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So do we do this next time any new illness spread? what if it happened to a poor country? Is this going to be coded as an international law? If so why is the la

So do we do this next time any new illness spread? what if it happened to a poor country? Is this going to be coded as an international law? If so why is the law retrospective? Considering your 1) lack of sanitary standards is more prevalent in poorer countries is the law discriminatory?

tathougies 7y ago
Yes, if it turns out a poor country lied and imprisoned doctors attempting to disseminate facts, then yes, they ought to be punished internationally.. We shouldn't punish China for simply having the virus. That could happen to anyone. But lying about it on the world stage for months, imprisoning whistleblower doctors, etc is reprehensible behavior.
- geogra4 7y ago
  Links to this?
  - tathougies 7y ago
    https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early-coronavirus-missteps-11583508932?mod=e2tw https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early... China misled WHO into thinking the virus wasn't contagious up until Jan 20. On Jan 14th, WHO (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152) said the virus wasn't contagious on twitter. China arrested scientist whistleblowers. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblowers-speak-out-vanish-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblo... To top it all off, China attempted to blame the united states for it. https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-blaming-us-army/ https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-th... The Atlantic has a thorough article as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trolling-world-and-avoiding-blame/608332/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trol...
    - ksk 7y ago
      There's no defending any communist regime, but I think the more likely explanation is that China had no reason to suspect that it was anything other than flu for a long time. They made it worse by trying to "manage" the panic by deleting social media posts, etc. And even otherwise, they put their economy ahead of the health of their citizens (like countries are doing even today, like the US). As far as we know it was identified as a novel pathogen on the 26th December. Its actually hard to know where to collect the sample from, and if you don't know what you're looking for, its extremely easy to miss. You can't just put a virus under a microscope. Its not unreasonable to assume that they didn't have any confirmation for a couple of weeks that the virus they sequenced was the exact same virus for all of the other cases. You need to develop a fool-proof protocol for a diagnostic test that has minimal false-negatives. No easy task to do in 2 weeks, etc, etc...

tathougies 7y ago

Yes, if it turns out a poor country lied and imprisoned doctors attempting to disseminate facts, then yes, they ought to be punished internationally.. We shouldn't punish China for simply having the virus. That could happen to anyone. But lying about it on the world stage for months, imprisoning whistleblower doctors, etc is reprehensible behavior.

geogra4 7y ago
Links to this?
- tathougies 7y ago
  https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early-coronavirus-missteps-11583508932?mod=e2tw https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-it-all-started-chinas-early... China misled WHO into thinking the virus wasn't contagious up until Jan 20. On Jan 14th, WHO (https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152 https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152) said the virus wasn't contagious on twitter. China arrested scientist whistleblowers. https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblowers-speak-out-vanish-2020-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/china-coronavirus-whistleblo... To top it all off, China attempted to blame the united states for it. https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-blaming-us-army/ https://qz.com/1817736/china-fuels-coronavirus-conspiracy-th... The Atlantic has a thorough article as well. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trolling-world-and-avoiding-blame/608332/ https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/03/china-trol...
  - ksk 7y ago
    There's no defending any communist regime, but I think the more likely explanation is that China had no reason to suspect that it was anything other than flu for a long time. They made it worse by trying to "manage" the panic by deleting social media posts, etc. And even otherwise, they put their economy ahead of the health of their citizens (like countries are doing even today, like the US). As far as we know it was identified as a novel pathogen on the 26th December. Its actually hard to know where to collect the sample from, and if you don't know what you're looking for, its extremely easy to miss. You can't just put a virus under a microscope. Its not unreasonable to assume that they didn't have any confirmation for a couple of weeks that the virus they sequenced was the exact same virus for all of the other cases. You need to develop a fool-proof protocol for a diagnostic test that has minimal false-negatives. No easy task to do in 2 weeks, etc, etc...