9 ms·

Sacrifice my ass. Their incompetence led to a province and its people being hung out to dry. They let this problem get out of hand—and now the people there suf

Sacrifice my ass. Their incompetence led to a province and its people being hung out to dry. They let this problem get out of hand—and now the people there suffer. How? They ignored the doctors who attempted to report the problem on New Year’s day. They (the CCP) take no precautionary measures until their political regime is threatened. So many things done wrong—including maintaining wet market controls up a few years after H1N1.

bitbrewer 7y ago
Do not agree. Government everywhere makes mistakes under emergencies. Just look at past responses to hurricanes in the US and the current wildfire in Australia. Maybe you could say every government is incompetent. But the fact is that China reported the cases very early to WHO, get the genes mapped very quickly, and decisively locked down Hebei. So I would say so far China has shown competence and resolve, against a tough virus.
- chance_state 7y ago
  Did you create your account specifically to parrot CCP propaganda, or is that just a coincidence? Literally every single comment on your profile is pro-CCP, anti-US.
  - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      Please don't do this here.
      - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
        Don’t post an explanation for why that account only comments on articles about China and tries to paint the CCP and Huawei in a favorable light? Don’t you think a real account would sometimes talk about something else?
        dang 7y ago
        Internet users are far too quick to assume that someone who disagrees with them can't possibly be holding their views in good faith, and thus far too quick to reach for sinister explanations like communist propaganda. This projection mechanism is destructive of the discourse we want here, so there's a rule in the site guidelines that explicitly ask you not to do it. Please read them and please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html More explanation upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276554
  - dang 7y ago
    You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment. We ban accounts that do that, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. HN is a highly international community. Someone having an opposing view to your own is evidence merely that the community is divided. People here need to assume good faith in the absence of some objective reason not to. Merely disliking what someone else says doesn't come close to an objective reason. I've written a great deal about this if you or anyone want more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what this site is supposed to exist for, so please don't do that.
    - guidance 7y ago
      > 'People here need to assume good faith in the absence of some objective reason not to. Merely disliking what someone else says doesn't come close to an objective reason.' All this sounds good in theory, yet here I am on my second account after the first one 6 weeks ago was shadowbanned in less than 15 posts, simply for expressing my honestly held and well researched opinions. Meanwhile I'm all the time seeing you on here busting various people's balls for the most ridiculous and trivial of things. The person you replied to just now, while it's true that I don't agree with their comment (obviously they're wrong) they certainly ought to have the right to express their opinion. And the community as a whole has a right to see that opinion be expressed, to see the opinion itself and see the responses to it, so they can judge for themselves what is or is not the truth, without having a Nanny State/Government picking apart and criticizing every word someone writes. You really need to lay off the bondage-and-discipline mod mentality. You're driving away good people from this site. Who the hell wants to stay in a place where they are constantly being nagged and harassed and even shadowbanned (one of the cruelest things that can be done to an online forum member) simply for having opinions? What is it about you personally that makes you so qualified to treat people this way?
- mtgx 7y ago
  His point is that their #1 priority was keep this under wraps instead of fixing it as soon as possible, even if it meant more people had to learn about it to protect themselves and not have the virus spread. Coronavirus has disrupted many businesses in China, and I think the government knew this would happen if more people found out about it. So their priority was not getting a big economic hit, not solving the issue. This is a good post on what happened, but there are others like it if you want to dig deeper on how they tried to cover it up: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-disease-of-communist-party-government-by-minxin-pei-2020-01 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-dis... I'll just copy these 2 paragraphs here to address your "China responded quickly" comment: > To be sure, at first glance, China’s government has appeared to be more forthcoming about the latest outbreak. But, although the first case was reported on December 8, the Wuhan municipal health commission didn’t issue an official notice until several weeks later. And, since then, Wuhan officials have downplayed the seriousness of the disease and deliberately sought to suppress news coverage. That notice maintained that there was no evidence that the new illness could be transmitted among humans, and claimed that no health-care workers had been infected. The commission repeated these claims on January 5, though 59 cases had been confirmed by then. Even after the first death was reported on January 11, the commission continued to insist that there was no evidence that it could be transmitted among humans or that health-care workers had been affected.
- corndoge 7y ago
  Here in Australia the general sentiment is that the response has been good relative to the magnitude of the fires. At some point nature overwhelms any government.
  - chance_state 7y ago
    Did the Australian government lie to the world and their own people about how bad the fires were and arrest people who posted on social media about them?
    - DarthGhandi 7y ago
      Well no arrests but the govt is investigating the fake coronavirus health department press releases made by some racist folks and which spread like wildfire on social media prompting the communications minister to step in. As for the govt lying about the bushfires, yes most definitely, we had tourism chiefs out there on the offensive claiming Australia was fine to visit when most of the East Coast had the worse air quality on Earth for months. We had a tourism minister standing on a half burnt Kangaroo Island which was still in lockdown from the fire telling people it's the best time to visit. Govts lie all the time for self interest. And strangely many of the public totally support them doing so when it's their team or for personal benefit.
- zozbot234 7y ago
  They were very late even in informing the people in Wuhan or Hubei. Even after everyone in the West knew about this new SARS-like virus, people there were still going around with no face masks or anything, no precautions at all. Disgraceful and a total failure.
  - mkl 7y ago
    Face masks likely don't help much: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/800531753/face-masks-what-doctors-say-about-their-role-in-containing-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317... WHO says they can, but only if used very right, and only alongside other measures: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of-masks-the-community-during-home-care-and-in-health-care-settings-in-the-context-of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of...
    - zozbot234 7y ago
      They don't have to be foolproof, it's enough if they're better than wearing no mask at all.
- ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
  Did you miss the part when they arrested doctors who reported the virus because they didn't want to deal with the virus during a local government meeting and banquet?
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    Is it confirmed? I see just some YouTube videos; that + the description upthread triggers my conspiracy theory alarm.
    - charlieflowers 7y ago
      This is at least related. Dunno if he was arrested, but the police expressed displeasure. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whistle-blower-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whist...
    - yorwba 7y ago
      Xinhua reporting on the Chinese Supreme Court's stance on the issue includes a section on the 8 people who were punished for spreading rumors and whether that punishment was reasonable: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.ht... Google Translated: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.htm&xid=17259,1500004,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700259,15700271,15700302&usg=ALkJrhjDXv-clXrjsR4J8ObAl2SQxkS1Eg https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
    - BiasRegularizer 7y ago
      Here is the news from Jan 1 in Chinese. https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2020_01_01_530191.shtml?s=zwyxgtjbt https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2020_01_01_530191.shtml?s=zw...
      - unityByFreedom 7y ago
        Reading the translation, this sounds like what police would say in a parody, yet this is real. Thank you for sharing it and I hope your family and we all make it through this in good health.
- yread 7y ago
  Chinese government definitely doesn't have it easy on the internet. Whole host of conspiracy theorists were saying: wtf couple hundred infected why are they locking down cities and closing provinces - they must know something we don't. And now you get people saying they didn't do enough. In this thread people are still sharing articles about how there akshually 10s thousands of dead and how the virus was intentionally released from a government lab. And at the same time surprised that the government arrested people spreading panic on social media. It took them a month to recognize atypical viral pneumonia and report it to WHO. Another ~10 days to isolate the virus (no mean feat, read the paper) and sequence it. Here in the Netherlands people would be just sent home on paracetamol - I had a pneumonia couple years back so I speak from experience.
  - literallycancer 7y ago
    Did you forget about what they are doing to ethnic minorities right now? They are running literal concentration camps. Of course they don't have it easy on the internet.
- BiasRegularizer 7y ago
  Mistakes can happen but wittingly suppressing news is not accidental nor a mistake. I was born in Wuhan and half of my family are currently holed up there. A few days before the Wuhan lockdown was ordered, coronavirus already made it to the headline in CNN and NYT, but there was not any headline news about the coronavirus within China. Heck my dad wasn't even wearing a mask on his 1hr metro commute to work until the day before lockdown happened. In early January, government officials and news outlets were reporting: "There are false rumors about Wuhan having a SARS like virus. This is an unknown virus that's _probably not_ transmittable from human to human. There are only 45 confirmed cases. There is no need to panic. " One of the officials even organized a thousand people CNY dinner as part of the CNY celebration a few days before the lockdown. They had a thousand opportunities to curb the disease and alert the people, but the Chinese bureaucracy and leadership's imcompetence directly caused the coronavirus disaster. Edit: January 21 news article on the thousand people dinner from a Chinese source. About 40k people participated, this neighbourhood is about 10 minutes away from the epicenter: https://news.163.com/20/0121/15/F3E3UTKI0001899N.html https://news.163.com/20/0121/15/F3E3UTKI0001899N.html
AlbertoGP 7y ago
For those interested in knowing more about this, from people that have lived in China for a long time, had families there, and have daily contact with others that still live there, I recommend these videos: “Coronavirus: the lies and the truths” (29th of January) “Let’s look at a timeline of what’s happened to see how slowly it has been dealt with, and how the information was actively suppressed.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSIt496d82s&t=1m2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSIt496d82s&t=1m2s “Coronavirus - Doctors arrested for revealing the truth” (31st of January) “So by now you’ve undoubtedly heard that, right in the beginning, a number of people were arrested for spreading rumors when they first tried to discuss the fact that there was a new virus going around in China. Turns out these people were all doctors.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=0m12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=0m12s Winston, the author of the second video, is in fact married to a Chinese doctor, and they keep in touch with their doctor friends in China. He also worked for years organizing training sessions for doctors all around China, so they both have direct knowledge about how those things work there and direct communication with people currently dealing with the situation on the ground. They have more recent videos, but those two are the first ones I recommend watching. Their channels are: - laowhy86: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvithwOECK5g_19TjldMKw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvithwOECK5g_19TjldMKw - serpentza: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl7mAGnY4jh4Ps8rhhh8XZg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl7mAGnY4jh4Ps8rhhh8XZg - ADVChina (their joint channel): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg Edit: a brief take on this from the BBC (4th of February): “... well, we know that some warnings were ignored or silenced. Let’s focus on this doctor, he was working at Wuhan central hospital and noticed seven cases that he thought looked like SARS (that’s a virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003) and in December he posted a warning about a potential outbreak in a chat group with fellow medics. Shortly afterwards he was summoned by Police and accused of making false statements, and being told he’d severely disturbed the social order. He was then given this document to sign. [...] «We solemny warn you: If you keep being stubborn, with such impertinence, and continue this illegal activity, you will be brought to justice - is that understood?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRggIb5Je_w&t=4m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRggIb5Je_w&t=4m0s
- tim333 7y ago
9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
It's not a single "they". Yes, Wuhan/Hubei provincial authorities did the usual Chinese thing of covering up bad news so the Eye of Sauron over in Beijing wouldn't hear about it, and there's a great/depressing read about why over at [1] (TL;DR: big Communist Party summit). But once Xi/Sauron did catch on, their response -- total lockdown, building new hospitals, etc -- was both draconian and massive on a scale unimaginable in most democracies. Compare with (say) the shambolic response to Hurricane Katrina, where pretty much the opposite happened: pleas by local authorities were basically ignored by the central gov't until their hand was forced. [1] http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/ http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/
- BiasRegularizer 7y ago
  I mean, if one is being reckless with fire and accidentally burned their own house down, but they managed to put it out before spreading to the neighbors. Can people really hail that person as a hero?
  - 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
    Where in my response am I hailing anybody as a hero? My main point is that HN (including the original poster) seems to assume that the CCP is some all-seeing, perfectly coordinated entity, when it's actually 100 million people (!) and even party apparatchiks have wildly differing agendas and levels of competence.
    - mucholove 7y ago
      Not sure if I am the original poster—but if I am—I don't see the CCP as some all-seeing, perfectly coordinated entity. And I also agree with you—that you are on balance pretty fair. Like you said—the response from Beijing was "draconian" and the provincial authorities couldn't stand to report the fact that "something was rotten in the state of Wuhan/Hubei." Why? Because there are however some characteristics to this entity—which is basic disregard for humans as individuals and community and a desperate desire for sycophancy. Alarmingly—the CCP disregard for individuals and community is spreading—and it's too often excused by people—like the poster below me who says "Event the US government the hurricane response wrong." By casting a wide net—and lower our standard as humans. For example... The Trump administration was wrong on purpose for the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico because they have similar CCP-like viewpoints and motivations. In New Orleans, for Katrina—you had Ray Nagin as governor who has been convicted on several counts of fraud. These are all people who don't care to shoulder community and build it up—however slow and difficult it might be to reconcile. We need to raise the bar. The place with the most antibodies to this kind of thinking are some places in Europe which try to appeal to our human instincts as opposed to fueling our "Animal Instincts" (and yes, I am referring to that mid-2000s book on US Stock Market people).

bitbrewer 7y ago

Do not agree. Government everywhere makes mistakes under emergencies. Just look at past responses to hurricanes in the US and the current wildfire in Australia. Maybe you could say every government is incompetent. But the fact is that China reported the cases very early to WHO, get the genes mapped very quickly, and decisively locked down Hebei. So I would say so far China has shown competence and resolve, against a tough virus.

chance_state 7y ago
Did you create your account specifically to parrot CCP propaganda, or is that just a coincidence? Literally every single comment on your profile is pro-CCP, anti-US.
- JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    Please don't do this here.
    - JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
      Don’t post an explanation for why that account only comments on articles about China and tries to paint the CCP and Huawei in a favorable light? Don’t you think a real account would sometimes talk about something else?
      - dang 7y ago
        Internet users are far too quick to assume that someone who disagrees with them can't possibly be holding their views in good faith, and thus far too quick to reach for sinister explanations like communist propaganda. This projection mechanism is destructive of the discourse we want here, so there's a rule in the site guidelines that explicitly ask you not to do it. Please read them and please don't do it again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html More explanation upthread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276554 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276554
- dang 7y ago
  You broke the site guidelines badly with this comment. We ban accounts that do that, so please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here. HN is a highly international community. Someone having an opposing view to your own is evidence merely that the community is divided. People here need to assume good faith in the absence of some objective reason not to. Merely disliking what someone else says doesn't come close to an objective reason. I've written a great deal about this if you or anyone want more explanation: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=true&page=0&query=by:dang%20astroturf https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme.... Edit: it looks like you've been using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. We ban accounts that do that, because it destroys what this site is supposed to exist for, so please don't do that.
  - guidance 7y ago
    > 'People here need to assume good faith in the absence of some objective reason not to. Merely disliking what someone else says doesn't come close to an objective reason.' All this sounds good in theory, yet here I am on my second account after the first one 6 weeks ago was shadowbanned in less than 15 posts, simply for expressing my honestly held and well researched opinions. Meanwhile I'm all the time seeing you on here busting various people's balls for the most ridiculous and trivial of things. The person you replied to just now, while it's true that I don't agree with their comment (obviously they're wrong) they certainly ought to have the right to express their opinion. And the community as a whole has a right to see that opinion be expressed, to see the opinion itself and see the responses to it, so they can judge for themselves what is or is not the truth, without having a Nanny State/Government picking apart and criticizing every word someone writes. You really need to lay off the bondage-and-discipline mod mentality. You're driving away good people from this site. Who the hell wants to stay in a place where they are constantly being nagged and harassed and even shadowbanned (one of the cruelest things that can be done to an online forum member) simply for having opinions? What is it about you personally that makes you so qualified to treat people this way?
mtgx 7y ago
His point is that their #1 priority was keep this under wraps instead of fixing it as soon as possible, even if it meant more people had to learn about it to protect themselves and not have the virus spread. Coronavirus has disrupted many businesses in China, and I think the government knew this would happen if more people found out about it. So their priority was not getting a big economic hit, not solving the issue. This is a good post on what happened, but there are others like it if you want to dig deeper on how they tried to cover it up: https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-disease-of-communist-party-government-by-minxin-pei-2020-01 https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/coronavirus-dis... I'll just copy these 2 paragraphs here to address your "China responded quickly" comment: > To be sure, at first glance, China’s government has appeared to be more forthcoming about the latest outbreak. But, although the first case was reported on December 8, the Wuhan municipal health commission didn’t issue an official notice until several weeks later. And, since then, Wuhan officials have downplayed the seriousness of the disease and deliberately sought to suppress news coverage. That notice maintained that there was no evidence that the new illness could be transmitted among humans, and claimed that no health-care workers had been infected. The commission repeated these claims on January 5, though 59 cases had been confirmed by then. Even after the first death was reported on January 11, the commission continued to insist that there was no evidence that it could be transmitted among humans or that health-care workers had been affected.
corndoge 7y ago
Here in Australia the general sentiment is that the response has been good relative to the magnitude of the fires. At some point nature overwhelms any government.
- chance_state 7y ago
  Did the Australian government lie to the world and their own people about how bad the fires were and arrest people who posted on social media about them?
  - DarthGhandi 7y ago
    Well no arrests but the govt is investigating the fake coronavirus health department press releases made by some racist folks and which spread like wildfire on social media prompting the communications minister to step in. As for the govt lying about the bushfires, yes most definitely, we had tourism chiefs out there on the offensive claiming Australia was fine to visit when most of the East Coast had the worse air quality on Earth for months. We had a tourism minister standing on a half burnt Kangaroo Island which was still in lockdown from the fire telling people it's the best time to visit. Govts lie all the time for self interest. And strangely many of the public totally support them doing so when it's their team or for personal benefit.
zozbot234 7y ago
They were very late even in informing the people in Wuhan or Hubei. Even after everyone in the West knew about this new SARS-like virus, people there were still going around with no face masks or anything, no precautions at all. Disgraceful and a total failure.
- mkl 7y ago
  Face masks likely don't help much: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/800531753/face-masks-what-doctors-say-about-their-role-in-containing-coronavirus https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/01/29/8005317... WHO says they can, but only if used very right, and only alongside other measures: https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of-masks-the-community-during-home-care-and-in-health-care-settings-in-the-context-of-the-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)-outbreak https://www.who.int/publications-detail/advice-on-the-use-of...
  - zozbot234 7y ago
    They don't have to be foolproof, it's enough if they're better than wearing no mask at all.
ourlordcaffeine 7y ago
Did you miss the part when they arrested doctors who reported the virus because they didn't want to deal with the virus during a local government meeting and banquet?
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  Is it confirmed? I see just some YouTube videos; that + the description upthread triggers my conspiracy theory alarm.
  - charlieflowers 7y ago
    This is at least related. Dunno if he was arrested, but the police expressed displeasure. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whistle-blower-intl-hnk/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/03/asia/coronavirus-doctor-whist...
  - yorwba 7y ago
    Xinhua reporting on the Chinese Supreme Court's stance on the issue includes a section on the 8 people who were punished for spreading rumors and whether that punishment was reasonable: http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.htm http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.ht... Google Translated: https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&nv=1&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=auto&sp=nmt4&tl=en&u=http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2020-01/28/c_1125508460.htm&xid=17259,1500004,15700021,15700186,15700191,15700259,15700271,15700302&usg=ALkJrhjDXv-clXrjsR4J8ObAl2SQxkS1Eg https://translate.googleusercontent.com/translate_c?depth=1&...
  - BiasRegularizer 7y ago
    Here is the news from Jan 1 in Chinese. https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2020_01_01_530191.shtml?s=zwyxgtjbt https://www.guancha.cn/politics/2020_01_01_530191.shtml?s=zw...
    - unityByFreedom 7y ago
      Reading the translation, this sounds like what police would say in a parody, yet this is real. Thank you for sharing it and I hope your family and we all make it through this in good health.
yread 7y ago
Chinese government definitely doesn't have it easy on the internet. Whole host of conspiracy theorists were saying: wtf couple hundred infected why are they locking down cities and closing provinces - they must know something we don't. And now you get people saying they didn't do enough. In this thread people are still sharing articles about how there akshually 10s thousands of dead and how the virus was intentionally released from a government lab. And at the same time surprised that the government arrested people spreading panic on social media. It took them a month to recognize atypical viral pneumonia and report it to WHO. Another ~10 days to isolate the virus (no mean feat, read the paper) and sequence it. Here in the Netherlands people would be just sent home on paracetamol - I had a pneumonia couple years back so I speak from experience.
- literallycancer 7y ago
  Did you forget about what they are doing to ethnic minorities right now? They are running literal concentration camps. Of course they don't have it easy on the internet.
BiasRegularizer 7y ago
Mistakes can happen but wittingly suppressing news is not accidental nor a mistake. I was born in Wuhan and half of my family are currently holed up there. A few days before the Wuhan lockdown was ordered, coronavirus already made it to the headline in CNN and NYT, but there was not any headline news about the coronavirus within China. Heck my dad wasn't even wearing a mask on his 1hr metro commute to work until the day before lockdown happened. In early January, government officials and news outlets were reporting: "There are false rumors about Wuhan having a SARS like virus. This is an unknown virus that's _probably not_ transmittable from human to human. There are only 45 confirmed cases. There is no need to panic. " One of the officials even organized a thousand people CNY dinner as part of the CNY celebration a few days before the lockdown. They had a thousand opportunities to curb the disease and alert the people, but the Chinese bureaucracy and leadership's imcompetence directly caused the coronavirus disaster. Edit: January 21 news article on the thousand people dinner from a Chinese source. About 40k people participated, this neighbourhood is about 10 minutes away from the epicenter: https://news.163.com/20/0121/15/F3E3UTKI0001899N.html https://news.163.com/20/0121/15/F3E3UTKI0001899N.html

AlbertoGP 7y ago

For those interested in knowing more about this, from people that have lived in China for a long time, had families there, and have daily contact with others that still live there, I recommend these videos: “Coronavirus: the lies and the truths” (29th of January) “Let’s look at a timeline of what’s happened to see how slowly it has been dealt with, and how the information was actively suppressed.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSIt496d82s&t=1m2s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSIt496d82s&t=1m2s “Coronavirus - Doctors arrested for revealing the truth” (31st of January) “So by now you’ve undoubtedly heard that, right in the beginning, a number of people were arrested for spreading rumors when they first tried to discuss the fact that there was a new virus going around in China. Turns out these people were all doctors.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=0m12s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HE7Iz7HLpYg&t=0m12s Winston, the author of the second video, is in fact married to a Chinese doctor, and they keep in touch with their doctor friends in China. He also worked for years organizing training sessions for doctors all around China, so they both have direct knowledge about how those things work there and direct communication with people currently dealing with the situation on the ground. They have more recent videos, but those two are the first ones I recommend watching. Their channels are: - laowhy86: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvithwOECK5g_19TjldMKw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChvithwOECK5g_19TjldMKw - serpentza: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl7mAGnY4jh4Ps8rhhh8XZg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCl7mAGnY4jh4Ps8rhhh8XZg - ADVChina (their joint channel): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNPa8fSXzzAZuT9859GVhg Edit: a brief take on this from the BBC (4th of February): “... well, we know that some warnings were ignored or silenced. Let’s focus on this doctor, he was working at Wuhan central hospital and noticed seven cases that he thought looked like SARS (that’s a virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003) and in December he posted a warning about a potential outbreak in a chat group with fellow medics. Shortly afterwards he was summoned by Police and accused of making false statements, and being told he’d severely disturbed the social order. He was then given this document to sign. [...] «We solemny warn you: If you keep being stubborn, with such impertinence, and continue this illegal activity, you will be brought to justice - is that understood?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRggIb5Je_w&t=4m0s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRggIb5Je_w&t=4m0s

tim333 7y ago

9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago

It's not a single "they". Yes, Wuhan/Hubei provincial authorities did the usual Chinese thing of covering up bad news so the Eye of Sauron over in Beijing wouldn't hear about it, and there's a great/depressing read about why over at [1] (TL;DR: big Communist Party summit). But once Xi/Sauron did catch on, their response -- total lockdown, building new hospitals, etc -- was both draconian and massive on a scale unimaginable in most democracies. Compare with (say) the shambolic response to Hurricane Katrina, where pretty much the opposite happened: pleas by local authorities were basically ignored by the central gov't until their hand was forced. [1] http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/ http://chinamediaproject.org/2020/01/27/dramatic-actions/

BiasRegularizer 7y ago
I mean, if one is being reckless with fire and accidentally burned their own house down, but they managed to put it out before spreading to the neighbors. Can people really hail that person as a hero?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y ago
  Where in my response am I hailing anybody as a hero? My main point is that HN (including the original poster) seems to assume that the CCP is some all-seeing, perfectly coordinated entity, when it's actually 100 million people (!) and even party apparatchiks have wildly differing agendas and levels of competence.
  - mucholove 7y ago
    Not sure if I am the original poster—but if I am—I don't see the CCP as some all-seeing, perfectly coordinated entity. And I also agree with you—that you are on balance pretty fair. Like you said—the response from Beijing was "draconian" and the provincial authorities couldn't stand to report the fact that "something was rotten in the state of Wuhan/Hubei." Why? Because there are however some characteristics to this entity—which is basic disregard for humans as individuals and community and a desperate desire for sycophancy. Alarmingly—the CCP disregard for individuals and community is spreading—and it's too often excused by people—like the poster below me who says "Event the US government the hurricane response wrong." By casting a wide net—and lower our standard as humans. For example... The Trump administration was wrong on purpose for the hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico because they have similar CCP-like viewpoints and motivations. In New Orleans, for Katrina—you had Ray Nagin as governor who has been convicted on several counts of fraud. These are all people who don't care to shoulder community and build it up—however slow and difficult it might be to reconcile. We need to raise the bar. The place with the most antibodies to this kind of thinking are some places in Europe which try to appeal to our human instincts as opposed to fueling our "Animal Instincts" (and yes, I am referring to that mid-2000s book on US Stock Market people).