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Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the oth

Popular opinion in the US regarding the integrity of various countries' coronavirus reporting is hilarious. Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having now leading to underreporting of numbers, back in Jan-Feb when every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up. Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Anyone who has the slightest awareness of how Japan works knows that this is par for the course. And no, it's not just the government brainwashing the people. The people are complacent in this and defend their government by rejecting criticism and continuing to vote them in office.

enaaem 7y ago
The big difference is that the chines communist party is actively suppressing messages And prosecuting people who go against the governments narrative.
- weeksie 7y ago
  No idea why this is downvoted because it's literally what's happening in China, regardless of the failures elsewhere.
  - kleer001 7y ago
    Downvoted maybe because spelling and capitalization errors? Edit: Holy crispy, it's just an idea of mine, not an assertion or endorsement or confirmation. Geeze.
    - simonh 7y ago
      If so that's a bit mean. Not everyone here is a native English speaker.
    - y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
      Which is a really stupid reason to down-vote. Down-voting should be reserved for comments that do not contribute to the discussion. People need to be aware that there's non-native English speakers on this platform too.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        If you can’t learn to write English keep reading. Being unable to capitalize or punctuate correctly is a wonderful heuristic for not trying to communicate. There are many more native speakers who are typing for their own benefit than non-natives who can profitably read this forum but can’t write.
      - cossray 7y ago
        This is an American forum in all but name. For the rest, we feel like we're eavesdropping, occasionally mumbling here and there.
- macewindu 7y ago
  > The big difference is that the chines communist party is actively suppressing messages And prosecuting people who go against the governments narrative. Unlike the USA?
  - duxup 7y ago
    Very much unlike the USA.
  - simonh 7y ago
    Even if that was being done in the USA, that does not make it ok for China to do it and in that case both should be criticised. Otherwise that's just whataboutism and should not be tolerated.
  - maallooc 7y ago
    Yes. Unlike the USA.
duxup 7y ago
> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie Lie, that involves intent so I don't know that I care to indicate or debate that. Highly skeptical, yeah I am considering they've already a long track record of suppressing information / people related to the COVID situation. Less free countries have little reason / a long track record of hiding bad news, from their own people, others, etc, and they have less free media, people to discover / tell anyone otherwise. >Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Here we are discussing an article that doesn't assume that.
me_me_me 7y ago
> Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Maybe because modern Japan doesn't have a track record of mass censorship and disappearing people who oppose governmental line? Chinese gov is trying to blame US as source of the virus. I think Trump only dreams of being 'creative' on that level. That said, I am not defending or justifying gov of Japan. This can be incompetence or malicious data tampering to look better.
keiferski 7y ago
This is a false equivalency. China is a totalitarian state that quite literally controls information; Japan and the US are not in any real sense. About six months ago, on a different HN topic, I said this about China's claim that foreigners committed crimes and thus couldn't leave the country: I call it “crying wolf in reverse”: The problem with being a totalitarian state that falsely imprisons people on a regular basis is that you’ve lost all moral authority when it comes to arresting people for actual crimes. If you’ve falsified evidence, conducted show trials and made a mockery of rule of law before, why should anyone believe you when you say it’s a real crime this time? We're seeing a similar situation with regards to their Covid-19 reporting. Is it necessarily inaccurate? No, but lying about everything else doesn't exactly lend us to trust you this time.
- tinus_hn 7y ago
  For what it’s worth, the Japanese justice system has an over 99% conviction rate.
  - keiferski 7y ago
    Sure, absolutely the Japanese justice system has some serious problems, just as the American one does. But let's not pretend that they're remotely comparable to the CCP.
    - sosborn 7y ago
      > unlikely-to-be-convicted cases Unfortunately this doesn't mean what people might think it means. "Unlikely-to-be-convicted" doesn't mean much when the police have so many tools available to force confessions, whether the person is guilty or not. *Not comparing to CCP
  - duxup 7y ago
    Assuming that is accurate, do they just perhaps take a different approach to who they bother to prosecute? Justice systems are really hard to compare considering the different circumstances.
coliveira 7y ago
There are wild accusations against Chinese government, when in fact we now see that they put the most stringent measures to avoid the escalation of this virus, which in fact they succeeded in doing, at least inside China. On the other hand, I live in one of the early focus of the virus in the USA, and the federal and local authorities told us to just wash hands, avoid handshakes, and continue our normal life. Against a virus that is treated in other countries with hazmat suits! In my opinion THIS is criminal, on the same level of what happened in Chernobyl, knowing everything that we knew about the crisis situation in China and Korea. Now the virus is out of control in the US and the government still has the nerve to tell us that this is the fault of someone else.
- hajile 7y ago
  China lied about literally EVERYTHING. Claims the first case was in December. It was [middle of November](https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.htm...) Other countries didn't even know there was much going on until December 30 thanks to Dr Li Wenliang [source](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30382-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...). He suddenly catches the disease and dies -- big coincidence in my opinion (especially as the death rate for someone 34 is 0.2%). This is at least SIX WEEKS after the initial infection. They have hundreds to thousands of cases, but they somehow conclude that human to human transmission isn't occurring. Middle of January, WHO itself [tweets out](https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fworld%2Fworld-health-organization-january-tweet-china-human-transmission-coronavirus https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=t...) that human to human transmission isn't happening. I'd note that Japan already had a case with NO links to any markets [source](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/16/national/science-health/japan-first-coronavirus-case/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/16/national/scienc...) Why would WHO do this? I don't know about the entire organization, but the WHO leader is [Tedros Adhanom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom). He is Ethiopian and works for the Ethiopian government. Ethiopia does 5.4 billion in trade with China let alone a 4 billion dollar direct investment [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Ethiopia_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Ethiopia_relatio...). China also holds almost half of Ethiopia's debt [source](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construction-style/index.html https://www.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construc...). Put simple, the WHO leader is compromised when it comes to China. This extends further with weird dodging of questions about Taiwan by another WHO official [source](https://twitter.com/ezracheungtoto/status/1243869774410469376 https://twitter.com/ezracheungtoto/status/124386977441046937...). Despite all this, the US still started screening people on Jan 17 [CDC source](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-sc...). If the disease were more like MERS or the original SARS, this would have likely been all that was needed. China throws a party with 40,000 people in Wuhan kicking an already huge problem into overdrive on January 18 [source](https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/02/06/wuhan-neighbourhood-sees-infections-after-40000-families-gather-for-potluck https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/02/06/wuhan-ne...) On January 20 (exactly 10 weeks ago), China still denied the virus was transmitting between people [source](http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020012009077 http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020012009077). Only on January 21 does someone at WHO finally conclude human to human transmission is happening [source](https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit-wuhan-china-jan-2020 https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...). Compromised WHO leader continues to praise China's response [source](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-statement-on-ihr-emergency-committee-on-novel-coronavirus https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...). China allows hundreds of millions of people to travel over Chinese Lunar New Years (Jan 24-30). The idea that people from Wuhan hadn't already traveled elsewhere in the country is crazy given what we know about the 1-27 days before symptoms show.
ggggtez 7y ago
Surprisingly, as a person complaining about gullibility of other people, I really don't know how you came to the conclusion that everyone believes Japan's numbers. Almost every article I've read that has mentioned Japan's low rate has raised the concern the numbers are faked. They highlight that it has a high rate of smoking, lots of travel to/from china, and very crowded cities. Each of these raises the risk. So I'd say reporters have been skeptical. On the other hand, China is not just suspected of lying, but have been proven to have lied and suppressed the disease. In fact, that was the whole reason the disease got out of hand in the first place, as it's now clear the disease started spreading at least as early as December, and possibly even as early as October of last year. If China had properly not suppressed the information, the world might have been able to get a start on preparing vaccines and equipment and we could have avoided the current mess.
dtwest 7y ago
"Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie" "every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up" Stop using absolutes. There are plenty of people in the US that realize the US numbers have been suppressed by a lack of testing. There are plenty of people in the US who actually think China has handled the situation better than our own dysfunctional government. The only absolute truth is that we don't have all of the information yet.
- fatjokes 7y ago
  I think GP was probably being hyperbolic. Speaking with temperament sadly doesn't work well on the Internet.
  - droopyEyelids 7y ago
    Regardless, HN prides itself on reasoned debate, and straw man/flamebait responses are against the TOS here.
standardUser 7y ago
I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I think you're missing a key part of the picture. Any jurisdiction can lie if they want, for a while, but at a certain point this is an actual disease that causes actual illness and death. You can't hide hundreds or thousands of people dying from respiratory failure and you can't hide overwhelmed hospitals or auxiliary medical tents. Not for very long at least. In the case of Japan, they do not appear to have high enough transmission rates to cause serious problems. I don't know if they are lying about any given fact or figure. But they are not covering up a widespread COVID-19 outbreak because we know what that type of outbreak looks like. It looks like Italy.
usaar333 7y ago
> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Well, this jibes with reality. I could care less about actual case counts - few countries are close to having the capacity to test everyone so who cares. What is a huge problem with China is the death statistics. Looking at Lombardy with 6k+ deaths with the outbreak not yet peaked, am I really supposed to believe that only 2.5k died in Wuhan (similar population)? The CFR outside Hubei is ridiculously low - only 1 death out of 1200 cases in Zhejiang (!)? During China's outbreak, there were additionally lots of accusations of case data being completely made up (insufficient variance in daily numbers) and looking at basically every other country's quite noisy reports today, that was almost certainly true. The implications are pretty vast: China's reporting actually made the disease seem less urgent than it really was. Perhaps tens of thousands of lives would have been saved had they been more transparent.
- bigpumpkin 7y ago
  These claims have no basis in facts. The case fatality rate varies greatly depends on whether the health capacity is being overwhelmed, because when you don't have enough ICU beds or ventilators, your seriously ill patients cannot live. Lombardy experienced a greater strain on its medical system than Wuhan ever did. China sent 40,000 medical professionals from the rest of the country to Wuhan where has Lombardy had little outside aid. China also had universal masking whereas Italy never did. The real case count in Italy is in the 7 figures. When you do widespread testing as China did in Zhejiang you can find a lot of mild cases. Indeed, Iceland, which did the same, has 1020 cases and 2 deaths.
  - taylodl 7y ago
    That's interesting. I had not heard that but that raises the question of where did those 40,000 medical professionals practice medicine? Where did China get all their ventilators and PPEs? Did they need them? Once this is all over I hope all the countries get together and compare notes and experiences so we're all better prepared for the next pandemic.
    - 7y ago
jariel 7y ago
All of China's public numbers are fiction, all information is suppressed and censored, numbers created at the local and regional level are fabricated, credible accounting principles do not exist, Chinese companies cannot withstand any reasonable external audit. There are many entities, specifically in the world of finance that perform their own measurements of Chinese economic numbers and they don't jibe with the official figures. With respect to Coronavirus, China lied and suppressed information early on, including sanctioning and suppressing anyone who talked about it. As far as Japan, why assume others are not suspicious? Japan's numbers look 'off' there's been a lot of talk about that. American numbers are transparent, created by different agencies, the issues are likely testing, the varying types of tests. Edit: I would say that most nations are otherwise the same, the only reason Japan stands out in this round is because their numbers just look odd. Edit: This is not a new phenomenon. During the Soviet era, we saw the same thing happening from the USSR et. al. Public numbers are politicized and an essential part of the propaganda effort. It's not even a controversial position. Consider that even right now, during the Huawei political crisis, nobody can discern who actually controls this major international conglomerate, as officially they are ostensibly 99% owned by employees, which is an obvious fallacy.
maallooc 7y ago
Who assumes Japan's numbers are honest? We all know they've been cooking their numbers for the stupid olympics. At this point all I can believe are South Korea's numbers. They have transparent government unlike China, they have tested extensively unlike the US, Italy and Spain, and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  > and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries. Do you mean political climate? I don’t think the weather over regions that large can be generalised in any meaningful way.
  - gpapilion 7y ago
    I'm assuming the author is referring to the weather, and the fact Korea is colder in winter and spring.
fatjokes 7y ago
I think the main issue is that the Internet (especially reddit, and to a lesser extent, HN) is just not a good place for nuanced discussion. China = totalitarian = bad. Any good results are either by luck or a lie. USA = democracy = good. Any bad results are due to incompetence or Trump/Hillary (depending on your leanings). Plenty of people exist in the gray area, but they're not going to be upvoted. Any post in support of China is going to be marked as "bot" or "CCP shill". Japan gets lumped in with the US. The case I find funniest is South Korea. Everybody agrees SK has done an amazing job while maintaining a very free society and vibrant democracy. The room tends to go quiet when you mention that this was enabled by their mass surveillance network. (Check out the live streams of their traffic cams! [1]). [1] https://map.naver.com/v5/?c=14135232.1111786,4519333.3257182,15,0,0,0,dhc https://map.naver.com/v5/?c=14135232.1111786,4519333.3257182...
- maallooc 7y ago
  > Mass surveillance network Citation needed. Live traffic feeds are common here in the US[1] and other countries. [1] https://transportation.arlingtonva.us/live-traffic-cameras/ https://transportation.arlingtonva.us/live-traffic-cameras/
  - gruez 7y ago
    [deleted]
    - maallooc 7y ago
      So? Having a traffic cam and/or having a traffic cam live feed does not prove that country has a 'mass surveillance network'.
      - gruez 7y ago
        [deleted]
        maallooc 7y ago
lurquer 7y ago
> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie If true, and the Chinese government officially pronounced that it does in fact always lie, the entire country would dissapear in a vortex of paradox.
intpx 7y ago
i dont know if their data is bogus or not but I can tell you that japan has engineered their society with infection control in mind. if people are even the least bit under the weather they put on a face mask. Many people who directly interface with large numbers of people wear them all the time (clerks, train station employees etc). hygiene is very important. many more doors are automatic than in most of the world. anything that can be touchless usually is. when any authority even hints that they want their passengers/employees/citizens to do or not do something it is taken a command and followed rigorously. I'm wondering if self-isolation along with a culture of face masks is why their numbers are so low. A single person wearing a cotton face mask wont move the numbers down at all but a majority of the population both retarding their exhalation of virulent loads and their inhalation of virulent loads will. Should also be emphasized that the philosophy behind face masks isnt "dont you make me sick" its "i really dont want to make you sick"
- cossray 7y ago
  The automatic doors might be the quiet heroes here. Given that hands have proved to be among the predominant avenues for the virus spread, I have been keen to monitor where my hands are put into use here in Japan. The only door knobs I have to turn on a normal day routine are my apartment and office doors. Any other place: from convenient stores, ATMs to buildings, automatic doors are quietly but effectively protecting the masses
  - robocat 7y ago
    > Given that hands have proved to be among the predominant avenues for the virus spread Do you have any information to back that up? I have seen respected epidemiologists saying hands are a minor vector, that Covid19 is a respiratory disease with respiration being the dominant transmission vector.
dfxm12 7y ago
Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? FWIW, Every report I read was skeptical of Japan's numbers, usually based in thinking they had an ulterior motive to downplay the outbreak because they didn't want to move the Olympics.
rumanator 7y ago
> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, You are talking about the regime that fired the previous official in charge of the chinese government's response to it's covid19 outbreak for aledgedly falsifying information, and afterwards inexplicably decided to officially leave out from their covid19 infection statistics any patient who was confirmed to carry the virus but subjectively wasn't experiencing major symptoms. Meanwhile, the Chinese government's officials claim with a straight face that there are no new covid19 cases in China, and ridiculously stating that any new case happens to be foreigners importing an infection caught outside of China. The reason why people think the Chinese governmemt is lying is because the Chinese government is patently and shamelesly lying.
- hungryhobo 7y ago
  Or you are just too deep in your personal bias. Even if you don't trust the numbers at the face value, there are external things you can observe. Provincial movement bans are lifted, factories are returning to work, restaurants are opening again. No government, authoritarian or not, would make that call if the cases are not under control.
  - rumanator 7y ago
    > Or you are just too deep in your personal bias. I could provide citations and sources and support for everything I pointed out. But I noticed you are posting using an account created recently which is being used to brigade threads all over HN that point out anything less than totally positive involving China's ruling regime.
    - hungryhobo 7y ago
      Citations that point to restaurants opening being faked? Factory opening being faked? Travel ban lifted being faked? Please do. I'm Chinese, I realize Chinese government's flaws, but I also recognize its merits. I hope you can accept that people with different opinions than you are not just trolls
tengbretson 7y ago
> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. The phenomenon you're describing is called a reputation.
righteous 7y ago
> Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having now leading to underreporting of numbers, back in Jan-Feb when every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up. I wish I could be as generous as you but China had a history of lying and suppressing objective truth. They behave more like Russia during the Cold War, than western countries with free and unrestricted press.
justicezyx 7y ago
Funny that a lot of my Chinese friends and relatives in mainland China, now believe that US and many western government deliberately not carrying out tests to manipulate the numbers. They believe US etc are heading to a much worse situations than China's because of the government's incompetence, and intention to not appear incompetent.
wnevets 7y ago
> Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. Japan is notorious for faking numbers to save face like their murder rate [0] but americans never seem to doubt them. Very odd. [0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autopsy9-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autop...
justaguyhere 7y ago
What is the reason behind doctored numbers? I mean, I can understand during normal time - governments and politicians and bureaucrats like all the time to make themselves look good. But during a pandemic/emergency, lying is only going to backfire, no? Like, how long can they lie? a week? a month? Eventually they're going to get caught, no?
dang 7y ago
Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. There's substantive material to discuss here, but you've unfortunately poured firestarter over it (e.g. snark and flamey rhetoric). When people do this, the results are predictable and dismal—especially when the material is flammable to begin with. That's why the site guidelines explicitly ask you not to post this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact, you should do the opposite: add flame retardant, i.e. use neutral language, narrow the scope of your claims to what the substance supports, edit out grand provocation.
- ksk 7y ago
  Unfortunately for you, people have been using neutral language to start daily flame-wars and getting away with it.
  - dang 7y ago
    It's easy to make grand claims like that. Where are the links? It's not ok for anyone to start flamewars on HN, and lord knows I spend enough of my life telling people so. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
    - ksk 7y ago
      Oh, I meant it half in jest. I definitely don't want your job ;) For e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219 Commenter labels a legitimate company as "skeezy", uses needlessly insulting language to polarize discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703881 Commenter uses the usual government trope to polarize discussion.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]

enaaem 7y ago

The big difference is that the chines communist party is actively suppressing messages And prosecuting people who go against the governments narrative.

weeksie 7y ago
No idea why this is downvoted because it's literally what's happening in China, regardless of the failures elsewhere.
- kleer001 7y ago
  Downvoted maybe because spelling and capitalization errors? Edit: Holy crispy, it's just an idea of mine, not an assertion or endorsement or confirmation. Geeze.
  - simonh 7y ago
    If so that's a bit mean. Not everyone here is a native English speaker.
  - y-c-o-m-b 7y ago
    Which is a really stupid reason to down-vote. Down-voting should be reserved for comments that do not contribute to the discussion. People need to be aware that there's non-native English speakers on this platform too.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      If you can’t learn to write English keep reading. Being unable to capitalize or punctuate correctly is a wonderful heuristic for not trying to communicate. There are many more native speakers who are typing for their own benefit than non-natives who can profitably read this forum but can’t write.
    - cossray 7y ago
      This is an American forum in all but name. For the rest, we feel like we're eavesdropping, occasionally mumbling here and there.
macewindu 7y ago
> The big difference is that the chines communist party is actively suppressing messages And prosecuting people who go against the governments narrative. Unlike the USA?
- duxup 7y ago
  Very much unlike the USA.
- simonh 7y ago
  Even if that was being done in the USA, that does not make it ok for China to do it and in that case both should be criticised. Otherwise that's just whataboutism and should not be tolerated.
- maallooc 7y ago
  Yes. Unlike the USA.

duxup 7y ago

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie Lie, that involves intent so I don't know that I care to indicate or debate that. Highly skeptical, yeah I am considering they've already a long track record of suppressing information / people related to the COVID situation. Less free countries have little reason / a long track record of hiding bad news, from their own people, others, etc, and they have less free media, people to discover / tell anyone otherwise. >Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Here we are discussing an article that doesn't assume that.

me_me_me 7y ago

> Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? Maybe because modern Japan doesn't have a track record of mass censorship and disappearing people who oppose governmental line? Chinese gov is trying to blame US as source of the virus. I think Trump only dreams of being 'creative' on that level. That said, I am not defending or justifying gov of Japan. This can be incompetence or malicious data tampering to look better.

keiferski 7y ago

This is a false equivalency. China is a totalitarian state that quite literally controls information; Japan and the US are not in any real sense. About six months ago, on a different HN topic, I said this about China's claim that foreigners committed crimes and thus couldn't leave the country: I call it “crying wolf in reverse”: The problem with being a totalitarian state that falsely imprisons people on a regular basis is that you’ve lost all moral authority when it comes to arresting people for actual crimes. If you’ve falsified evidence, conducted show trials and made a mockery of rule of law before, why should anyone believe you when you say it’s a real crime this time? We're seeing a similar situation with regards to their Covid-19 reporting. Is it necessarily inaccurate? No, but lying about everything else doesn't exactly lend us to trust you this time.

tinus_hn 7y ago
For what it’s worth, the Japanese justice system has an over 99% conviction rate.
- keiferski 7y ago
  Sure, absolutely the Japanese justice system has some serious problems, just as the American one does. But let's not pretend that they're remotely comparable to the CCP.
  - sosborn 7y ago
    > unlikely-to-be-convicted cases Unfortunately this doesn't mean what people might think it means. "Unlikely-to-be-convicted" doesn't mean much when the police have so many tools available to force confessions, whether the person is guilty or not. *Not comparing to CCP
- duxup 7y ago
  Assuming that is accurate, do they just perhaps take a different approach to who they bother to prosecute? Justice systems are really hard to compare considering the different circumstances.

coliveira 7y ago

There are wild accusations against Chinese government, when in fact we now see that they put the most stringent measures to avoid the escalation of this virus, which in fact they succeeded in doing, at least inside China. On the other hand, I live in one of the early focus of the virus in the USA, and the federal and local authorities told us to just wash hands, avoid handshakes, and continue our normal life. Against a virus that is treated in other countries with hazmat suits! In my opinion THIS is criminal, on the same level of what happened in Chernobyl, knowing everything that we knew about the crisis situation in China and Korea. Now the virus is out of control in the US and the government still has the nerve to tell us that this is the fault of someone else.

hajile 7y ago
China lied about literally EVERYTHING. Claims the first case was in December. It was [middle of November](https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.html https://www.livescience.com/first-case-coronavirus-found.htm...) Other countries didn't even know there was much going on until December 30 thanks to Dr Li Wenliang [source](https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30382-2/fulltext https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...). He suddenly catches the disease and dies -- big coincidence in my opinion (especially as the death rate for someone 34 is 0.2%). This is at least SIX WEEKS after the initial infection. They have hundreds to thousands of cases, but they somehow conclude that human to human transmission isn't occurring. Middle of January, WHO itself [tweets out](https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foxnews.com%2Fworld%2Fworld-health-organization-january-tweet-china-human-transmission-coronavirus https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152?ref_src=t...) that human to human transmission isn't happening. I'd note that Japan already had a case with NO links to any markets [source](https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/16/national/science-health/japan-first-coronavirus-case/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/01/16/national/scienc...) Why would WHO do this? I don't know about the entire organization, but the WHO leader is [Tedros Adhanom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom). He is Ethiopian and works for the Ethiopian government. Ethiopia does 5.4 billion in trade with China let alone a 4 billion dollar direct investment [source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Ethiopia_relations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93Ethiopia_relatio...). China also holds almost half of Ethiopia's debt [source](https://www.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construction-style/index.html https://www.cnn.com/style/article/addis-ababa-china-construc...). Put simple, the WHO leader is compromised when it comes to China. This extends further with weird dodging of questions about Taiwan by another WHO official [source](https://twitter.com/ezracheungtoto/status/1243869774410469376 https://twitter.com/ezracheungtoto/status/124386977441046937...). Despite all this, the US still started screening people on Jan 17 [CDC source](https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-screening.html https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p0117-coronavirus-sc...). If the disease were more like MERS or the original SARS, this would have likely been all that was needed. China throws a party with 40,000 people in Wuhan kicking an already huge problem into overdrive on January 18 [source](https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/02/06/wuhan-neighbourhood-sees-infections-after-40000-families-gather-for-potluck https://www.thestar.com.my/news/regional/2020/02/06/wuhan-ne...) On January 20 (exactly 10 weeks ago), China still denied the virus was transmitting between people [source](http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020012009077 http://wjw.wuhan.gov.cn/front/web/showDetail/2020012009077). Only on January 21 does someone at WHO finally conclude human to human transmission is happening [source](https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit-wuhan-china-jan-2020 https://www.who.int/china/news/detail/22-01-2020-field-visit...). Compromised WHO leader continues to praise China's response [source](https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-statement-on-ihr-emergency-committee-on-novel-coronavirus https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-...). China allows hundreds of millions of people to travel over Chinese Lunar New Years (Jan 24-30). The idea that people from Wuhan hadn't already traveled elsewhere in the country is crazy given what we know about the 1-27 days before symptoms show.

ggggtez 7y ago

Surprisingly, as a person complaining about gullibility of other people, I really don't know how you came to the conclusion that everyone believes Japan's numbers. Almost every article I've read that has mentioned Japan's low rate has raised the concern the numbers are faked. They highlight that it has a high rate of smoking, lots of travel to/from china, and very crowded cities. Each of these raises the risk. So I'd say reporters have been skeptical. On the other hand, China is not just suspected of lying, but have been proven to have lied and suppressed the disease. In fact, that was the whole reason the disease got out of hand in the first place, as it's now clear the disease started spreading at least as early as December, and possibly even as early as October of last year. If China had properly not suppressed the information, the world might have been able to get a start on preparing vaccines and equipment and we could have avoided the current mess.

dtwest 7y ago

"Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie" "every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up" Stop using absolutes. There are plenty of people in the US that realize the US numbers have been suppressed by a lack of testing. There are plenty of people in the US who actually think China has handled the situation better than our own dysfunctional government. The only absolute truth is that we don't have all of the information yet.

fatjokes 7y ago
I think GP was probably being hyperbolic. Speaking with temperament sadly doesn't work well on the Internet.
- droopyEyelids 7y ago
  Regardless, HN prides itself on reasoned debate, and straw man/flamebait responses are against the TOS here.

standardUser 7y ago

I agree with the gist of what you're saying, but I think you're missing a key part of the picture. Any jurisdiction can lie if they want, for a while, but at a certain point this is an actual disease that causes actual illness and death. You can't hide hundreds or thousands of people dying from respiratory failure and you can't hide overwhelmed hospitals or auxiliary medical tents. Not for very long at least. In the case of Japan, they do not appear to have high enough transmission rates to cause serious problems. I don't know if they are lying about any given fact or figure. But they are not covering up a widespread COVID-19 outbreak because we know what that type of outbreak looks like. It looks like Italy.

usaar333 7y ago

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Well, this jibes with reality. I could care less about actual case counts - few countries are close to having the capacity to test everyone so who cares. What is a huge problem with China is the death statistics. Looking at Lombardy with 6k+ deaths with the outbreak not yet peaked, am I really supposed to believe that only 2.5k died in Wuhan (similar population)? The CFR outside Hubei is ridiculously low - only 1 death out of 1200 cases in Zhejiang (!)? During China's outbreak, there were additionally lots of accusations of case data being completely made up (insufficient variance in daily numbers) and looking at basically every other country's quite noisy reports today, that was almost certainly true. The implications are pretty vast: China's reporting actually made the disease seem less urgent than it really was. Perhaps tens of thousands of lives would have been saved had they been more transparent.

bigpumpkin 7y ago
These claims have no basis in facts. The case fatality rate varies greatly depends on whether the health capacity is being overwhelmed, because when you don't have enough ICU beds or ventilators, your seriously ill patients cannot live. Lombardy experienced a greater strain on its medical system than Wuhan ever did. China sent 40,000 medical professionals from the rest of the country to Wuhan where has Lombardy had little outside aid. China also had universal masking whereas Italy never did. The real case count in Italy is in the 7 figures. When you do widespread testing as China did in Zhejiang you can find a lot of mild cases. Indeed, Iceland, which did the same, has 1020 cases and 2 deaths.
- taylodl 7y ago
  That's interesting. I had not heard that but that raises the question of where did those 40,000 medical professionals practice medicine? Where did China get all their ventilators and PPEs? Did they need them? Once this is all over I hope all the countries get together and compare notes and experiences so we're all better prepared for the next pandemic.
  - 7y ago

jariel 7y ago

All of China's public numbers are fiction, all information is suppressed and censored, numbers created at the local and regional level are fabricated, credible accounting principles do not exist, Chinese companies cannot withstand any reasonable external audit. There are many entities, specifically in the world of finance that perform their own measurements of Chinese economic numbers and they don't jibe with the official figures. With respect to Coronavirus, China lied and suppressed information early on, including sanctioning and suppressing anyone who talked about it. As far as Japan, why assume others are not suspicious? Japan's numbers look 'off' there's been a lot of talk about that. American numbers are transparent, created by different agencies, the issues are likely testing, the varying types of tests. Edit: I would say that most nations are otherwise the same, the only reason Japan stands out in this round is because their numbers just look odd. Edit: This is not a new phenomenon. During the Soviet era, we saw the same thing happening from the USSR et. al. Public numbers are politicized and an essential part of the propaganda effort. It's not even a controversial position. Consider that even right now, during the Huawei political crisis, nobody can discern who actually controls this major international conglomerate, as officially they are ostensibly 99% owned by employees, which is an obvious fallacy.

maallooc 7y ago

Who assumes Japan's numbers are honest? We all know they've been cooking their numbers for the stupid olympics. At this point all I can believe are South Korea's numbers. They have transparent government unlike China, they have tested extensively unlike the US, Italy and Spain, and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries.

lostlogin 7y ago
> and their climate is similar to the US unlike Taiwan and SE Asian countries. Do you mean political climate? I don’t think the weather over regions that large can be generalised in any meaningful way.
- gpapilion 7y ago
  I'm assuming the author is referring to the weather, and the fact Korea is colder in winter and spring.

fatjokes 7y ago

I think the main issue is that the Internet (especially reddit, and to a lesser extent, HN) is just not a good place for nuanced discussion. China = totalitarian = bad. Any good results are either by luck or a lie. USA = democracy = good. Any bad results are due to incompetence or Trump/Hillary (depending on your leanings). Plenty of people exist in the gray area, but they're not going to be upvoted. Any post in support of China is going to be marked as "bot" or "CCP shill". Japan gets lumped in with the US. The case I find funniest is South Korea. Everybody agrees SK has done an amazing job while maintaining a very free society and vibrant democracy. The room tends to go quiet when you mention that this was enabled by their mass surveillance network. (Check out the live streams of their traffic cams! [1]). [1] https://map.naver.com/v5/?c=14135232.1111786,4519333.3257182,15,0,0,0,dhc https://map.naver.com/v5/?c=14135232.1111786,4519333.3257182...

maallooc 7y ago
> Mass surveillance network Citation needed. Live traffic feeds are common here in the US[1] and other countries. [1] https://transportation.arlingtonva.us/live-traffic-cameras/ https://transportation.arlingtonva.us/live-traffic-cameras/
- gruez 7y ago
  [deleted]
  - maallooc 7y ago
    So? Having a traffic cam and/or having a traffic cam live feed does not prove that country has a 'mass surveillance network'.
    - gruez 7y ago
      [deleted]
      - maallooc 7y ago

lurquer 7y ago

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie If true, and the Chinese government officially pronounced that it does in fact always lie, the entire country would dissapear in a vortex of paradox.

intpx 7y ago

i dont know if their data is bogus or not but I can tell you that japan has engineered their society with infection control in mind. if people are even the least bit under the weather they put on a face mask. Many people who directly interface with large numbers of people wear them all the time (clerks, train station employees etc). hygiene is very important. many more doors are automatic than in most of the world. anything that can be touchless usually is. when any authority even hints that they want their passengers/employees/citizens to do or not do something it is taken a command and followed rigorously. I'm wondering if self-isolation along with a culture of face masks is why their numbers are so low. A single person wearing a cotton face mask wont move the numbers down at all but a majority of the population both retarding their exhalation of virulent loads and their inhalation of virulent loads will. Should also be emphasized that the philosophy behind face masks isnt "dont you make me sick" its "i really dont want to make you sick"

cossray 7y ago
The automatic doors might be the quiet heroes here. Given that hands have proved to be among the predominant avenues for the virus spread, I have been keen to monitor where my hands are put into use here in Japan. The only door knobs I have to turn on a normal day routine are my apartment and office doors. Any other place: from convenient stores, ATMs to buildings, automatic doors are quietly but effectively protecting the masses
- robocat 7y ago
  > Given that hands have proved to be among the predominant avenues for the virus spread Do you have any information to back that up? I have seen respected epidemiologists saying hands are a minor vector, that Covid19 is a respiratory disease with respiration being the dominant transmission vector.

dfxm12 7y ago

Meanwhile people just assume Japan's numbers must be honest because... why? FWIW, Every report I read was skeptical of Japan's numbers, usually based in thinking they had an ulterior motive to downplay the outbreak because they didn't want to move the Olympics.

rumanator 7y ago

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, You are talking about the regime that fired the previous official in charge of the chinese government's response to it's covid19 outbreak for aledgedly falsifying information, and afterwards inexplicably decided to officially leave out from their covid19 infection statistics any patient who was confirmed to carry the virus but subjectively wasn't experiencing major symptoms. Meanwhile, the Chinese government's officials claim with a straight face that there are no new covid19 cases in China, and ridiculously stating that any new case happens to be foreigners importing an infection caught outside of China. The reason why people think the Chinese governmemt is lying is because the Chinese government is patently and shamelesly lying.

hungryhobo 7y ago
Or you are just too deep in your personal bias. Even if you don't trust the numbers at the face value, there are external things you can observe. Provincial movement bans are lifted, factories are returning to work, restaurants are opening again. No government, authoritarian or not, would make that call if the cases are not under control.
- rumanator 7y ago
  > Or you are just too deep in your personal bias. I could provide citations and sources and support for everything I pointed out. But I noticed you are posting using an account created recently which is being used to brigade threads all over HN that point out anything less than totally positive involving China's ruling regime.
  - hungryhobo 7y ago
    Citations that point to restaurants opening being faked? Factory opening being faked? Travel ban lifted being faked? Please do. I'm Chinese, I realize Chinese government's flaws, but I also recognize its merits. I hope you can accept that people with different opinions than you are not just trolls

tengbretson 7y ago

> Whatever China says must ALWAYS be a lie, on the other hand, the US numbers are not "suppressed," it's just incompetence. Meanwhile, nobody is batting an eye at Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. The phenomenon you're describing is called a reputation.

righteous 7y ago

> Hey guys, maybe China was just having literally the same organizational problems the US is having now leading to underreporting of numbers, back in Jan-Feb when every commenter on reddit and HN were saying China was covering it up. I wish I could be as generous as you but China had a history of lying and suppressing objective truth. They behave more like Russia during the Cold War, than western countries with free and unrestricted press.

justicezyx 7y ago

Funny that a lot of my Chinese friends and relatives in mainland China, now believe that US and many western government deliberately not carrying out tests to manipulate the numbers. They believe US etc are heading to a much worse situations than China's because of the government's incompetence, and intention to not appear incompetent.

wnevets 7y ago

> Japan's ridiculously and obviously doctored numbers. Japan is notorious for faking numbers to save face like their murder rate [0] but americans never seem to doubt them. Very odd. [0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autopsy9-story.html https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-nov-09-fg-autop...

justaguyhere 7y ago

What is the reason behind doctored numbers? I mean, I can understand during normal time - governments and politicians and bureaucrats like all the time to make themselves look good. But during a pandemic/emergency, lying is only going to backfire, no? Like, how long can they lie? a week? a month? Eventually they're going to get caught, no?

dang 7y ago

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. There's substantive material to discuss here, but you've unfortunately poured firestarter over it (e.g. snark and flamey rhetoric). When people do this, the results are predictable and dismal—especially when the material is flammable to begin with. That's why the site guidelines explicitly ask you not to post this way: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html In fact, you should do the opposite: add flame retardant, i.e. use neutral language, narrow the scope of your claims to what the substance supports, edit out grand provocation.

ksk 7y ago
Unfortunately for you, people have been using neutral language to start daily flame-wars and getting away with it.
- dang 7y ago
  It's easy to make grand claims like that. Where are the links? It's not ok for anyone to start flamewars on HN, and lord knows I spend enough of my life telling people so. If you see a post that ought to have been moderated but hasn't been, the likeliest explanation is that we didn't see it. We don't come close to seeing everything that gets posted here. You can help by flagging it or emailing us at hn@ycombinator.com.
  - ksk 7y ago
    Oh, I meant it half in jest. I definitely don't want your job ;) For e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703219 Commenter labels a legitimate company as "skeezy", uses needlessly insulting language to polarize discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703881 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22703881 Commenter uses the usual government trope to polarize discussion.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]