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China's numbers make no sense at all. A country with 1.4B people and they at one point had 80k people with the coronavirus in the country which includes many bi

China's numbers make no sense at all. A country with 1.4B people and they at one point had 80k people with the coronavirus in the country which includes many big cities, smaller cities, and towns. Somehow they only have 15 new cases in the whole country? How does that make any sense if you take a moment to really think about it? It's clear they are either deliberately not testing or skewing/hiding their numbers for political purposes. It's a bit similar to India's numbers. India (population 1.3B) has fewer cases than Iceland (Isolated island of 300k people), again, how does this make any sense? It only makes sense if they're not testing people or hiding numbers.

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
Why, concretely, doesn't that make sense? The CCP deliberately trying to hide things is definitely a possibility that should be considered, but I don't follow why you're saying it's impossible or what they'd hope to gain.
- saberience 7y ago
  It's obvious what they gain? What does the CCP care about more than anything? They care about their image and the stability of their hold on the people. If China looks like they "fucked it up" then the people become more restless and start questioning the party. Also, they care deeply about their worldwide reputation and that the world sees that their "system" (top down authoritarianism) is seen as more effective than western progressive liberal democracies. It makes them look a hell of a lot better if they can say to their people, "Look guys, look at how well we handled this crisis compared to the Western countries, this is why having an authoritatian one-party state with absolute control is better for you guys!" Looking like the idiot country who totally fucked this up doesn't help the CCP at all, which is why they tried to silence the guy who was originally trying to blow the whistle on this whole thing.
  - SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
    But if the virus isn't actually contained, how is lying about it going to help their image or stability? If Beijing hospitals end up stuffed to the brim with pneumonia patients, nobody's going to be fooled by a claim that there are no coronavirus cases.
    - saberience 7y ago
      No one is looking deeply or focusing on China right now. Due to their level of control they can easily hide the problem. But you're a fool if you think that in the last few days across the WHOLE of China that they had a handful of cases? Even with PERFECT lockdown of literally every person you would expect more than like 20 cases across 1.4B people.
petilon 7y ago
India is a democracy with a free press; so the numbers are more trustable. India has low numbers because they are handling the crisis better. See: https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/05/kerala-earns-praise-from-bbc-panel-for-efficiently-handling-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/05/kerala-earns-pr...
discodave 7y ago
They locked the fucking place down. No movement = no transmission. But people not doing stuff basically means a recession, if not depression is guaranteed.
- xenospn 7y ago
  Seems like they did but my suppliers have been back to work for over two weeks now.
- odyssey7 7y ago
  I'm not sure that locking the place down for a little while per se will cause a recession. Numbers will take a hit for a while because people are prevented from spending and working, but the normal course of action after a snow day or staying home with the flu is to get up and go back to work and resume spending money. This is the path China could be on for its economy overall, if not for its economic interdependence with the U.S., which is handling things differently. The U.S. is steering itself toward a year-or-more-long issue that has people fearfully avoiding stores, deliveries, workplaces, and the consequences of this will ricochet. A recession happens when people and businesses restrict spending and hiring, and that's exactly what this scenario causes in a chronic way. But who knows? Maybe Gilead's experimental antiviral will be approved within a month or two, and maybe that will be enough to make people not fearful and regain economic confidence.
  - jsight 7y ago
    A common definition of recession is a decline in GDP lasting for 2 consecutive quarters. It seems likely for this to cause a decline in GDP in Q1 and Q1 at a minimum, so a recession seems inevitable. I do think there will be a point when going out becomes less of a concern and there will be a lot of pent up demand for travel. The recovery will likely be sharp (V-shaped).
    - odyssey7 7y ago
      I was speaking to the strategies that could be employed vs what we’re actually doing, and I am concerned that what we’re doing will cause a recession. To relate the strategy to that formal definition of a recession, if everybody stayed home for a month this quarter, we might lose 1/3 of the quarter’s GDP. But if that break is structured so that it’s expected and we resume normal activity afterward, then in the next quarter we would see the GDP “grow“ a ton, if only back to normal because people are working and spending for the full three months, and we would cleanly avoid this formal definition for a recession.
refurb 7y ago
Climate. There was a theory that the virus doesn’t fare well in hot climates and that seems to be playing out. A good example of this is Vietnam. Nearly all their cases have been in Hanoi which has quite temperate weather in the winter versus Ho Chi Minh City which is tropical all year around. It’s not the only factor, but it does appear to have an impact.
- saberience 7y ago
  Again. Maybe climate has an "impact" but the size of the numbers makes no sense. Greece isn't exactly a cold place right now, it's massively smaller than India and yet has 30% more coronavirus cases. India: 1.3B population and right next to China. Greece 10M population and no close land links to China. These numbers don't pass the common sense test.
  - refurb 7y ago
    Agreed that the impact of climate is a big question mark. In terms of Greece, it's more like Japan or China than a tropical country.
  - sivakon 7y ago
    Right next China is a weak argument. There is an impossibly terrain dividing India and China called Himalayas. Other means of transport are restricted from the very beginning.
- danans 7y ago
  It seems far too early to judge the degree to which warm weather mitigates this. There have been a growing number of cases in Australia and South America. Also consider that in India, there is not only a massive population, but access to tests per capita is probably quite low. Furthermore, the background noise of other infectious diseases is higher there, so many of these cases may go unnoticed or just attributed to common ailments. Death by infectious disease, while tragic, is somewhat more normalized there, and it might be hard to convince a lot of people not to go about their daily lives.
DarthGhandi 7y ago
Without seeing the numbers for tests conducted you're just wildly speculating based on personal opinion about the country. From WHO stats in the last day China has 50 new cases. Let's take South Korea instead, they have tested more per capita than anywhere else on Earth by far and conduct over ten thousand a day. Since yesterday they've had 100 new cases. Sorry to disappoint the doomsayers but all these big grandiose predictions seem far off the mark with a proper response.
- war1025 7y ago
  Proper response is key. It's exactly the argument that gets made here from time to time about doing maintenance and paying down tech debt. The people that do it get called over-cautious and reactionary because shit never actually hits the fan.
songco 7y ago
From 20+ of my friends in Wuhan, the numbers most likely correct. And in my city, a small city in China with about 3M population, there's about 100 total confirmed cases in the past 2 months, there's news spreaded in local social network for every case before official confirmation. IMO, it's very hard to hide numbers. In early stage of Wuhan(Jan 2020), there's hiding numbers, and there's lots 'rumours' widely spreaded on social network, e.g. Lots messages from medical staffs in Wuhan, so we known the numbers of Wuhan is not correct. But in recent weeks there's no such 'rumours', the gov may have strong control on many things, but it's not possible to control all(most?) 'rumours'..

SpicyLemonZest 7y ago

Why, concretely, doesn't that make sense? The CCP deliberately trying to hide things is definitely a possibility that should be considered, but I don't follow why you're saying it's impossible or what they'd hope to gain.

saberience 7y ago
It's obvious what they gain? What does the CCP care about more than anything? They care about their image and the stability of their hold on the people. If China looks like they "fucked it up" then the people become more restless and start questioning the party. Also, they care deeply about their worldwide reputation and that the world sees that their "system" (top down authoritarianism) is seen as more effective than western progressive liberal democracies. It makes them look a hell of a lot better if they can say to their people, "Look guys, look at how well we handled this crisis compared to the Western countries, this is why having an authoritatian one-party state with absolute control is better for you guys!" Looking like the idiot country who totally fucked this up doesn't help the CCP at all, which is why they tried to silence the guy who was originally trying to blow the whistle on this whole thing.
- SpicyLemonZest 7y ago
  But if the virus isn't actually contained, how is lying about it going to help their image or stability? If Beijing hospitals end up stuffed to the brim with pneumonia patients, nobody's going to be fooled by a claim that there are no coronavirus cases.
  - saberience 7y ago
    No one is looking deeply or focusing on China right now. Due to their level of control they can easily hide the problem. But you're a fool if you think that in the last few days across the WHOLE of China that they had a handful of cases? Even with PERFECT lockdown of literally every person you would expect more than like 20 cases across 1.4B people.

petilon 7y ago

India is a democracy with a free press; so the numbers are more trustable. India has low numbers because they are handling the crisis better. See: https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/05/kerala-earns-praise-from-bbc-panel-for-efficiently-handling-coronavirus-cases.html https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2020/03/05/kerala-earns-pr...

discodave 7y ago

They locked the fucking place down. No movement = no transmission. But people not doing stuff basically means a recession, if not depression is guaranteed.

xenospn 7y ago
Seems like they did but my suppliers have been back to work for over two weeks now.
odyssey7 7y ago
I'm not sure that locking the place down for a little while per se will cause a recession. Numbers will take a hit for a while because people are prevented from spending and working, but the normal course of action after a snow day or staying home with the flu is to get up and go back to work and resume spending money. This is the path China could be on for its economy overall, if not for its economic interdependence with the U.S., which is handling things differently. The U.S. is steering itself toward a year-or-more-long issue that has people fearfully avoiding stores, deliveries, workplaces, and the consequences of this will ricochet. A recession happens when people and businesses restrict spending and hiring, and that's exactly what this scenario causes in a chronic way. But who knows? Maybe Gilead's experimental antiviral will be approved within a month or two, and maybe that will be enough to make people not fearful and regain economic confidence.
- jsight 7y ago
  A common definition of recession is a decline in GDP lasting for 2 consecutive quarters. It seems likely for this to cause a decline in GDP in Q1 and Q1 at a minimum, so a recession seems inevitable. I do think there will be a point when going out becomes less of a concern and there will be a lot of pent up demand for travel. The recovery will likely be sharp (V-shaped).
  - odyssey7 7y ago
    I was speaking to the strategies that could be employed vs what we’re actually doing, and I am concerned that what we’re doing will cause a recession. To relate the strategy to that formal definition of a recession, if everybody stayed home for a month this quarter, we might lose 1/3 of the quarter’s GDP. But if that break is structured so that it’s expected and we resume normal activity afterward, then in the next quarter we would see the GDP “grow“ a ton, if only back to normal because people are working and spending for the full three months, and we would cleanly avoid this formal definition for a recession.

refurb 7y ago

Climate. There was a theory that the virus doesn’t fare well in hot climates and that seems to be playing out. A good example of this is Vietnam. Nearly all their cases have been in Hanoi which has quite temperate weather in the winter versus Ho Chi Minh City which is tropical all year around. It’s not the only factor, but it does appear to have an impact.

saberience 7y ago
Again. Maybe climate has an "impact" but the size of the numbers makes no sense. Greece isn't exactly a cold place right now, it's massively smaller than India and yet has 30% more coronavirus cases. India: 1.3B population and right next to China. Greece 10M population and no close land links to China. These numbers don't pass the common sense test.
- refurb 7y ago
  Agreed that the impact of climate is a big question mark. In terms of Greece, it's more like Japan or China than a tropical country.
- sivakon 7y ago
  Right next China is a weak argument. There is an impossibly terrain dividing India and China called Himalayas. Other means of transport are restricted from the very beginning.
danans 7y ago
It seems far too early to judge the degree to which warm weather mitigates this. There have been a growing number of cases in Australia and South America. Also consider that in India, there is not only a massive population, but access to tests per capita is probably quite low. Furthermore, the background noise of other infectious diseases is higher there, so many of these cases may go unnoticed or just attributed to common ailments. Death by infectious disease, while tragic, is somewhat more normalized there, and it might be hard to convince a lot of people not to go about their daily lives.

DarthGhandi 7y ago

Without seeing the numbers for tests conducted you're just wildly speculating based on personal opinion about the country. From WHO stats in the last day China has 50 new cases. Let's take South Korea instead, they have tested more per capita than anywhere else on Earth by far and conduct over ten thousand a day. Since yesterday they've had 100 new cases. Sorry to disappoint the doomsayers but all these big grandiose predictions seem far off the mark with a proper response.

war1025 7y ago
Proper response is key. It's exactly the argument that gets made here from time to time about doing maintenance and paying down tech debt. The people that do it get called over-cautious and reactionary because shit never actually hits the fan.

songco 7y ago

From 20+ of my friends in Wuhan, the numbers most likely correct. And in my city, a small city in China with about 3M population, there's about 100 total confirmed cases in the past 2 months, there's news spreaded in local social network for every case before official confirmation. IMO, it's very hard to hide numbers. In early stage of Wuhan(Jan 2020), there's hiding numbers, and there's lots 'rumours' widely spreaded on social network, e.g. Lots messages from medical staffs in Wuhan, so we known the numbers of Wuhan is not correct. But in recent weeks there's no such 'rumours', the gov may have strong control on many things, but it's not possible to control all(most?) 'rumours'..