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Remember Li Wenliang. We warned his fellow doctors about the situation, in December. The police punished him for this. He later died of the disease. We are al
by boplicity 7y ago
Remember Li Wenliang. We warned his fellow doctors about the situation, in December. The police punished him for this.
He later died of the disease.
We are all suffering because an authoritarian government suppressed the good intentions of its citizens.
The Chinese Government is squarely to blame for this situation. Could it have been prevented if they had acted responsibly? I don't know – but there is a strong chance that the answer is yes. We'll never know, however, because that is not the path they took.
- vesinisa 7y agoOTOH the same authoritarian government quarantined a city the size of New York and built field hospitals for thousands of people on very short notice when the situation truly got out of hand.
- madengr 7y agoKilled 20 million too in the great revolution.
- tomrod 7y agoThis was during the COVID-19 outbreak?
- dang 7y agoPlease don't take HN threads on generic flamewar tangents. Also, would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments generally? We unbanned you awhile ago because your comments had improved, but they've backslidden. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- aldoushuxley001 7y agoSure, but they closed the barn gates after the horses had already bolted. Edit: Oof, the truth hurts don't it?
- BiasRegularizer 7y agoBoth are very classic traits of authoritarian gov: In times of crisis, it's far more efficient than democratic governments. However, in times of non-crisis, its centralized power and information control would cause a crisis that would've been otherwise avoided.
- cycrutchfield 7y agoWow, so an authoritarian government did authoritarian things. Big surprise.
- gentleman11 7y agoAs long as we’re giving strikes for/against their authoritarian government, should we mention the millions in concentration camps and the complete lack of civil liberty? We shouldn’t be so fast to accept their system
- philwelch 7y agoThe Soviet government ended up addressing the Chernobyl disaster when that got out of hand, too. I think any government, facing any crisis, is eventually going to do the right thing by virtue of running out of other options. The question is how many mistakes they make beforehand, and this seems like a big one.
- elorant 7y agoOn the other hand their lockdown measures wouldn't be so successful if they weren't an authoritative regime.
- eloisius 7y agoSeems that Taiwan, Korea and Japan haven’t had such a hard time with it.
- elorant 7y agoNot as densely populated as China though, and they're richer countries, as per capita GDP.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- qtplatypus 7y agoJapan 336 people per square kilometer PRC 145 people per square kilometer ROC 649 people per square kilometer South Korea 503 people per square kilometer
- bildung 7y agoThank god this could never happen in the US. https://www.newsweek.com/hhs-coronavirus-whistleblower-claims-she-was-unfairly-reassigned-after-raising-concerns-over-lack-1489624 https://www.newsweek.com/hhs-coronavirus-whistleblower-claim... People are people, and have been shooting the messenger for millennia.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ctoth 7y agoOh. Someone criticized China. And then someone rapidly turned around and said "But what about the US!" Where have I possibly seen this before?
- bildung 7y agoYes, everyone hinting that xenophobia might not be a sensible pursuit when facing a pandemia is obviously a paid troll. I'm German, BTW, and considering the history of our country I'm a bit sensible to things like this.
- dang 7y agoPlease stop posting flamebait and/or unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- grandmczeb 7y agoLi Wenliang was arrested and forced by the police to sign a letter admitting to “false comments.” These aren’t even remotely comparable.
- whatshisface 7y agoThey are a little comparable, in that what the US is trying to do indicates that it would go the same way as in China if there was not a semi-functional press, a freedom-minded citizenry, and a mostly-functional democracy holding them back. The intent and "evil" is there, what makes the difference is what restrains it.
- beamatronic 7y agoCan you fully blame the Chinese government? The WHO could have sounded the alarm in January and stopped global travel. Trump could have had a fearful knee jerk reaction and done the same. Everything we are doing now should have been done mid January. State governments, county health departments, they all could have reacted louder, faster.
- eloisius 7y agoDeleted
- quaquaqua1 7y agoMeanwhile China has mostly contained this virus and the West is at the brink of despair? If the virus started in USA, it would be even worse...
- eloisius 7y agoDeleted
- beamatronic 7y agoAll that may be true. But the rest of world has no excuse for not reacting.
- mondoshawan 7y agoMostly contained based upon numbers. How much of those numbers are lies or omissions?
- deadmetheny 7y agoTrump is in a no-win situation here - if a fearful knee-jerk reaction would have successfully mitigated the disease making it into the USA, it would have been painted as xenophobic and overreaching. The WHO has just proven itself to be largely ineffective. It's a dumpster fire all around.
- blackoil 7y agoIf the timeline in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO5EXjFKE7U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kO5EXjFKE7U are true, doesn't seem like the information was suppressed. WHO knew about a new virus/disease by 31st Dec/1st Jan and the market in question was closed. What they didn't know was if these were one off cases from eating bad meat or is it spreading human to human. Also, Li Wenliang circulated SARS info on WeChat on 30th/31st and public broadcast in Wuhan/Hubei was on 31st. Possible the source is biased and info. is missing but doesn't look any info is false.
- naasking 7y ago> WHO knew about a new virus/disease by 31st Dec/1st Jan and the market in question was closed. China knew about the disease in mid to late November. That's quite a lag time.
- Leary 7y agoThe virus was first identified on Dec 27th. The first case was on Nov 17th. But that was found retroactively.
- qtplatypus 7y agoThe Supreme People’s Court said that suppressing the information hampered responding to the virus. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048042/chinas-top-court-hits-out-wuhan-police-over-coronavirus-rumour https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3048042/chin...
- wwarner 7y agoThis heroic doctor can no longer speak for himself and did not write his wikipedia page. I really doubt that if he were alive right now that he'd be focusing on the stupidity of the initial reaction to his reports.
- amluto 7y agoI find it hard to imagine that the current CDC would have done better if the pandemic had started in the US. Sure, they would have been more honest, but they haven’t been demonstrating much competence recently.
- citilife 7y agoHonesty is what lets businesses scale production to meet demand. I also find it hard to imagine the CDC would have done much better, BUT it would have indicated to businesses the potential.
- dumbfounder 7y agoWe were actually in the perfect position to react appropriately to this virus and we completely failed. We saw what it did to China and their response yet we stalled for weeks. Those weeks matter. The only country that seems to have responded well based on what happened in China is South Korea. South Korea was in second place for total infected for a long time, but they responded incredibly well and have remained relatively stable for a while, and now others are rocketing past them.
- blackearl 7y agoIf not prevented, severely curtailed. I'd almost give them the benefit of ignorance if their actions weren't so clearly malicious.