6 ms·

Let me make sure I have my timeline right. For years experts have warned that another SARS-like virus is going to come out of China, due to their animal husban

by eric_b 7y ago

Let me make sure I have my timeline right. For years experts have warned that another SARS-like virus is going to come out of China, due to their animal husbandry practices and culture of eating certain animals. Then this disease appears, and China initially tries to suppress news of it. They deny it's an issue. Wasting valuable time and allowing it spread unchecked to the rest of the world. Then, about three months ago they lock down Wuhan to contain it (an area with millions of people I think?) This means, based on this Twitter thread, that residents can't even walk outside. So, like being incarcerated? And, people's wages are getting paid still, but as loans they'll owe when this is all over. So, like debt? What boggles my mind is all the positive news coverage of this. Why are people fawning over this?

alkibiades 7y ago
CCP propoganda is strong. and you cant counteract the narrative without being called a racist.
dboreham 7y ago
They locked down end of January.
drivers99 7y ago
The news I’ve seen has been calling it “draconian.” e.g. “China has used draconian measures to contain the spread of the virus, including locking down Hubei province and more recently stepping up measures to screen and quarantine overseas arrivals.” Reuters (NYTimes?) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/21/world/asia/21reuters-health-coronavirus-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/21/world/asia/21reut...
dredmorbius 7y ago
China, as with other countries, hss made errors and seen successes in addressing COVID-19. Systemic strengths and weaknesses have been exposed. A reasonable commentary expresses both sides. Truth is nonideological. As much as China squandered weeks, possibly months of advanced warning, we've seen precisely that script repeated around the world, across a wide range of cultures, governmental systems, economic systems, and ideologies. With a few notable exceptions: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan RoC, and South Korea most notably. This epidemic is unprecedented since WWII, and everyone is making up their response (including numerous ineffective ones) as it develops. Most often there are no good options, only least bad ones.
- eric_b 7y ago
  I don't get your apologist stance. It was well known there was high risk for a pandemic, just like this, coming out of China. If the U.S. knew there was a risk that they could cause a worldwide pandemic (wasting disease in deer for example), and did nothing, and a disease erupted here, I bet you wouldn't be so quick to apologize.
  - jchiu1106 7y ago
    Check out the Spanish flu. It originated in America...
    - scruple 7y ago
      Or the UK or China or... There are at least a dozen theories that I've read in the last few weeks as my interest in this specific topic has spiked.
  - darkkindness 7y ago
    meta: Over these past four years I've seen a growing number of people interpreting the most nuanced, neutral statements as 'apologist', 'biased', 'lobbying', 'spam', 'politically motivated'. I don't think this has always been the case, especially on HN. It's not just skepticism, that's for sure. How do I put it? It's like assuming there are sides when there are no sides. I'm curious, is there a word for this?
    - brianpan 7y ago
      Polarization has been happening everywhere not just HN and not just in the US. Othering is a related term. See also: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/partisanship/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/partisanship/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/ideology/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/ideology/
      - darkkindness 7y ago
        I like this. Polarization is a pretty good characterization. People are just not treating neutral views as neutral anymore. Food for thought: perhaps people treating everything as fake news is an unfortunate adverse effect of all the messaging about the dangers of not recognizing fake news.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
thankswell 7y ago
Even all you claimed stand, China stop its whole country in Jan and achieved 0 domestic new case in 2 months. This is already the biggest positive news. Speaking of that: - Hongkong and Palau has much worse eating wild animal habit than Wuhan. - Hundreds of Wuhan gov officials got punished due to inefficient response, more investigation is still continuing. - First case reported at end of Dec, China CDC shared out coronavirus gen sequence in Jan, Wuhan locked down in Jan, but the most of the world simply did nothing in the upcoming 3 months and keep spreading unchecked globally even today. - "Incarcerated" or die, you make the choice. - Loan payments are postponed as well.
- eric_b 7y ago
  The estimated IFR for this coronavirus is ~.05 to 0.1%. Even if it turns out to be something extreme, like 0.5%, it's not a big deal for the vast, vast majority of the population. But lockdowns and economic catastrophe are. They are a big deal for everyone. In this case the needs of the many are being overridden by the needs of the few. If the shutdowns/lockdowns go for more than 4 weeks, I think we'd have been better off just letting the disease run wild. More people will die from the economic issues at that point. Might be too late already.
  - jlokier 7y ago
    The numbers are higher than that. From Wikipedia today: > "The case fatality rate (CFR) depends on the availability of healthcare, the typical age and health problems within the population, and the number of undiagnosed cases. Preliminary research has yielded case fatality rate numbers between 2% and 3%; in January 2020 the WHO suggested that the case fatality rate was approximately 3%, and 2% in February 2020 in Hubei. Other CFR numbers, which adjust for differences in time of confirmation, death or remission but are not peer reviewed, are respectively 7% and 33% for people in Wuhan 31 January. An unreviewed preprint of 55 deaths noted that early estimates of mortality may be too high as asymptomatic infections are missed. They estimated a mean infection fatality ratio (IFR, the mortality among infected) ranging from 0.8% to 0.9%. A peer-reviewed article published on 19 March estimated the overall symptomatic case fatality risk as 1.4% (IQR 0.9–2.1%). The outbreak in 2019–2020 has caused at least 335,974 confirmed infections and 14,641 deaths." Current predictions are that letting the disease run wild would result in millions or tens of millions of deaths, and on top of that another large number of people walking around (slowly) with serious lung damage. Consider this: > "The Hong Kong Hospital Authority found a drop of 20% to 30% in lung capacity in some people who recovered from the disease, and lung scans suggested organ damage."
Kaze404 7y ago
It's awful, but I feel it's not fair to single out China for this. I don't see the rest of the world doing much better of a job, especially in Brazil where Bolsonaro is still going on television to downplay the situation and actively making it harder for state governors to do the right thing (make people stay the fuck home, if you pardon my French).
- eric_b 7y ago
  It is absolutely fair to single them out. This would not be happening if not for circumstances specific to their culture and industry. They had warning 20 years ago with SARS1, and they did nothing to prevent this, even though the solutions would basically be "don't store live animals next to each other in wet markets". Now we all pay the price. Our world would be better with more accountability. And in this case there is one specific party who fucked up worse than all the rest, particularly given their 20 year notice.
  - Kaze404 7y ago
    That's fair, but we have our share of blame for letting this get out of control. We knew what this virus could do as well, and instead of acting accordingly we're just not.
    - eric_b 7y ago
      Yep, absolutely. US response has been abysmal.
  - runawaybottle 7y ago
    And not to pile on, but, what can you even criticize China over? They are very much a real super power now, they get away with stuff in the same fashion as America. Jail their civilians in camps, threaten Hong Kong, steal foreign intellectual property, and now possibly mishandle the onset of a pandemic. All very difficult stuff to get international accountability on, they’ve really joined the super power ‘I-do-whatever-I-want’ club nicely.
amylene 7y ago
Because there is value in making good decisions after a series of bad ones. Wuhan has stopped more infections, which is to be applauded. Moving forward, we can criticize the reasons in the post mortem. However, if we are looking to find the truth, we cannot start with blame. We all know how blame causes people to cover their ass and inhibits learning.
- hcknwscommenter 7y ago
  Perfectly put. Thank you.
dirtyid 7y ago
Strip away media narrative on both sides, an impartial timeline would be: Wuhan medical community recognized a new pneumonia of unclear cause in late December during winter and the height of influenza season. The novel Corona Virus was identified, WHO was notified, the genome was sequenced. This took roughly 1 week. Then it took 3 more weeks of "stability management" before central government quarantined WuHan and essentially shutdown the entire country right before the most important holiday of the year and the largest annual human migration. 4 weeks for identification to evaluation to 3 months of aggressive techno-authoritarian quarantine, and assuming 2nd wave and import cases can be managed until the vaccine - China just demonstrated the first civilization model in human history to be able to suppress a virus of this magnitude in large countries. Other countries are only recently adopting the war analogy, China executed it on a dime. How they'll fair in rebooting society is unknown. Was there missteps? Yes. Could they have done better? Not by much IMO. Every misstep with Chinese characteristics is being repeated just as worst in other countries with their cultural characteristics. The overall response as been not as agile (if there a response at all), despite having ample notice and more information. The retrospect of this global health crisis is going to be interesting, China and a handful of islands managed to successful crush the curve, complacent developed countries may or may not successful spread the curve, and all the developing countries get rapid herd immunity because like the Spanish flu, they have no other choice. 1.4 billion people without herd immunity among a globalized world with immunity is going to be a conundrum though.
- tluyben2 7y ago
  Herd community for covid19 is speculation right? There is no proof that that will happen is there? It is a (dangerous) gamble at this point as I understand it.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Assuming patients can't get reinfected with the virus, then herd immunity will definitely work. But for herd immunity to occur, a very large portion of the herd needs to get infected. And I would assume that proportion is greater, the more infectious a disease is. The idea with the lockdowns is to keep the rate of infection slow enough that hospitals can handle the influx of cases.
hcknwscommenter 7y ago
You are dangerously misinformed and jingoistic. On January 21, the Chinese government declared that “anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity." Wuhan, indeed all of Hubei shut down to a level no other country has even tried to this day on January 23. On that day, they had 830 known cases and 25 known deaths. I don't know about the loan vs. debt thing, and maybe we can agree on that, but the tone of your argument is so negative when the rest of the world (TW, SG, VN, JP, and SK excepted) has done a much worse job just makes me think you are a troll.
gandutraveler 7y ago
A pure theory but how likely is it that Chinese govt knew that travelers would spread covid-19 but allowed it knowingly anyways.
nojvek 7y ago
US had a 2 month warning. Our president and CDC kept downplaying it like it was nothing. Trump was saving face for a long time trying to not harm the stock market while blatantly lying to us. How is this any different from what China did? At-least China has gotten things under control, the west is on fire. Italy is being decimated and being overwhelmed.

by eric_b 7y ago

alkibiades 7y ago

CCP propoganda is strong. and you cant counteract the narrative without being called a racist.

dboreham 7y ago

They locked down end of January.

drivers99 7y ago

The news I’ve seen has been calling it “draconian.” e.g. “China has used draconian measures to contain the spread of the virus, including locking down Hubei province and more recently stepping up measures to screen and quarantine overseas arrivals.” Reuters (NYTimes?) https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/21/world/asia/21reuters-health-coronavirus-china.html https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/21/world/asia/21reut...

dredmorbius 7y ago

China, as with other countries, hss made errors and seen successes in addressing COVID-19. Systemic strengths and weaknesses have been exposed. A reasonable commentary expresses both sides. Truth is nonideological. As much as China squandered weeks, possibly months of advanced warning, we've seen precisely that script repeated around the world, across a wide range of cultures, governmental systems, economic systems, and ideologies. With a few notable exceptions: Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan RoC, and South Korea most notably. This epidemic is unprecedented since WWII, and everyone is making up their response (including numerous ineffective ones) as it develops. Most often there are no good options, only least bad ones.

eric_b 7y ago
I don't get your apologist stance. It was well known there was high risk for a pandemic, just like this, coming out of China. If the U.S. knew there was a risk that they could cause a worldwide pandemic (wasting disease in deer for example), and did nothing, and a disease erupted here, I bet you wouldn't be so quick to apologize.
- jchiu1106 7y ago
  Check out the Spanish flu. It originated in America...
  - scruple 7y ago
    Or the UK or China or... There are at least a dozen theories that I've read in the last few weeks as my interest in this specific topic has spiked.
- darkkindness 7y ago
  meta: Over these past four years I've seen a growing number of people interpreting the most nuanced, neutral statements as 'apologist', 'biased', 'lobbying', 'spam', 'politically motivated'. I don't think this has always been the case, especially on HN. It's not just skepticism, that's for sure. How do I put it? It's like assuming there are sides when there are no sides. I'm curious, is there a word for this?
  - brianpan 7y ago
    Polarization has been happening everywhere not just HN and not just in the US. Othering is a related term. See also: https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/partisanship/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/partisanship/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/ideology/ https://fivethirtyeight.com/tag/ideology/
    - darkkindness 7y ago
      I like this. Polarization is a pretty good characterization. People are just not treating neutral views as neutral anymore. Food for thought: perhaps people treating everything as fake news is an unfortunate adverse effect of all the messaging about the dangers of not recognizing fake news.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

thankswell 7y ago

Even all you claimed stand, China stop its whole country in Jan and achieved 0 domestic new case in 2 months. This is already the biggest positive news. Speaking of that: - Hongkong and Palau has much worse eating wild animal habit than Wuhan. - Hundreds of Wuhan gov officials got punished due to inefficient response, more investigation is still continuing. - First case reported at end of Dec, China CDC shared out coronavirus gen sequence in Jan, Wuhan locked down in Jan, but the most of the world simply did nothing in the upcoming 3 months and keep spreading unchecked globally even today. - "Incarcerated" or die, you make the choice. - Loan payments are postponed as well.

eric_b 7y ago
The estimated IFR for this coronavirus is ~.05 to 0.1%. Even if it turns out to be something extreme, like 0.5%, it's not a big deal for the vast, vast majority of the population. But lockdowns and economic catastrophe are. They are a big deal for everyone. In this case the needs of the many are being overridden by the needs of the few. If the shutdowns/lockdowns go for more than 4 weeks, I think we'd have been better off just letting the disease run wild. More people will die from the economic issues at that point. Might be too late already.
- jlokier 7y ago
  The numbers are higher than that. From Wikipedia today: > "The case fatality rate (CFR) depends on the availability of healthcare, the typical age and health problems within the population, and the number of undiagnosed cases. Preliminary research has yielded case fatality rate numbers between 2% and 3%; in January 2020 the WHO suggested that the case fatality rate was approximately 3%, and 2% in February 2020 in Hubei. Other CFR numbers, which adjust for differences in time of confirmation, death or remission but are not peer reviewed, are respectively 7% and 33% for people in Wuhan 31 January. An unreviewed preprint of 55 deaths noted that early estimates of mortality may be too high as asymptomatic infections are missed. They estimated a mean infection fatality ratio (IFR, the mortality among infected) ranging from 0.8% to 0.9%. A peer-reviewed article published on 19 March estimated the overall symptomatic case fatality risk as 1.4% (IQR 0.9–2.1%). The outbreak in 2019–2020 has caused at least 335,974 confirmed infections and 14,641 deaths." Current predictions are that letting the disease run wild would result in millions or tens of millions of deaths, and on top of that another large number of people walking around (slowly) with serious lung damage. Consider this: > "The Hong Kong Hospital Authority found a drop of 20% to 30% in lung capacity in some people who recovered from the disease, and lung scans suggested organ damage."

Kaze404 7y ago

It's awful, but I feel it's not fair to single out China for this. I don't see the rest of the world doing much better of a job, especially in Brazil where Bolsonaro is still going on television to downplay the situation and actively making it harder for state governors to do the right thing (make people stay the fuck home, if you pardon my French).

eric_b 7y ago
It is absolutely fair to single them out. This would not be happening if not for circumstances specific to their culture and industry. They had warning 20 years ago with SARS1, and they did nothing to prevent this, even though the solutions would basically be "don't store live animals next to each other in wet markets". Now we all pay the price. Our world would be better with more accountability. And in this case there is one specific party who fucked up worse than all the rest, particularly given their 20 year notice.
- Kaze404 7y ago
  That's fair, but we have our share of blame for letting this get out of control. We knew what this virus could do as well, and instead of acting accordingly we're just not.
  - eric_b 7y ago
    Yep, absolutely. US response has been abysmal.
- runawaybottle 7y ago
  And not to pile on, but, what can you even criticize China over? They are very much a real super power now, they get away with stuff in the same fashion as America. Jail their civilians in camps, threaten Hong Kong, steal foreign intellectual property, and now possibly mishandle the onset of a pandemic. All very difficult stuff to get international accountability on, they’ve really joined the super power ‘I-do-whatever-I-want’ club nicely.

amylene 7y ago

Because there is value in making good decisions after a series of bad ones. Wuhan has stopped more infections, which is to be applauded. Moving forward, we can criticize the reasons in the post mortem. However, if we are looking to find the truth, we cannot start with blame. We all know how blame causes people to cover their ass and inhibits learning.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago
Perfectly put. Thank you.

dirtyid 7y ago

Strip away media narrative on both sides, an impartial timeline would be: Wuhan medical community recognized a new pneumonia of unclear cause in late December during winter and the height of influenza season. The novel Corona Virus was identified, WHO was notified, the genome was sequenced. This took roughly 1 week. Then it took 3 more weeks of "stability management" before central government quarantined WuHan and essentially shutdown the entire country right before the most important holiday of the year and the largest annual human migration. 4 weeks for identification to evaluation to 3 months of aggressive techno-authoritarian quarantine, and assuming 2nd wave and import cases can be managed until the vaccine - China just demonstrated the first civilization model in human history to be able to suppress a virus of this magnitude in large countries. Other countries are only recently adopting the war analogy, China executed it on a dime. How they'll fair in rebooting society is unknown. Was there missteps? Yes. Could they have done better? Not by much IMO. Every misstep with Chinese characteristics is being repeated just as worst in other countries with their cultural characteristics. The overall response as been not as agile (if there a response at all), despite having ample notice and more information. The retrospect of this global health crisis is going to be interesting, China and a handful of islands managed to successful crush the curve, complacent developed countries may or may not successful spread the curve, and all the developing countries get rapid herd immunity because like the Spanish flu, they have no other choice. 1.4 billion people without herd immunity among a globalized world with immunity is going to be a conundrum though.

tluyben2 7y ago
Herd community for covid19 is speculation right? There is no proof that that will happen is there? It is a (dangerous) gamble at this point as I understand it.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  Assuming patients can't get reinfected with the virus, then herd immunity will definitely work. But for herd immunity to occur, a very large portion of the herd needs to get infected. And I would assume that proportion is greater, the more infectious a disease is. The idea with the lockdowns is to keep the rate of infection slow enough that hospitals can handle the influx of cases.

hcknwscommenter 7y ago

You are dangerously misinformed and jingoistic. On January 21, the Chinese government declared that “anyone who deliberately delays and hides the reporting of [virus] cases out of his or her own self-interest will be nailed on the pillar of shame for eternity." Wuhan, indeed all of Hubei shut down to a level no other country has even tried to this day on January 23. On that day, they had 830 known cases and 25 known deaths. I don't know about the loan vs. debt thing, and maybe we can agree on that, but the tone of your argument is so negative when the rest of the world (TW, SG, VN, JP, and SK excepted) has done a much worse job just makes me think you are a troll.

gandutraveler 7y ago

A pure theory but how likely is it that Chinese govt knew that travelers would spread covid-19 but allowed it knowingly anyways.

nojvek 7y ago

US had a 2 month warning. Our president and CDC kept downplaying it like it was nothing. Trump was saving face for a long time trying to not harm the stock market while blatantly lying to us. How is this any different from what China did? At-least China has gotten things under control, the west is on fire. Italy is being decimated and being overwhelmed.