India is by the way the only major economy that is projected to grow over 6% next year. That's largely due to profiting off of resell of Russian goods.
The problem is that people conflate their own moral standing with actual factual realities and unfortunately it will cost _us_ dearly.
Russia's economy is trivial in size, as are their non-energy exports.
A $20-$30 gap in the price of oil via artificially cheap Russian oil isn't the difference between India's large economy (3x larger than Russia, nearly the size of Germany) growing at -3% vs growing at +6%.
We need to put the hammer down far harder on Russia than we have so far.
I think this was a policy move more than a lack of science understanding. In fact, leadership in China is very science-heavy. Time will tell, but it's actually looking like possibly a good move, now that 5% of the UK population is not working due to long term sickness, the highest ever[1], and covid is looking like a contributory factor.
I could even imagine China extending their lockdown policy to other diseases which might have long term population-wide effects, like influenza.
The main downside of such a policy is you need to have effectively closed borders forever, otherwise travellers re-introduce diseases from other countries into yours.
I was of the view that China could be the next super power and overtake the US.
But two things changed my view:-
1. COVID and their response to it. China still does not have a good vaccine and they still rely on lockdowns. That speaks a lot to how backward China is in basic sciences.
2. The move to remove term limits for the president. History tells us that one person can’t be relied on to make good long term decisions for a country specially a communist country.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/03/11/592694991...