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Coronavirus and the blindness of authoritarianism
- newfeatureok 7y agoI'm not sure I agree with this article - there is plenty of evidence to suggest that China knew about C19 well ahead of the media, but choose to ignore it to save face and/or not create panic.
- metalgearsolid 7y agoIsn't that the point though? That sweeping things under the rug in order to save face is what allows these issues to spiral out of control.
- newfeatureok 7y agoYou might be right, but that type of behavior isn’t unique to a authoritarian government.
- FooBarWidget 7y agoBut did they really sweep things under the rug or is that just what people casually like to say without fact checking? Here is the coronavirus timeline: https://youtu.be/kO5EXjFKE7U https://youtu.be/kO5EXjFKE7U
- exposay 7y agoNathan Rich is notorious for spreading Chinese communist propaganda. You should post a better source.
- FooBarWidget 7y agoYou say it is propaganda but do you have an argument against his actual claims? Can you point out factual inaccuracies or omitted facts that are relevant?
- FooBarWidget 7y agoIs that really true? Take a look at the coronavirus timeline and tell me what you think of that. https://youtu.be/kO5EXjFKE7U https://youtu.be/kO5EXjFKE7U
- themgt 7y agoThis seems a little hypocritical given that the US still doesn't have an adequate SARS-2 testing regime in place, and will almost certainly see the first real rise in cases once a cluster of locally transmitted infections start becoming severely ill/dying, as in Italy/Iran. Calling China blind while we still have our eyes shut. It is possible we'll luck out and escape Wuhan-level consequences, but I'm predicting this piece may age very badly.
- stanski 7y agoIt's easy to point fingers from the sidelines. I'm curious how this would've progressed if the virus had originated in the US instead and how much better it would've been handled.
- aianus 7y agoThese viruses don't originate in China by random chance. Although, ironically, they originate in China because of too little government control over hygiene in wet markets and game meat, not too much authoritarianism.
- DyslexicAtheist 7y ago> originate in China because of too little government control over hygiene in wet markets and game meat China isn't unique here, it's also the case for most of Africa and other South East Asian countries.
- aianus 7y agoI didn't say it was unique, just that it's not random that it happened in China and not America.
- smileysteve 7y ago> These viruses don't originate in China by random chance China (country), India and Africa (continent) each separately have > 1/6 of the World Population. So, even if human disease came randomly, it would have a 50% chance of being from these 3 areas. What is surprising is that the high population densities of the Philippines haven't correlated to disease.
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y agoClaims unequivocally that the virus originated in the wet market. However, Chinese scientists are saying it possibly did originate from a Wuhan lab: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0gww2yznI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0gww2yznI
- nomorecensors 7y agoIndeed. See When Fury Overcomes Fear: www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear
- balola 7y agoIt's more about not wanting to take responsibility at all levels than not knowing it. Though party mouthpieces love this angle to spin the supreme leader as kind-hearted whenever possible. Cersorship serves to make the people feel good, but general hospitals are almost all state-owned thus the infomation flow is not that impeded. The system punishes those who take risks (right or wrong) and rewards those who obey orders, display loyalty and don't make mistakes. In this case, low level officials waited for orders, the national level agency went to the site fairly early on but they too waited, here's the catch, high officials and Xi don't want to make mistakes too. The power dynamics were on display when the governor knew he's about to be sacrificed so he went on a high profile live interview to accuse Beijing of inaction, couple days later, Xi released his own version of the story, replaced the local boss with his old sport, gaining even tighter grip on local governments. Every body in this system avoids doing things with the slightest possibility of harming their political careers, but doubles down on the things that make them politically safe (heavy-handed/draconian lockdown measures).
- drummer 7y agoThis is an excellent article also showing the danger of censorship, which on HN happens via the voting and flagging system as well as shadow bans. People become afraid to speak their minds and you end up with dangerous conformity.
- lastres0rt 7y agoCool story bro. I think HN's real problem is a certain amount of "monoculture" unlike reddit's communities, but sure, whatever makes your karma counter go up.
- pbourke 7y agoMonoculture and groupthink can act as defacto censorship. We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. If anything, the HN response to this event has demonstrated to me that uninformed, smug, back-of-the-napkin takes from computer programmers on domains totally outside of their experience will be richly rewarded on this site.
- luckylion 7y ago> We are finally seeing some stories about COVID-19 break through to the front page and get some interesting discussion - it's taken over a month. They aren't really that interesting, though. HN is for interesting stuff, not for "I'm too lazy to go to CNN to get my daily dose of news".
- darawk 7y agoIt seems like in a situation like this authoritarianism is a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, you get fed deceptive information by your local officials, but on the other hand, you have the power to enforce city-scale quarantines rather effectively. It's not immediately clear to me which of these is actually more important, but it doesn't seem quite as simple as this article is portraying it to be.
- holri 7y agoWhy should a democracy not be able the enforce a city-scale quarantine effectively? Italy did it on a smaller scale in no time yesterday. I do not see why this should not work for example for Milano too.
- gnulinux 7y agoI'm unsure how this would work in the US though. Everyone being on at-will employment, if you're sick you still have to go to work and spread the disease, otherwise your employer can fire you.
- frockington1 7y agoMost employers would rather you don't spread disease to everyone you come in contact with. It's pretty rare to find someone with zero sick days
- spazx 7y agoMy employer resets sick days to 0 at the beginning of the year, and you have to accrue them over time. I was sick very early in January and they were unhappy about it.
- monocasa 7y agoMost software adjacent employers maybe. Service industry would rather have you sneezing into customer's food (as long as the health inspector isn't currently there) than have to reconfigure the schedule.
- m0zg 7y agoAs my wife and I were talking about this, one thing that came to mind was the Chernobyl disaster, which both of us saw on TV as kids when it unfolded. The CPSU also initially attempted to sweep it under the rug, and for about 3 days you could only find out about it from e.g. Voice of America broadcasts (which people would get on shortwave radio in regions which weren't covered by jamming). After a few days it became clear even to the party bosses that this is not an ordinary disaster, and it can't be swept under the rug entirely, so we got some reporting from the site of the disaster, mixed with a heavy dose of propaganda. They'd show trucks, workers, views of the reactor from a helicopter (which was probably getting a bunch of radioactive dust in the air), speak of heroism of those who tried to douse the fires in spite radiation and later died of radiation poisoning, stuff like that. What they did not do, however, is make any attempt at explaining the magnitude of the disaster, so while the populace was pacified by "reporting" we didn't really know its true effects until many years later.
- almost_usual 7y agoSeems to be working pretty well in Vietnam.
- billfruit 7y agoThis and another article today on the Atlantic seems to be implying that this type of epidemics are better dealt with in democratic countries. To me, that isn't that much clear, to see how the AIDS was handled in the United States during the 80's. Even democratic governemnts are succesptible to staging coverups to save face.
- pbourke 7y ago> To me, that isn't that much clear, to see how the AIDS was handled in the United States during the 80's. Do you know of an undemocratic country that handled AIDS better? The early AIDS epidemic response was absolutely terrible, but at least when the government would not respond, civil society did as best it could.
- gph 7y agoWas that really a coverup or willful neglect due to a cultural atmosphere that was massively homophobic? From what I understand the Reagan administration was reluctant to put resources into something that was considered a "gay mans disease", really wouldn't have played well with the majority of the electorate at the time.
- ryanmercer 7y ago>From what I understand the Reagan administration was reluctant to put resources into something that was considered a "gay mans disease" indeed, let us not forget that "AIDS" was originally called "GRID", "Gay-related immune deficiency" and was also called things like "gay cancer" and "gay plague". It was unfortunate events like Ryan White's infection [1] that started to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White#Ryan_White_and_public_perception_of_AIDS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White#Ryan_White_and_publ...
- acoderhasnoname 7y agoJapan, Korea and Italy are Authoritarianism as well?? They are losing grip even after Chinese and WHO warned them.
- almost_usual 7y agoYou can be bad at authoritarianism. Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well. They were also the first country to stamp out SARS.
- pbourke 7y ago> Vietnam is authoritarian and has contained the virus very well. The jury is still very much out on that. Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia - give it 12-18 months before we make any categorical declarations about these countries.
- almost_usual 7y agoThe fact you are blindly grouping all these countries together tells me you don’t know much about Southeast Asia. I’ll let you continue with your assumptions.
- pbourke 7y agoYou are referring to the inclusion of Thailand? Major tourist destination for China, but only 35 confirmed cases. Just changed testing protocol to drop travel to China as prerequisite two days ago. We shall see, I suppose. That's all I was saying - it's very early days to say which country has handled this well or not.
- almost_usual 7y agoVietnam has closed its border to China and banned all flights weeks ago. Vietnam has already started force quarantining passengers from South Korea. Vietnam operates a ‘brutal’ militarized ring quarantine which is extremely effective. The SK residents will not be going to a militarized area but all VN exposed to them will. SK residents go to a hospital that has been sprayed and decontaminated. Compare this with the US and I’d argue I’d feel safer in Vietnam than here.
- sub7 7y agoI'm all for hating on authoritarians but this is nonsense. If anything, authoritarianism allowed China to build facilities and implement ridiculous quarantine measures in record time.
- xiphias2 7y agoStopping trains from Italy to Austria is a security theatre. All the borders there should already be closed for non-commercial traffic at least. People are still travelling there for fun.
- redisman 7y agoI think the main argument was that the virus had spread very far because people were afraid to speak up and were being silenced rather than the (late) (efficient) response.
- Barrin92 7y agoif (as the article points out) the regime would have listened to its own physicians, who already identified isolated cases as far back as december, the Mao era crackdown would not have been necessary because the disease could have likely been contained from the beginning. It's precisely the authoritarian blindness and dysfunction that the article talks about that necessitates its own brutality. So no, the draconian measures that the system is able to enact are not a sign of success, they're the opposite. It's an absolutely perverse idea. It's as if someone would point at Xinjiang concentration camps and take it as a sign for how great Chinese construction companies work.
- jmull 7y agoYou're arguing that China's response to Covid19 has been effective? I don't think so. "Ridiculous quarantine measures" may look like impressive action, but it's been ineffective at stopping the spread of the virus. It's also been massively inefficient, causing a huge economic impact.
- gdubs 7y agoHonest question: what would the correct response have been? What would it look like had this originated in the U.S., for instance, and what steps would have been taken. I keep wondering about the mass quarantines, their effectiveness, whether they’re more show than efficacy, etc.
- newfangle 7y agoAnd all the closet authoritarians and Chinese nationalists come out to defend China. China is the sick man of Asia and is unfortunately infecting the entire planet with its horrible ideology
- rossdavidh 7y agoWhile I agree with the point about suppressing dissent being a vulnerability because it suppresses information, I don't think this is something democracies are so great at. The UK's response to mad cow disease, for example, does not look much better, if as good. The flupandemic in 1918 was not handled appreciably better in the democracies than it was in the empires. People in authority reacting too slowly to an epidemic, is not unique to authoritarian states.
- throw3293 7y agoUK government covered-up rape epidemics for two decades. Very similar story; cover-ups, censorship, punishing whistle blowers and victims...
- gdubs 7y agoHopefully we’ll get lucky with this one and it will “only” be a bit worse than the flu. We don’t know. The risks lie in the unknown. But, if this thing (or some other thing down the road) is bad, then won’t democracies essentially be faced with the decision to suspend liberty in a martial-law type situation? Effectively becoming (at least temporarily) authoritarian? If not, what’s the Democratic model for addressing a situation requiring mass quarantine? Seems like a good question to ask before facing such a crisis, even if it seems outlandish or fringe.
- ryanmercer 7y agoI don't think this will be 'that bad' in the end, I think far worse will come in the future though without a doubt. The Chinese growth seems to be mostly just a result of people living in rather large concentrations with generally poor hygeine. The South Korean spread seems to largely stem from a single religious group (and it appears they are a doomsday cult that may be attempting to spread the virus intentionally [1][2][3]). Ok, I hope this won't be bad. I'm getting married in 89 days and in my religion the weddings are at one of our temples... we've closed 2 in Asia indefinitely already due to the virus and I'm hoping it doesn't get bad here in the United States and result in the same. I'm already looking at a punk concert I have tickets for the week of my birthday next month and thinking "yeahhh, maybe I should just eat the cost and not go" but it also has my fiance and I a bit on edge for our wedding and what the earliest we can get the marriage license and other necessary paperwork so that if things start to get bed we can look at all the temples near us and schedule a different date within a few days to make sure we are married before we see any potential closures. sigh A thought I've had is I wonder how much genes have to do with the severity of this. I have not looked at the data for a racial component, nor am I remotely qualified to, but I wonder if there isn't some genetic variable in Asian populations that is causing this to be more severe. Perhaps there is something there that will see a less severe response in other populations. shrugs just throwing an idea out there. [1] - https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-korean-coronavirus-spike-linked-to-doomsday-sect-with-messianic-leader/2020/02/21/cd3e1220-54c2-11ea-9e47-59804be1dcfb_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/south-kore... [2] - https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-24/how-coronavirus-hit-south-korea/11993682 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-02-24/how-coronavirus-hit-s... [3] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest-south-korea-super-spreader-cult-church-diamond-princess-uk-a9348646.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-latest...