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I find it incredibly hard to believe that China has stopped community spread within the country - I hope I’m wrong, but I think we’re getting PRC propaganda whe

• actuator 7y ago
  They might have contained it better as they went pretty intense on lockdown. There were lots of videos on internet from their lockdown on which people were laughing at China being an authoritarian state. The videos displayed homes being taped from outside if someone in that home was suspected of having it, people being picked from streets etc. Being an authoritarian state really helps in these scenarios as you can suppress liberties easily without people rising up in arms about it. Having said this though, being an authoritarian state with constant efforts to have a good image, they might have underreported the numbers of actual cases.
• dntbnmpls 7y ago
  That's fair, but aren't all the comments talking about PRC propaganda propaganda itself? > I hope I’m wrong Do you really? It seems to me that many who share your sentiments actually want things to get worse both in china and around the world. That's just the feeling I get reading the comments. Also, it would be interesting if there was a study done on the "PRC propaganda" crowd and the "CCP propaganda" crowd - from a linguistic and propaganda standpoint.
• blisterpeanuts 7y ago
  Maybe they stopped the spread in Hubei, but suppose just one infected person travels to another heavily populated province. What is the contingency plan for this obviously dangerous scenario?
  • baybal2 7y ago
    Isolate, test, quarantine, repeat
• seqastian 7y ago
  Have you seen their lockdown? their lockdown laughs at Europes lockdown.
  • capableweb 7y ago
    I live in Spain. Yesterday I saw a group of five people standing together in the dog park, about 2 meters apart from each other. Good thing they are practicing social distancing, but their dogs were still playing with each other. We're indeed being laughed at, and rightfully so. Many people are not taking the lock down serious here.
    • nradov 7y ago
      There is no evidence that dogs can spread coronavirus to humans. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/animals.html https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/animals.ht...
      • capableweb 7y ago
        Surely they can't be infected but I know that when I get sick, I have a lot close contact with my dogs, which includes that they sometimes get saliva on them (sleeping on them and drooling and/or coughing near them), which means their fur would carry the virus.
      • de_watcher 7y ago
        Virus stays on surfaces for some time. Dogs have surfaces.
      • arcturus17 7y ago
        So what happens if I have covid19, I pet or hug a dog, and five minutes later someone else touches it? The virus suddenly disappears across the entire dog's surface?
        • capableweb 7y ago
          Now I agree with your general sentiment but can't help but feel the unhelpful tone in your finishing question. We might as well do without that. You can frame your messages to be less hostile without loosing the meaning of what you want to write.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
  WHO seems to believe. We would have a prior expectation that a strong lockdown would reduce transmission to below 1 per case. China has a strong lockdown. And it would be extremely hard for them to hide it plus massive downside risk and limited upside. So why don't you believe them.
  • aww_dang 7y ago
    "The reason for the WHO’s failure to properly act to contain the outbreak, and its repeated issuing of inaccurate and bad advice, is not merely the result of incompetence. Rather, the malfeasance is the direct result of the CCP deliberately buying out WHO’s leadership, with tragic consequences." https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/17/u-s-funds-world-health-organization-that-boot-licks-china-with-deadly-results/ https://thefederalist.com/2020/03/17/u-s-funds-world-health-... "The coronavirus crisis is raising questions over China's relationship with the World Health Organization" https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-china-intl-hnk/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/14/asia/coronavirus-who-chin... "Coronavirus: How WHO Corruption Helped It Spread" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwFTZawOc9k https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwFTZawOc9k
    • asdfasgasdgasdg 7y ago
      Yeah I'm not really buying what these articles are selling. The world had plenty of time to act and opted not to. This all seems more like an attempt to avoid blame than a credible analysis of the situation. It's a far better story for the western politicians that the evil Chinese didn't give enough warning than to acknowledge that plenty of warning was given and none was heeded until the developing crisis was already realized in western countries.
      • aww_dang 7y ago
        There are two separate ideas at play here. 1)The credibility of the WHO in regards to the CCP. 2)The culpability of CCP in regards to covering up the pandemic which began in territory it controls. Allegedly this outbreak began in November. Doctors who warned about it were arrested. Your response references a third issue 3)Western officials had sufficient time to formulate a 'better' response
• streetcat1 7y ago
  Right. You cannot stop this virus unless you somehow tag who is "clean" and who is "infected" I.e. a solution to this issue would require: 1) Massive testing of everyone. This can be done via a mobile lab or "at home" kit. 2) Issue a clean certificate 3) Division of all areas to "clean" (you can prove that you have been tested) and "infected". For example, you can board a flight or a train only if you are "clean". In general, the initial test should be done in parallel and hopefully at the same time. Once this test is done, all the "clean" certificate can be issued and the quarantine can end. I personally cannot see any other way. I.e. even if you end the quartine after X weeks, the virus will start again. So the race is either to massive testing or to a vaccine. I think that reaching massive testing is easier.
  • lb0 7y ago
    Wait, what, just right? First we laughed at China, downplayed it, now we ignore them again? (And if not China, why not look more at Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, there seem to be ways to keep the load for the health system reasonable enough .. but what I also miss too much is how we go forward, not just flatten the curve, but also rump up hospitals, and masks for everyone, and what else it takes to get into some reasonable state as before). Just translating http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a089a4d9 http://blog.fefe.de/?ts=a089a4d9 from someone who claims to be China insider via his wife: The reason why China thinks it can lower its shutdown is because they believe they control it now well enough. What is not clear to us in the West is how draconian but efficient they did the lockdown and quarantine: - Immediate true and complete lockdown of whole China. They do not agree what we understand as lockdown in Italy and other European countries. - In Shandong (80.000.000 inhabitants) they started tracking by licenses plates, train tickets and mobile phones all 70.000 persons that were in Wuhan and sent them to quarantine. That is like if Germany would have sent anyone who was in Italy on vacation into quarantine start of February. - Every known infected case had 5 people working on it that via big data, tracking and interviews identified every contact person and put these into quarantine. - As there was an infection case in a block, the whole house (30 flats) came for 14 days into quarantine into a hotel, they disinfected the whole house, and everyone else in the block (500 flats) were fever checked daily by security. - Patrols in Wuhan arrested everyone breaking quarantine. - Fever checking at every checkpoint. But there was not only force, they are getting daily SMS to their chinese SIM: - current state of epdemics - state of food stocks of the province and there is no reason to hamster - inform that all health costs due to corona will be paid - how many face masks are produced each day - that any price gouging is strictly forbidden, with a hotline you can call to report violations - and general tips for behaviour They partly paid people also a month wage if they went into hospital for testing/reporting their corona. What we don't understand in Europe is that Chinese government looked at Wuhan for few weeks and then decided that the cheapest way out of this will be this dramatic complete lockdown. Everyone travelling into China btw must go into 2 weeks quarantine. Thus they feel safe from a second big outbreak wave. -- Let's see if that works (keep in mind everyone there is wearing masks, while not perfect, they likely have a huge impact on reproduction coefficient on large scale). I believe we should have learned much earlier when everyone was reporting that they e.g. build a hospital ultra quick, and then sent everything into complete lockdown, that they maybe had known what they have at their hands. By doing our small steps, and also not having massive testing and good behaviour available like South Korea, I'm afraid, it will just take longer for us and the pain will be much larger. In Italy it already is :(
• glandium 7y ago
  I saw today on Japanese TV that China reportedly doesn't count asymptomatic people who tested positive as of the 14th of February, and that there might be 40k+ of those.
  • balola 7y ago
    They have this "zero-out" campaign, effectively goading local officials into reporting zero cases, you will need to think about your political career before reporting one.
  • eloisant 7y ago
    France: - never tested asymptotic people - in the first weeks, didn't tested anyone unless they had symptoms AND came back from China or Italy - now only takes care of serious cases, which means that if you have mild symptoms you don't get tested Official numbers a way, way lower than reality.
    • netvarun 7y ago
      I had to do a double take - I'm pretty sure you meant 'asymptomatic' :)
• yomly 7y ago
  While you are reasonable to be sceptical over the official reports, I have no insight into the true number, I am sure there is still some lingering virus floating around in China. That said, you are grossly underestimating the cultural response to this: here is some flavour of how people acted different in China. Chinese New Year (equivalent to Christmas / New Year if you are a westerner) was effectively cancelled by the government, and I know that my in-laws at least adhered to this and all their neighbours did as well. The government were happy to physically dig up roads to contain Wuhan, and people outside Hubei would snitch on people fleeing Hubei so they would be sent back. My mother in-law has been in isolation since the end of January, solely venturing out to buy supplies. She wears a mask when she leaves, and she immediately showers + disinfects her clothes when she gets home. This may surprise you, but she is not really in the minority. People in Asia are fairly risk-averse when it comes to contagion, coupled with the history of SARS, the community-level response to COVID-19 has been starkly different. Separately, a friend living in Shanghai said (during February) that the only people out on streets were expats/foreigners.
  • lonelappde 7y ago
    Why is CCP letting foreigners in to China, and letting them move freely? They've locked down interior movement but opened the border? That just smells like deception.
    • yomly 7y ago
      I think it was more a case that the timings of this were before the pandemic had spread widely outside of China and the lockdown outside of Hubei was much softer than inside. But the locals were more individually prepared to comply with guidelines
• TeMPOraL 7y ago
  To add to other comments here; I follow some supply chain news, and my impression is that China has been recovering for a month now. I sincerely doubt that they'd let a thoroughly infected population back to work, and that it wouldn't leak out. So this is a weak support that their success story is true.
• anpago 7y ago
  I can't comment on what's happening in China, but I do know that south east asians especially students fled from the UK and no doubt elsewhere over the last few weeks back home where it was considered the worse was over. I believe Cathay Pacific put on extra flights back to Hong Kong. It's noticeable Singapore, Hong Kong and China all reporting imported cases. In the UK due to the lack of Testing no one but the wealthy know if they have or had Covid unless in a very bad way.
• patrec 7y ago
  Your scepticism would be more intelligent if there weren't also South Korea and Taiwan. Basically all countries that made any real effort at suppression seem to be doing comparably well ATM, no? And I think both of them may rank higher in Reporters Without Borders Press Freedom Index than Italy, so probably brutal censorship is not the only reason they appear to be doing better.