. Scientific standards are required to overcome that, and traditional communities did not have access to those.

That does obviously not mean that all old traditions are not working. But again: those that are get simply included into our general medical knowledge and become or already are medicine by modern standards.

Which is stupid, because the second best thing you can do after vaccinating yourself is ensuring the people around you are as well.

OP XERT is being sarcastic... Everyone outside of China knows nothing in China is fair or free.

They would buy it, but insisted on gaining mrna tech for free as part of the bargain, so Pfizer and moderna said no.

Just in time!!!!

At least from the people I know, there are a lot that argue that because China does have local elections which filter upwards in their one-party system, there is an element of representative democracy that isn't that different from America.

In China, the candidates are heavily filtered and selected by the ruling party. The same can be said for the Democrats or Republicans selecting their own candidates to put up in primaries, heavily biasing the vote through gerrymandering and voter suppression, or the election system itself selecting for certain types of people -- namely people with enough inherent wealth or influence to run.

So, is the sarcasm obvious? Maybe if all you read is fairly unsophisticated and biased media. But, when you look at the nuance, is it obviously sarcastic to say Xi was elected fairly and freely? It's about as obviously sarcastic as saying Trump was elected fairly and freely.

China should have just copied the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine and called it Sinovac 2 or Sinovac Deluxe.

They can’t. They haven’t figured out how to steal the technology to make them yet.

That is imo unlikely. For three years, not only are their narratives about protect the elderly, they also shifted more resources to the elderly than they should, to the point young people were asking "what about us", and began lying flat and not upholding the economy.

They likely just didn't have a plan whatsoever.

Youth of China were under tremendous pressure from news that the retirement funds hit new peaks despite bad economies, that covid treatment in Wuhan doesn't favor young people first, from TV show hosts and officials talking about youth should take low paying jobs to boost the economy, that housing prices should remain high to give incentives for youth to work harder, etc.

Kind of surprising they didn't.

so, steal others' tech, label it china made, nationalism further ensues, and profit goes to CCP. Really, it's about money and nationalism/face

Lockdowns should have been rolling kind of like in the US. Flatten the curve better than 0 Covid quarantine 1.4 billion

Imperial doctors used to prescribe mercury, because they thought drinking it would make you immortal

Also they have been paying Chinese companies for antigen tests and the Chinese made vaccine. Buying western vaccines is admitting the poor efficacy of their own medicine and also paying western companies for the vaccine.

Welp, the horses are all gone, time to see about closing that barn door.

Still doesn't excuse the additional cold supply chain cost required for the vaccines even if it is cheaper than Pfizer vs none for AstraZeneca

In the free world, the leadership would have been replaced. Too bad, this is China.

Ya but the runs and metal taste on your tung yikessss. I kinda think we’re gonna have to have paxalovid in our houses like we have acetaminophen or ibuprofen lll

Everyone stand back, he's doubling down!

And that's only against the original strain.

Nah, "stealing" tech is actually quite hard.

The same with the UAE and a lot of the Middle East. They gave everyone 2 doses of the Sinopharm. And then a year later, gave everyone an additional 2 doses of Pfizer.

This is an issue in some places where hospitals get crowded with people who have the flu. Doctors can't really help much, stay in bed is their diagnosis. But all those people who go to the hospital cause they have a runny nose just increase the wait times for everyone else...

I think their vaccine isnt very effective and rather than appear weak and relying on the west they remain obstinate and accept a worse outcome as the result.

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> who owns reddit

Advance Publications?

You're 100% right! I mean just look at the United States!

Yea, sure, they're not slaving away on a factory doing hard labor. Instead, they're recently graduated worker who can't find a job. . . Due to government policies like outsourcing, crushing labor unions, etc. . . Millennials are lonely and desperate due to out of control housing, lack of opportunities, high childcare costs, etc.......

We can play that game however you want. There are challenges for the USA and plenty of people that take pride. When it comes to China I think there are plenty of people with nationalistic pride in their country. Forgive this ignorant 老外 /s

Generation Snitch How censorship, nationalism, and wealth have shaped young Chinese

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/04/14/china-youth-generation-snitch/

I never said the US was better or different. I was close to editing in that young people everywhere are getting fucked in the ass.

But, to humor your misplaced sarcasm, when you look at youth in America, they're much less blindly patriotic than older people.

You link Noam Chomsky saying that the US is the greatest threat to world peace to most young people and their response would be "yea, no shit."

If you ask them if America is #1, young people will more accurately point out that America is indeed not #1 in many metrics.

The older generations that got to live the American dream would obviously be patriotic about it. Most young people will tell you that dream is dead.

The one time that it was really important. The CN copies the west they failed. So much for their superiority. yep that local made vaccine absolute fail. oh but wait. Who was making money on the policing of the lockdown No can’t be private firms. Really

Not point on US. It was that you can draw similar, valid criticisms to other nations. Read the article - if you are having issues with paywall open incognito.

We can do better than Noam Chomsky on criticism of America. That's a given if he's in the picture. A given like him denying a Cambodian genocide or two lol.

Is this true? Any sources?

Holy shit dude. How can you be this dense?

Brian this is like an anthropology meme stand down

Weak

Have you had paxlovid? It is a bitter pill

No, I haven't and good to know that though the pun was not intended (or may be it was)

So the vaccine didn't work?

Then get AstraZeneca? Still better then Sinovac.

>while tcm tries to boost the vitality of the body and let it heal?

"Western" medicine also does that, it's just called eating healthy, exercising, and in some circumstances prescribing vitamins because the deficiencies cannot be corrected for some reason.

The difference is that western medicine needs proof that something is working. TCM could have stuff that works, the issue is that there's too much noise (a lot of things that don't work).

I won't go that negative. Traditional medicine is still based on the limited scientific knowledge of the time. They observed that certain herbs have certain effects, so they crafted a theory on how it works, and it seems to hold true so they keep using it.

The difference is that now we have better tools/methods to determine what works.

With specific for TCM, the herbal medicine part was based on a book by the author trying and documenting its various effects, so in essence it's a very primitive form for scientific process. Can't exactly blame him for not knowing to account for placebo effects, controls, etc.

Yup in no way I'm saying sinovac is effective enough

Note that for acupuncture on pain relief, it seems that the perception of it working is that in some instances it makes people aware of muscles in questions.

So essentially, it's the same as telling people to sit up straight and don't slouch, just buried under the ceremony of needle sticking.

Reminds me of a cartoon I saw while little. Where a clever child monk figures out that a king's back pain disappeared not because of the really expensive mythical ceremony he keeps paying for, but because he rode a horse on the way there and the exercise from horse riding was what relieved the pain.

It makes everything taste like nasty af rotting grapefruit too.. ugh..

Worked pretty well though thankfully!

The rotting grapefruit taste was fouuuul. And lasted for over a week after I stopped taking it.

It did seem to work good though! I doubt it will be a household staple though because of its interactions with certain drugs/foods.